To begin this explanation of the sacraments, it might be helpful to address the sacraments you have received thus far and have learned what unique, sanctifying grace they give all throughout the years of Catholic education. Let’s look at the when: Baptism was most likely given as an infant, receiving the filial relationship with God; Reconciliation and First Communion were received consecutively as a 2nd grader, with healing and reentering into communion with God through the Eucharist; Confirmation was remembered as a middle or high schooler, given the gifts of the Holy Spirit; and you have assumed as spouses received Matrimony in greater union with each other and God in spousal love. These sacraments are received in stages of life, yes, but the sacraments are not limited to our understanding as a rite of passage. They are the essential entrance points into an active participation and reunification of Divine Life that the world was intended to have from the beginning of time.
Using historical, philosophical, and theological foundations, Louis Bouyer, in his work, Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God, ultimately displays the point: all of creation is oriented to the sacramental life. If this is understood properly, it will transform the understanding of the necessity for sacraments.
What is creation? Is it just the material things right in front of us? What is seen, touched, smelled, tasted, heard? But, everything that we sense also becomes a part of our intellectual thinking, which “at each moment, our perception of reality is integrated” (Bouyer, 13). Humanity knows creation because what we see becomes what is known, what we think about, and eventually what we love, wanting the good. And you parents know this intimately through the creation of your children. God made creation out of nothing, ex nihilo, and this fact demonstrates that creation is NOT God and has to be something apart and completely dependent on Him.
But, where do we see this dependency through the history of creation? Material things can show us our dependency – food, water, death, life, the sexual act. These are things created that humanity depends on to live and be human. Bouyer, along with Cardinal Ratzinger, explains that these material items in the context of rites give the entrance of myth. We are not talking about myths like the Greek gods, but a story that unifies our understanding of what is right in front of us. And in the sacraments, as set rituals, give us the greater scope of myth, the hidden narrative that is forgotten if we just focus on the rite itself. With the material and spiritual activity of the sacrament, “man sees himself as capable of gaining the widest and deepest vision of this reality” (Bouyer, 18). And the reality spoken of is the knowledge of God.
So, this is the point that we have covered thus far: the sacraments are an entrance point in knowing the narrative of creation. But, why is that important to know for the basis of comprehending the sacraments for your children? Let’s see how we know the narrative of creation.
To set the tone, let’s look at poetry. Poetry is the way of using words as symbols or images to convey a perspective, an experience, a love, a desire that is unlike just flat out saying it. Poems are frustrating to read and sometimes rejected because they seemingly don’t present the fact that the mind wants to know. I don’t want to hear about the ‘whispering winds’, just tell me what they say! However, what does the poem make the reader do? The reader has to peer further than just the practical meaning of the words into a deeper reality of what is being expressed. Bouyer describes that creation is poetic in a “specific logic, the logic of all living symbols, [which] universally preserves man’s experience in this world as a unifying experience” (161). Humans have the capacity to know further into the spiritual realm through the symbol of material, which is something that each sacrament invites us into. There is always matter and form with every sacrament you have received and learned about. And if the intent of creation always had the sacraments in mind, the matter helps us to understand the form.
Poetry, through symbols, images, and words, makes humanity have to wonder and peer into a deeper reality than just simply presented. If the sacraments are poetic and beautiful, what do they let us peer into? It has to be God, the Creator, the one who created the materiality and ritual activity of the sacraments. But not just the Creator, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The sacraments give us the grace to enter into union with the relationship of the Trinity.
Adam and Eve, in the story of Genesis, were created to live in relationship with God the Father. And peering further before the creation of man, the angelic hosts were also called to live in union with God, but some fell, which began evil. Man was meant to restore the will to love God but the Fall tainted humanity. But, remember the meaning of the sacraments were there the whole time through the material realities of food (the Eucharist), water (Baptism), the sexual act (marriage). Christ’s salvific act elevates these creational realities into the entrance point into Divine Life. This wisdom or glory of God through Christ “returns to him through the history of creation, of the Fall, and of salvation, as a universal Eucharist where all things come together in glory” responding to the Trinity (Bouyer, 192). The children He intended to be united with Him can be restored through the beauty of the sacraments. So, therefore, all creation is oriented toward the sacramental life. If the sacraments are controlled as just rites of passage, they will lose the sense of wonder. This sense of the rite of passage is a partial truth but not the whole picture or it would be “an essentially fragmented or compartmentalized conception of the faith” (Bouyer, 128). Each sacrament is a glimpse of participation in the glory of the Trinity, which is the Divine Fatherhood that we all long for.
Quotations from Louis Bouyer’s Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God