On Symbols and Sacraments

It is Holy Week, and the Spirit is moving in this house more than ever this year.  It is an awe-inspiring thing, and we are humbled.  As part of our preparation for Easter, we had a Seder meal with good friends of ours.  It was lovely, and reverent, and moving.  Just perfect.  And it led to a discussion afterwards about the difference between symbols and sacraments.  Which, of course, got me thinking.

A sacrament is an outward sign of an invisible grace.  This means that physical, concrete, "things we can perceive with our senses" symbolize something that is happening on a spiritual realm.  Because, after all, we are physical, concrete things that experience reality through our senses.  So something we see, touch, taste, hear, smell  here in this world, reveals and facilitates the blessing and grace of something that we can't see, touch, taste, hear, or smell.  We receive God's grace, His POWER, through physical things.  Not through the power of those physical things themselves, but through the power of God.  Because that's how He designed us to experience reality, and knows what we need.  

As we did our Seder, I began to see the difference, then between the symbol and the sacrament.  We broke bread, passed it, spoke the words of Christ at the last supper.  It was a tool for learning, teaching ourselves and the children, remembering.  And it WAS a blessing to us.  It brought us closer to each other and to Christ.  So, how was it different than what we do at Mass on Sunday, when we essentially do the same thing during the words of institution?  The difference was that, as lovely as it was, it did not instill GRACE.  It was merely a symbol, and as edifying as a symbol can be (believe me, I love probing the depths of symbolism in this world!), it does not have POWER.  The sacrament has grace, which is God's POWER.    The symbol explains, edifies.  This does not mean that a sacrament does not also have symbolism.  It obviously does.  But it is MORE than symbolism.  It has to be, because we need God's help in a much more concrete way than with just our minds.  Our bodies need Him, our soul needs Him. 

So, how do I feel this power, this grace?  Sometimes we don't, and that's where our senses hinder us.  But just because I don't feel something, doesn't mean it's not happening.  An infant feels the water of baptism, which is temporary, yet that water leaves an indelible mark on that infant's soul, and causes him to become "born again", of water and spirit, just as Jesus said.  He is a profoundly different creature after baptism than he was before, even though our senses don't perceive the change, except that the child is now a little wet. 

Same is true of the Eucharist.  Our senses perceive bread, wine.  And just as the child looks no different according to our corporal selves after baptism, so the host looks no different after consecration.  But it is. Profoundly different.  Whether we perceive that or not.  And as we consume that consecrated host, it becomes not merely bread for our belly (symbolizing an occurrence two thousand years ago) but salvation for our soul, transforming our nature into that of Christ Himself, so that we may be incorporated into His divinity, to one day stand in the presence of Almighty God. 

There have been times when worlds have collided - when that spiritual realm poked through into the world that I can perceive, and I know this is true.  The power and grace of sacrament.  Those are called "miracles".  They are when our eyes are opened to see what is really happening on the spiritual side.  They are "signs", little glimpses behind the curtain.  When my toddler son was blessed with oil during the anointing of the sick, we had faith that those words, that oil, was impacting his soul.  The "miracle" was that we had the enormous privilege of witnessing the effect of that day, in his physical body.  His severely damaged kidney was healed.  Verifiably, inexplicably.  As a sign of the healing on a spiritual level, his physical body reflected that.  That is POWER.  Real power.  Associated with concrete movements, concrete things. 

So, the symbol merely edifies, but the sacrament really DOES.  The sacrament is the REAL THING, the symbol refers us to the REAL THING.  And the two are distinct from each other.  There is a symbolic nature to the sacrament, true.  But there is no sacrament to a mere symbol.  And that makes all the difference.

Because Christ did not merely "symbolize" God.  He did not teach us about God, remind us about God.  He WAS God, that we could see, and hear, and touch, and interact with.  The ultimate sacrament, God Personified.  Grace personified.