February 12, 2022 - Pastor Message
04/24/2024THE SACRAMENTS “When the people heard Peter’s message, they were cut to the heart, and they asked Peter and the other apostles: ‘What are we to do, my brothers?’ Peter said to them: ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is made to you and to your children and to all those far off, whomever the Lord God will call’” (Acts 2:37-39).
“The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1131).
In last week’s column, we reflected on grace, the divine life that God shares with us, lifting us up beyond sin and death to share in the new, risen life of Christ, the fullness of which is the perfect union with God for all eternity we call heaven. God’s grace, the whole purpose of our lives as Christians, takes many forms, each one a free gift from God that we can do nothing to earn, but we can do certain things to receive that gift. Seven ritual celebrations, entrusted to the Church by Christ and shaped and directed by the Church through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, take pride of place as privileged opportunities to receive grace that we call sacraments.
God creates us as embodied spirits, living in a physical world. He communicates his invisible grace to us in visible, sensible ways through that same physical world because that is who we are. We do not live as disembodied spirits, separate and isolated from the rest of the world in our minds and hearts, and even less as digital representations on a computer or TV screen. We are physical beings living in a physical world, and we need physical ways to encounter the spiritual. That is what God gives us in the sacraments.
The sacraments are effective signs of grace-sensible realities that not only represent or remind us of the life God offers us, but make it present. It is like the difference between walking by a florist’s shop and seeing signs about Valentine’s Day and actually receiving a Valentine’s Day bouquet from our significant other. Just seeing the sign in the shop may remind us of the love we share with that person, calling it to mind, but that’s it. Receiving that bouquet from our loved one makes their love for us real, makes it present, makes it grow, because it’s not just an idea anymore. It’s right there, in our hands, lifting our hearts and moving us to show our love for them in return. That’s what we mean by an effective sign, and the sacraments are effective signs of God’s life, which is love (1 John 4:8), lifting us up and moving us to show our love for him.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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