We cannot say everything about everything. This article is an introduction meant to invite you to reflect, to think it through, to discuss and to explore more deeply on your own.
To understand what a sacrament is, we need to grasp two things:
God is God
We are human
How does God speak to us? How does he show his love, "touch" us, walk with us, and be concretely and visibly present?
God must give himself a body—hands, eyes, a mouth—to "touch" us. He uses concrete, visible things from our world to show, to manifest his love for us.
These things are "signs".
God uses the human body of Jesus—historical, concrete, real—to show us his love. The body of Jesus, his hands, his gaze, his actions, his words: this is the first way God visits and touches us concretely.
We can say that Christ himself is the "sacrament" of God's love.
The Church—all of us Christians together—is like the continuation of the body of Christ. We are the body of Christ. Through us, God shows his love concretely today. I am Christian. We all are the heart, the hands, the mouth, the eyes of God for others. We can say that we are the "sacrament" of God's love.
In the Church, certain concrete human gestures have been chosen to express God's love visibly: water poured, bread and wine shared, the priest's words, the laying on of hands, anointing with holy oil.
These visible, concrete signs are the practical means through which God manifests his love for us in the Church today. This is why we call them "sacraments"—"effective signs".
We cannot understand the Church's sacraments apart from the great sacrament that is the Church itself. And we cannot understand the Church apart from the first sacrament of God's love: Christ.
With this in mind, we can grasp these words from Vatican II:
"The Lord… established his Church as a sacrament of salvation and sent his Apostles into the whole world… Therefore the Church's mission is carried out by such activity as makes her, in obedience to Christ's command and under the influence of the Holy Spirit's grace and love, present and active in the world. Through her members she must therefore be present to all peoples and nations in a way that is fully concrete, in order to lead them to the faith, to the freedom and peace of Christ by the example of her life, by her preaching, by her sacraments, and by the means of grace. Since this mission continues and develops throughout history the mission entrusted by Christ—sent to bear good news to the poor—the Church must walk the same path that Christ walked: the path of poverty, obedience, service, and self-sacrifice even to death, by which she emerged victorious in his resurrection.
Ad Gentes, 5
From this perspective, we draw one essential conclusion about our situation: in the sacrament (Christ, Church, and sacraments), it is always God's action that drives everything. God always takes the initiative.
So when speaking of sacraments for people with intellectual disabilities, Bishop Boillon said already in 1973: "The sacraments are acts of Christ himself, performed by the minister of the Church. What matters in the celebration of a sacrament is not what we do: it is enough that we receive it with openness, according to our abilities."
In the next article, we will see how this understanding of what a sacrament is helps us grasp the meaning of the Eucharist and communion.
Michel Charpentier, Vito Palmisano, 1977
PS: For those who work with young people to bring them Christ's message, these reflections seem essential and should be deepened in prayer.
"We are the body of Christ, through which God shows his love concretely today."
Then our words will be the words of Christ—the ones we find in the Gospel. Our actions will overflow with goodness and love like those of Christ, who went about doing good to all. Our hearts will be like his.
Once we have grasped this, it will not be hard for us to find ways to reach these souls in whom the Trinity dwells, in whom the Spirit waits for our gesture, our word, to answer us.
The secret is to listen to Christ, to let him live in us. Then, even without formal theology, we will know how to be a sacrament of God's love.
Sister Maria Ida, 1977
