Signs of God Present or Men Making Magic?
When I was a child preparing for First Communion I learned there were seven sacraments and I had to memorize something like "A sacrament is an outward sign of inward grace, ordained by Jesus Christ, by which grace is given to our souls." We were either taught or allowed to conclude that Jesus established these seven sacraments during his life before Good Friday We were taught that baptism removed original sin so that babies who died without it would go to limbo; also, that the consecrated host was the physical body of Christ and that if we bit it, it might bleed.
Of course none of this was true. I don’t know exactly what is being presented to children now in catechism, but I am told that, along with the historicity of the gospels, the sacraments are being presented in a way more in accord with their historical development and the theological understanding of today. Part of the problem with that old presentation is that it makes sacraments look like magic. The world loves magic and wants magic.
All one has to do is to look at the number of TV shows such as Charmed, Bewitched, Superman, and movies that focus on the supernatural as in witches and ghosts. Much of this is comic and the interest in it may be similar to the appeal of comics and cartoons: - relief from the confines of reality in that characters get run over or blown up but never die of feel pain. There is a dark side to this magic, too, such as Santoria or Voodoo.
I fear that many Catholics see the sacraments, particularly in the Eucharist, as magic: the priest says special words and the bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of Christ. The phrase "hocus pocus" came from the Protestants who thought that Catholics believed consecration was this kind of magic. And they were wrong, of course. The power of the sacraments is not magic.
First of all, Jesus, in his lifetime, did not establish seven new signs. It is interesting to note that Jesus did not go around administering sacraments at all; he was a teacher, preacher, and healer.
The Church in its hierarchy has never officially taught that Jesus personally established sacraments, whether seven or seventy, but rather that the community he left gradually, over a long period of time - centuries! - developed the awareness of human signs which mediated the life of God and Christ to them. They were known first of all as "mysteries" from the Greek mysterion. "Sacrament" was first used by Tertullian around 200 AD, a Western Father who preferred Latin. It was the oath sworn by Roman soldiers enrolling in the army, and Tertullian compared baptism to enrolling in the community of Christ. (For those who might be interested, I have appended a brief historical outline of the development of sacraments which I have culled from a number of books. The history is fascinating.)
The signs were there all along: washing with water to show purification and specifically the baptism of John, anointing with oil of the sick and dying, weddings such as Jesus attended, coming of age rituals, the scape-goat ritual for the forgiving of sins, anointing of prophets and the coronation of kings, and ritual meals such as the Chaburah and the Pascal meal. Of course there were many other signs and rituals, so it took the community years to identify which ones were true sacraments and which were "sacramentals." The early Christian communities recognized only baptism and Eucharist as the Lord’s Supper, with no recognition that this meal was a sacrifice or there was a priesthood.
The signs or actions are part of human life and part of God’s plan for the world. How could it be otherwise? This is the difference between magic and spirituality. Magic plays God by claiming to have power in itself. Spirituality claims power from finding and using the bridges God has put in creation. The best illustration I can think of for sacramental power is this: The sun has power intrinsic to it. We know it can give us sun burn, but ordinarily we are not aware of its potential to really start a fire. But when we take a magnifying glass and concentrate the power of the sun, it can start a fire.
God’s presence is immanent in all creation, but it is more available to us in some actions than in others. Human actions such as embracing, anointing, etc have intrinsic psychic power, particularly when they celebrate forgiveness, acceptance into community, a pledge of future actions, etc. . It is the coming together of the community and their corporate intentionality that takes the spiritual power which God has placed in these actions, and concentrates this power..
Applying this to the Eucharist, we can see that it is not the magic words said by the priest, nor is it a special power he personally has a magician. The power comes from the community coming together to worship and believing, accepting the presence of the Lord as he promised. The community is the magnifying glass and the priest is the one who holds it.
This view of sacraments squares with the historical development and has the tremendous advantage of being able to show that God loved and still loves all God’s people. The very narrow view that God chose one people and just ignored the rest of the world makes no sense if God is a caring father. If God is present in signs that are part of our human nature, then decent, sincere pagans of Babylon, Rome and Greece could have some contact with God. Was not God present in some way to the Egyptians who first introduced monotheism to the world? If God tolerated the child sacrifice of the Israelites, could God not tolerate those of the Incas? The American Indians in their sweat lodges or other ceremonies could have made real contact with the Great Spirit. Could not God be present to the highly civilized people of Asia in their religious practices?
Some will think that this view equates all religious belief as being the same. I do not see it that way. God can still lead the world, redeem the world, through lighting one path more than another. But if God is father of all, and indeed if we want to pursue peace in the world, then we must recognize that God can be present in all of creation, including religions. God can come to His creatures through many signs, not just those selected by the Christian community.
The narrow understanding of sacraments I imbibed, as a child does not allow for this. What we need in the Church and in the world is true spirituality, not magic.
(Written by Tom Draney at Email: tpdraney@hotmail.com )