Friends, I’m dusting off the old fashioned bloggy-blog. You’re going on an adventure with me in my Sacraments class at the University of Notre Dame this semester. I have to write several blog posts for this course. Some may be brilliant. Some may be passing. I’ll be wrestling with our course material and various pastoral or academic prompts from Professor Tim O’Malley. This week, we read Pieper‘s In Search of the Sacred and Ratzinger’s The Sacramental Foundation of Christian Existence.
This week’s question is a good one:
Imagine that you’re teaching adult catechumens about the sacraments. One of the catechumens raises the following objection: “Do I really need the sacraments? After all, can’t I encounter God on my own without the rites of the Church?” Based on your reading of Pieper and Ratzinger, how would you respond?
To answer these questions, I’ll start with a question: In your experience, what makes the celebration of the Eucharist or Mass different from any other gathering? Mass is the liturgy, the unity of the congregation, the choir, the call and response, the proclamation of the Word, the prayers, the celebration of the Eucharist, the kneeling and standing, the smell of incense and the ringing bells, the sign of the cross. All of these symbols and signs make up the sacrament of the Eucharist as an efficacious encounter with Christ himself at work (see CCC 1127). In the Mass, we encounter Jesus, physically offered to us in the Eucharist –His body, blood, soul, and divinity. We do not celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist any other way. For this reason, we understand the Mass as something sacred, meaning set apart and oriented toward the divine. Moreover, we speak of the Mass being “celebrated”, which means that it is something carried out in a non-ordinary manner on behalf of the community (see Pieper p. 26).
We can see, historically through art, that the Christian tradition has always recognized some things as sacred (set apart and oriented toward the divine). If you’ve ever taken a careful look at art in churches, especially older churches, you may notice that on the outside of the churches, porticos, or in the narthex, there are often paintings or mosaics of the zodiac signs. This may seem weird; why put pagan images on churches? These images appear outside the sanctuary, or “pro-fanus”, meaning the area outside the temple (Pieper p.16). This location demarks what is sacred (what is inside the church) from what is “profane”, or “outside.” Note that profane in this sense does not mean unholy or vulgar, it’s simply denoting that which is sacred from that which is ordinary. (Pieper, p. 25).
In defining a sacrament, Cardinal Ratzinger taught that our relationship with God, specifically through the sacraments, can be expressed using the cruciform shape of a vertical and a horizontal dimension. The “vertical dimension” of sacrament reflects the call that God makes on a person in the first instance. (see Ratzinger p.164). The “horizontal dimension” of sacrament involves Christ’s own participation in history, which draws humans into God’s eternity. (See Ratzinger, p. 164.) Ratzinger described the sacraments as a rope between creation and eternity. God’s personal call on humans, and God’s participation in history to draw humanity to himself through Jesus Christ, exist within the sacraments.
In today’s culture, there’s an effort to “desacralize”, or to strip off, what is sacred so that either everything becomes sacred, or nothing is sacred. A symptom of deserialization may manifest in someone saying that she is spiritual but doesn’t need to go to church (to participate in something set apart and oriented toward the divine). This sort of spiritual self-sufficiency is just a new iteration of Pelagianism, a heresy that pedaled that humanity did not need God’s grace – grace that is offered in the sacraments! If we buy into the idea that everything is sacred, then we are also likely to deny the sacramental reality that certain signs and symbols are efficacious in Christ’s activity of moving creation toward eternity. A danger in professing that everything is sacred, is that it dilutes what is sacred so much that eventually, nothing is sacred.
When we participate in the sacraments of the Church, we affirm that aspects of God’s creation are separated from the ordinary and directed to the divine. We also affirm Christ’s movement in creation to draw us to eternity.
The practice of eating a meal provides a helpful analogy for why the sacraments are necessary. Think of the most enjoyable meal that you’ve ever had – perhaps a Christmas dinner with family and friends. This meal is more that utilitarian eating. It’s special. In this meal, we delight in the gifts of God’s earth, we drink fruits of the vine, the meal creates community and fellowship, and everyone is united in the common interest of receiving the gifts of food and good company, and celebrating Jesus’ birth (see Ratzinger 156-57). The meal is set apart from ordinary eating. To make the meal special, you might use nice dishes, light candles, or prepare elegant or favorite foods. Such a meal is, in a way loosely “sacred.” This is not ordinary eating. This is set apart.
Other meals may partially resemble the special Christmas meal, but they are not the same and lacking in some aspects. For example, swinging through the McDonald’s drive through to grab burgers for the kids on the way to soccer practice may resemble a Christmas meal insofar as food is present, but it’s ordinary eating in the course of an ordinary day of driving, and gathering uniforms and soccer balls. It’s not set apart from our ordinary days.
Is an ordinary meal less good or unholy? No. Remember that to be “sacred” is to be set apart and oriented to the divine. But remember, too, that creation is “very good.” Things that are “profane”, meaning outside the sacred are not necessarily “unholy” or “Godless.” Your ordinary drive-through dinner may very well be good (health concerns aside).
But let’s take this idea of a meal celebrated like Christmas as an analogy for sacrament. At the beginning of this blog we outlined what makes the Mass, the Mass. The Mass is sacred: it is set apart and oriented to the divine and has many conspicuous elements (prayer, bells, singing, etc). In the sacred celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist, we come to understand that vertical dimension of God’s call on us and the horizontal dimension that Jesus Christ works in the history of creation, offering Himself, to draw us to eternity. In this sacrament, a person realizes “that he is not the founder of his own being but lives his existence in receptivity” (See Ratzinger p. 157).
So can a person encounter God on his own without the rites of the Church?
Yes. God’s creation is “very good” and there are many ways to encounter God outside of rites that are specifically set apart. This does not mean that every encounter with God is a sacrament. Holiness can exist outside of sacraments.
Just as we seek to encounter God personally, God seeks us personally. God encounters us personally through His creation. We see God encountering humanity in His creation in the Garden. “Where are you?” (Gn 3:9), he asked Adam and Eve? Moreover, Scripture is replete with people lifting their prayers to God personally, outside of communal rites and rituals. For example, we see individual prayer in the Old Testament when Abraham stands before God and asks for intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. In the New Testament, Jesus prayed personally to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane (see Mt 26:39).
However, as personal prayer deepens, we are drawn more into participation with Christ, and this happens in an efficacious way in the sacraments. Personal prayer is a way that people encounter the “vertical” dimension of sacramentality and realize God’s call on their lives, but it is through the sacraments that we encounter, in community, the horizontal aspect, namely, Christ’s action to draw humanity toward eternity.