SACRAMENTAL COMMUNITY

The Sacraments are one of the two primary ways in which we give witness to God and God’s saving action in the world today. Word and Sacrament are the burning focal points of this world-embracing manifestation of the Lord in the Church’s activity. By Baptism, Christians are called to a life of witnessing to Christ. This is our vocation as Christians. This is what makes us unique. One of the very important ways of witnessing is to sacramentalise, to give visible expression to, the saving activity of the risen Christ in the world today.

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation we give visible expression to Christ’s forgiving, reconciling love in our lives. We praise and thank God for this, and we do it for all to see and hear. Through this witnessing we function as a support group for one another’s faith and hope. This is one very important way in which we witness to God’s forgiving love to non-Christians too. We baptised form the Body of Christ which is the sign of salvation turned towards the world. Even a very “private” sin of frailty weakens the sign of salvation by that much.

 The reason why the practice of sacramental penance is in decline may well be in part that preachers and teachers have put such emphasis on private interiority and so little emphasis on ecclesial identity and vocation. By asserting the primacy of individual confession, we may well be collaborating with the individualism of our culture to undermine the public, social and sacramental character of the Catholic tradition. All the sacraments are liturgical acts that are essentially communitarian, which includes confession since it is a dialogue between the penitent and the church that is represented by the priest

  Confession is also an integral part of the healing process. Here the need is of an educated faith, humility and confidence. Whatever the psychological blocks due to past traumas, let the person begin communicating, especially in confession, and the healing process will slowly but surely take effect. Confession to a fellowman [priest] manifests a fundamental trust in reality.

                            What is operative here is the Incarnation principle whereby forgiveness is available in the community in the person of the priest. No one will understand confession unless he first understands the theology of the Incarnation. In God’s great design we have access to him in and through the humanity of his Son, Jesus Christ. The Incarnate Word is so completely in our midst, he is so intimately among his brethren, that we contact him in our brothers, even the least of them. Through his Incarnation Christ moved into historical solidarity with all human beings, as well as with the created world. He entered history to become, in a sense, every man and every woman. Hereafter to receive divine grace through other men and women and through the world would be to receive divine grace through the Incarnate Christ. Not only in meeting and caring for those who suffer but also in being graced by them, we meet and are graced by Christ. By his Incarnation “the Son of God has in a certain way united himself with every human being” (G S 22). Hence to experience and receive God’s grace through other human beings is to experience and receive that grace through the incarnate Christ. The Incarnation is an ongoing event, and it continues to be realised in the Church and the sacramental action of its duly ordained ministers. The New Testament clearly shows this to be the way Christ arranged the economy of salvation. The minister of the sacrament is at the service of the community: a trained and trusted representative of the community. Through him the faithful members of the community make their contact with Christ. The minister does not belong to himself. He has no self, but is emptied of it. He represents Christ and the Church, and for this reason he is bound to secrecy.

            We depend upon others for our physical, mental and emotional sustenance. We even make our very personal needs known to them, like describing to the physician the details of our ailment, in many cases brought on by our own fault. Confession to another is not repugnant.

            Salvation is a personal event, not an individual thing. Covenant-salvation is addressed to the community, not to individuals in isolation. Hence a person can find community in God only in community with humans. Confession belongs here. Confession is an event that operates in function of the interdependence of the individuals and the community. The penitent confesses to the priest [representative of the community], the community rehabilitates the sinner, the sinner is reborn and the community is healthier.

SACRAMENTS      Given that symbols are understood as objects, activities, gestures, and words that are used to bring about  interpersonal communication and communion, and given that they invite future participation in the ultimate meanings and highest values that human being perceive and pursue, sacraments may be defined as symbols of God’s presence in human life, history, world, and Church. To say that they are instituted by Christ is to recognize that these activities, objects, gestures, and words (the third level of sacramentality) are actions of the Church (second level of sacramentality) rooted and grounded in the meaning and message, the word and the work of Jesus (the first level of sacramentality). In the sacraments of the Church, Christians can discern an ethical horizon, the contours of how one is to conduct oneself in every dimension of life.