So, what then of sacraments? What are these “mysteries”?
Look at your hand. No, don’t keep reading. Do it! Look at your hand. Please.
Good. What do you see?
Flesh.
Matter.
“Dust”.
Earth.
Adamah, in Hebrew—meaning “fertile soil”. Humus, in Latin—origin of “human” …
“O Adam, thou art dust; and to dust thou shalt return!” spoken as ashes are poured over your head or used to make a sign of the cross on your forehead on Ash Wednesday.
And yet …
… and yet, O Human, thou art alive. Indeed, alive with spirit. Or rather with the Spirit. You are made by God’s hand in God’s image and likeness, with God’s fingerprints in every line of your humanity.
You are a “sacrament”: an earthly—earthy—material reality, that points beyond itself to a transcendent, spiritual reality—God—making that towards which it points truly and really present in itself, transforming creation that receives you as itself-come-alive. For that is what a sacrament is: a physical sign signifying a spiritual reality by being itself what it signifies, given as gift for the purpose of transformation, for fulfilment, the “perfection”/completion of creation.
And it begins with Christ himself, the Sacrament of God: the human being, Jesus, pointing beyond his humanity to God, making God present among us in himself, transforming us who receive him in faith and uniting us with God in himself.
Now, as Christ is the Sacrament of God, the church, as Christ’s Mystical Body, is the sacrament of Christ. As church we are an earthly—human—reality that points beyond itself to Christ, in which Christ is truly, efficaciously present and active in the world for the sake of the world’s transformation: its becoming the “kingdom of God”.
And so with the “seven sacraments of the church”: the sevenfold (which is biblical shorthand for “complete”) embodiment of the Mystical Body of Christ—us—by transforming all of mortal life into eternal life.
All of life is contained in the “seven”, beginning with Baptism, our immersion into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, and culminating in Eucharist, our communion with God in Christ. All of the sacraments of the church are about the mission of Christ: healer, reconciler, spouse, priest, and Holy Wisdom; all of them are gifts of the Holy Spirit; all of them means of that grace that is God’s absolute, unconditional and infinite love.
And each of them is celebrated liturgically—by Christening, Chrismation, Confession, Anointing, Wedding, Ordination, and, of course, Mass, the Divine Liturgy, “source and summit of the Christian life”.
God is the primary “doer” (or “subject”, to use the more formal word) of all liturgy because God is both the giver of the sacrament and the gift given, the ultimate grace each sacrament bestows.
When liturgy is approached in this light—as the work of God bestowing the grace of God—it could never be “boring”. It only becomes boring when we focus on ourselves and our secondary (albeit legitimate, even important) part in the liturgy: ritual worship.
Let us keep our hearts and minds focused on God and what God is doing in our lives, our world and our very selves, and then liturgy really will be for us the “source and summit” of our life in Christ.
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