What Are You Looking For? Part 2: The Liturgy and the Sacraments

Sacraments

Sacraments

            One of the things I liked when I first came to a Catholic Church, one of the things that drew me, was the drama of the Mass.  I didn’t understand anything about the seven sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, or Marriage (in the sacramental sense; at that point I’d been married for over twenty years, so I understood marriage as an institution.)  What appealed to me was the form, the “smells and bells” as it’s been called.  There is pageantry to the Mass.  If you have ever watched a Mass from St. Peter’s in Rome, you know what I mean.  I liked that.  I didn’t understand why things were done that way, but I liked it.

            Actually there is a reason why I liked it so much.  As human beings, we are sensual people.  By that I mean that we come to understand deep things best through our senses.  In the Protestant world I came from, the Sunday worship service only used two senses.  Hearing and seeing.  We watched the pastor as he gave the sermon which we heard.  Once a month or so, the sense of taste was involved with Holy Communion.  But that was it.

            In the Catholic Church, all of the senses are involved.  We hear the Word of God.  We see, not just the priest give the homily, but also we watch the altar being prepared.  We smell the incense, which reminds us of our prayers and the prayers of all of the saints rising to God.  We taste the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Christ.  We feel it when we hold it in our hand.  As a Protestant, I held the bread in my hand many times.  As a Catholic, I have as well.  I can’t describe it, but there is something fundamentally different between the two.  Of course, the consecrated host is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, so perhaps it should feel different in my hand.

            This is why we have sacraments.  “Christ now acts through the sacraments he instituted to communicate his grace.  The sacraments are perceptible signs (words and actions) accessible to our human nature.  By the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit they make present efficaciously the grace that they signify.” (CCC 1084) 

I know I have quoted that paragraph from the Catechism before, but it bears repeating.  You cannot understand the Catholic Church and her teachings without understanding the necessity of the sacraments.  Yes, salvation still works; yes, Baptism under the proper form (in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit) is still valid.  Yes, two Protestants who marry are sacramentally married whether they realize it or not.  But the fullness of any of those things is only realized within the context of viewing them as sacraments.  Without that, it’s like eating when you have a cold.  The food doesn’t taste as good because you can’t smell it.  It’s much tastier, much more enjoyable, and a much deeper experience when you can smell the aroma as well as taste the flavors.

            “The sacraments are ‘of the Church’ in the double sense that they are ‘by her’ and ‘for her.' They are ‘by the Church,’ for she is the sacrament of Christ’s action at work in her through the mission of the Holy Spirit.  They are ‘for the Church’ in the sense that ‘the sacraments make the Church’ since they manifest and communicate to men, above all in the Eucharist, the mystery of communion with the God who is love, One in three persons.” (CCC 1118)

            With the sacraments in our worship and our lives, going to Mass is like eating filet mignon (medium rare).  Without the sacraments in our worship and our lives, going to church is like eating…hamburger.  Maybe even really good hamburger.  But it’s not steak.