Now only if we could have far more homilies on Sacramental theology like this instead of all the hand-wringing and phrase-skwirming we often encounter from hierarchs attempting to evade the hair-splitting and note books of the Pharisees and the Temple Police. Today's excerpt from Fr Peter Dresser's book God is Big. Real BIG! is focused on a discussion we have been having for a long time here on Catholica: the meaning of Sacrament in today's world. We commend it as an excellent contribution to that wider discussion.

Series Navigation: Prologue & Preamble | Chapter One: The Thinking of Pooh | Orthodoxy | Who or What is God? I | Who or What is God? II | God and Jesus I | God and Jesus II | Jesus the Avatar I | Jesus the Avatar II | Religion & Literalism I | Religion & Literalism II | Religion & Literalism III | Religion & Literalism IV | Religion & Literalism V | Religion & Literalism VI | Our Universe I | Our Universe II | The God of Our Universe I | The God of Our Universe II | God, Our Universe & Ourselves I | God, Our Universe & Ourselves II | God, Our Universe & Ourselves III | God, Our Universe & Ourselves IV | Ourselves & Prayer I | Ourselves & Prayer II | Ourselves & Prayer III | Ourselves & Prayer IV | Epilogue

Chapter Ten (Part 3): Ourselves and Prayer

The Sacraments...

In the light of what has been written how can we interpret the Sacraments of the Church in our contemporary world?

I am given encouragement by the words of an article I came across recently which deals with the notion of reconciliation, that is, the Sacrament of Penance or the Rite of Reconciliation, one of the Sacraments of the Church. The writer had a subsection entitled The Priest: Is he stronger than the good God?. Some pertinent observations were made. He says that when Christians participate in the Eucharist (which for all intents and purposes is essentially a memorial meal that recalls the life, death and resurrection of Jesus), they generally have an awareness of listening to the God that speaks to them, notably in the Gospel. They give thanks for Christ who, in breaking the bread, broke his life for them and for all men and women. By going to communion they know they are uniting themselves to the Christ himself and are lead to follow the example of his life.

He then goes on to say that this transparent understanding of what is happening in the sacramental action is not however acquired for the other sacraments, in other circumstances. Thus, concerning the Anointing of the Sick, once we excitedly wished that the priest would arrive in time — that is, before the death of the person — otherwise (often we did not say, but silences implied) — that in the opposite case the sick person would not be able to be saved. Similarly the death of children who die without baptism: Ah, if only we had baptised him or her! The exclamation implies, once again, that without baptism the child must be condemned, something that the sacrament would have avoided for him or her. In the harshness of the term, in this mentality, the sacrament is going to change God's point of view; it is perceived as a sort of sufficiently powerful lever to modify the eternal lot of these persons, children or sick, and this goes against God himself. We find ourselves then standing before nothing less than a perversion of the sacramental logic. Because then sacraments are no longer signs of the magnetic attitude of God towards these persons, but as a manner or a way for the Church to save them from the hands of a badly disposed God. You know, this kind of reasoning is still fairly rampant among Catholics and other Christians today — and just maybe still traps some part of the depths of many 'up to date' Christians. More about this Sacrament of Penance later but let us look firstly at the Sacrament of Baptism and how this might be better understood in our contemporary world — and particularly the contemporary world of the Christian.

In an age of steep decline in church attendance, mums and dads still bring along their infants to be baptised — to be done as they invariably say. Why is this? It is perhaps for most a vestige of past thinking. Baptism magically removed Original Sin that we inherited from Adam and Eve and opened up for us the heavenly gates. Without Baptism no one could be saved. The Sacrament was necessary for salvation. God's kindness and love and presence was limited or bound by Baptism. But not even theologians of the Middle Ages thought like this. It was Thomas Aquinas who stated that God has not bound his power to the sacraments. And certainly such thinking does little justice to a God who is big. Real big!

Baptism is a Sacrament of Christian Initiation. No more or less! Image Source: asburychurch.org

Baptism is a Sacrament of Christian Initiation. No more or less. It is an action which through washing with water a person is initiated into the Church and becomes a follower of the man Jesus and attempts wherever possible to share in his spirit and in his outlook on life and what he saw as his mission in life. Baptism is a community celebration in which a new member is "born anew" sacramentally, is given a "new birth by water and the Holy Spirit", and in a very tangible and tactile way is made aware of his or her oneness with the Universal Spirit. Of course an infant misses all this! The baby is secreted into a religion, a request made usually by people who either have no interest in that religion or who certainly do not follow its practices. The baptism of infants makes no sense at all in contemporary society. It is full of mumbo jumbo thinking and to a large extent bears testimony to a kind of magic religious superstition on the part of parents and grandparents. It also takes up the priest's valuable time! These same children will later be presented for First Communion and then for Confirmation. All of this is time consuming and meaningless because usually today their parents – "the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith" [from the Rite of Baptism] – do not practice the faith themselves. The same kids will probably get married in the Church and usually get buried from a Church. Their lives, however, will hardly be a lived experience of sharing the Spirit of the man Jesus and could well lead to frustration and to the same passing on of religious mumbo jumbo to their own children! A grandfather once said to his grandson who was about to have a night out: "Remember boy, life is too short to be dancing with ugly girls". We might say the same thing about religion. Life is too short to be tied down to a spiritless and superstitious and meaningless and irrelevant religion. A religion must be equipped to deal with the issues of contemporary life and must embody a message of good news to its followers. If this is not the case, the cessation of its practice is highly recommended! I am more convinced than ever before that a good spirituality must come before any kind of religious affiliation. One must have an experience of God before being initiated into a community which will then nurture this experience. The flowering bush must first be planted if the watering is to have any effect.

There is something about the person and character of Jesus that is assuredly inspirational for our contemporary world. He was a man who tried to free society and religion from too many laws and too much legislation. His spirit was always a freeing and healing one, and he attempted to empathise with those who were being spurned by their fellow men and women and with those who were sick or suffering injustices of one kind or another. He was a man who continually searched for truth, justice, peace and beauty. He was definitely a man for his time. His spirit is desperately needed in our modern world because it is the spirit of the Universal Soul. It was the spirit of God that this choked up world with its overcodification and legislation and litigation and with its wars and intolerance and religious stupidity cries out for. So by all means let the good news of Jesus be promulgated. Those who then would like to be disciples of Jesus can be so. But it's entirely optional. And, once they are discipled, they can be baptised. But in that order — discipleship first and then baptism. And this is exactly the way that the man Jesus envisaged as can be extrapolated from his words at the conclusion of Matthew's Gospel [28:19]: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." To reiterate, our religion must be able to nurture and nourish a contemporary spirituality. Each of us needs an experience and a relationship with our God in the world we live in and a religion that will nurture, nourish, reinforce and celebrate this relationship, this experience.

The healing power of God's spirit — always present in the world...

The healing power of God's spirit is always present in our world but it needs to be embraced in our lives if forgiveness and reconciliation are to be achieved. There is a Sacrament in the Catholic tradition, the Sacrament of Penance or the Rite of Reconciliation that has been alluded to above. But it is not the priest who forgives. This thinking is a rather sad indictment on an older theology that suggested that God is only supposed to have power to forgive if the priest consents! It is therefore imperative that expressions such as the priest forgives or the priest consecrates no longer be used. Indeed the Third Eucharistic Prayer expresses this more correctly in the words "Father, we bring you these gifts. We ask you to make them holy by the power of your Spirit." The Eucharist is not celebrated without the ministry of the priest but the ministry of the priest is precisely at the service of the action of God's Spirit. And so it is with Confession. The latest Catechism of the Catholic Church states quite clearly that the "the confessor is not the master of God's forgiveness, but its servant". [#1466] Thus healing, forgiving, reconciling and so on are brought about by uniting ourselves in mind and heart with the healing, forgiving and reconciling Spirit of God. The attitude of forgiveness and so on exists eminently well outside the Sacrament referred to. So where does this leave the Sacrament of Penance?

The Second Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation prays in part:

In the midst of conflict and division, we know it is you who turn our minds to thoughts of peace. Your Spirit changes our hearts: enemies begin to speak to one another, those who were estranged join hands in friendship, and nations seek the way of peace together.

Your Spirit is at work when understanding puts an end to strife, when hatred is quenched by mercy, and vengeance gives way to forgiveness.

If the Sacrament of Penance is to have meaningful relevance it should be seen as a kind of a beacon which proclaims that the healing and forgiving Spirit of God is at work. It is also an opportunity for people to come together to celebrate this healing Spirit and to make tangible and tactile reconciliation with each other as a community event. The most appropriate way to view the Sacrament is to see it as a crystallisation of the existence of God's prevailing and freeing Spirit, not the moment when this Spirit comes to existence. Indeed Thomas of Aquinas did not hesitate to write that normally the penitent goes to confess in the state of grace. The Sacrament therefore becomes the celebration of God's freeing, healing and reconciling Spirit in our lives. A similar conclusion could be made for the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Through tactile expressions (the anointing with oil and the laying on of hands) the healing energy of God's spirit will be remembered and reinforced and celebrated in the here and now.

And with the experience of the Eucharist and Communion where we remember the life of the man Jesus and sacramentally partake of his body and blood, we should be drawn more closely towards his experience of God. Perhaps in the Eucharistic elements of the bread and wine that we eat and drink, the connection between ourselves and the Universal Soul that Jesus identified with will be enforced, strengthened and fortified. Thus this Sacrament will be the occasion for remembering and reinforcing the experience of God in our lives. It will become, as the Second Vatican Council noted, the source and summit of the Christian life.

Sir Edmund Leach (1910-1989) writes that "far from being the basis of a good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents".

Marriage is a huge challenge for the modern world. Even though the institution of marriage is crumbling in our modern world, couples are still opting to get married. Ironically many seek marriage as a means of cementing their relationship. Unfortunately, the majority of couples presenting themselves for marriage have been living together for some time, and such de facto relationships formalised in matrimony have little chance of success. The chemistry of sexual attraction wears off after five or six years! Divorce rates are at an all time high, families are disintegrating, neglected children the sad legacy of broken relationships. Pessimistically and perhaps realistically viewing the notion of marital and family bliss, the social anthropologist Sir Edmund Leach writes that far from being the basis of a good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.

We live in a throw-a-way kind of world...

One questions whether it is possible to have a life long commitment in our contemporary society. We live in a throw-a-way kind of world, ranging from fast take-a-ways to disposable razors. Institutions are collapsing all around us and marriage, sadly, is one such institution. And very few couples even consider undertaking some kind of Marriage Preparation course thus plunging the likelihood of lasting marital bliss to even lower depths. But it is an institution still on the books and perhaps can be a success for those who undertake this vocation with an appreciation of the spirituality that is its infrastructure. With the creation-based spirituality that I have been referring to throughout this document, the love and intimacy shown between the couple in marriage should really reflect the oneness of our God and ourselves. This is the traditional Catholic sacramental understanding of Marriage and so Marriage ought to reinforce and celebrate and display in the lives of the couple the unity and connectedness that we all have with each other and with our God. The flowering bush must first be planted before it can be nourished and nurtured in the waters of matrimony. As a note of warning, therefore, couples should not approach Marriage without a good understanding of the oneness of all things and how God and ourselves are intimately connected. Otherwise Marriage becomes a futile activity, ruinous to all involved, and also wastes the priest's valuable time!

An unfortunate aspect of marriage in today's society is that many men in particular feel that they have to marry. We live in a fairly homophobic kind of society where single men are sometimes regarded with a certain degree of suspicion. A greater deal of ostracism is placed on acknowledged gay men and women. It is time for all of us to recognise and accept individual differences with regard sexuality. It is also time for society and for the contemporary Church to recognise same-sex relationships, and that such relationships can in a meaningful way reinforce, celebrate and display not only the intimacy between the partners involved but their connectedness and oneness with all of creation and with their God. If we are to be truly honest living with the signs of the times in our modern world, such relationships should be sacramentally celebrated and blessed within the Church community. It is unfortunate that centuries of righteous teachings from pulpits have expressed only a dim understanding of the potential for beauty, ecstasy and comfort that sexuality grounded in love can bring about. We have to be one with the sublime message of compassion and inclusiveness preached by the man Jesus. We have to be one with the Cosmic Christ.

A beautiful aspect of the sacramental system of the Church is its tactility. Touch and the laying on of hands and the use of the fruits of nature — oil, bread, wine, water — bring us immediately into a conscious relationship with mother earth and with our God and with each other. And so the God that underpins all that is, continues to nurture and enrich us in a sacramental or symbolic way during such celebrations. The tangible symbols of the sacraments should be used generously and lavishly during their celebration. Thus our Catholic religion and practice can nurture a sound cosmic based spirituality. It is important that such a spirituality be there to begin with. Our religion can then nurture it sacramentally as outlined above.

NEXT WEEK: Peter Dresser looks at Other Forms of Prayer in
Chapter Ten Part 4: "Ourselves at Prayer"

Series Navigation: Prologue & Preamble | Chapter One: The Thinking of Pooh | Orthodoxy | Who or What is God? I | Who or What is God? II | God and Jesus I | God and Jesus II | Jesus the Avatar I | Jesus the Avatar II | Religion & Literalism I | Religion & Literalism II | Religion & Literalism III | Religion & Literalism IV | Religion & Literalism V | Religion & Literalism VI | Our Universe I | Our Universe II | The God of Our Universe I | The God of Our Universe II | God, Our Universe & Ourselves I | God, Our Universe & Ourselves II | God, Our Universe & Ourselves III | God, Our Universe & Ourselves IV | Ourselves & Prayer I | Ourselves & Prayer II | Ourselves & Prayer III | Ourselves & Prayer IV | Epilogue

IMAGE CREDITS:
Clicking on the images in the body of this article will take you to the original source and further information.

[Index of Commentaries by Fr Peter Dresser]