Gail_Davis

2017Sacramentality

Sacraments Workshop: Sacramentality

Introduction

Let’s talks about Sacramentality (the potential finding of God in all things):

One of the unique features of Catholicism is its sacramental life. Catholic Christianity experiences and sees the world through the lens of sacramentality, in other words, Catholics recognise and see the presence of God in all things. God is present in people, events, places, the environment, the world at large and the cosmos. It is through our living of life and through the people and events around us that we encounter the invisible God.

In order to understand sacraments and sacramentality, it is helpful to make the distinction between the concept of sacraments in general and the seven rituals sacraments of the Catholic Church. In general terms, sacraments can be any person, event or thing which enables the believer to encounter God in a new or deeper way. These special moments have the potential to heighten the presence of God in our life. Because we are human, God’s presence can only be felt through our humanness, our human experiences and our relationships with others.

The story of Helen KellerHelen was a young girl who was born in 1880 in Alabama, USA. When she was 19 months old she contracted a serious illness which left her blind and deaf. When she was seven her father employed a young visually impaired woman, Anne Sullivan, as her governess and teacher. Anne decided to teach Helen, which was considered by many as an impossible task. Her teaching method involved using her fingers and hands to spell words onto the hand of Helen.

Watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlKuJBiw1ac The Miracle worker – She knows.

Respond to the questions below:

What insights does Helen gain at the pump and how is this achieved? All the characters in this scene display a variety of emotions. Create a continuum and map the emotions

you identify form the beginning to the end of the scene. If the Captain had prevented Anne from taking Helen to the pump, the moment would have been lost.

What is your response to such possiblity? Many people would describe the moment at the pump as a sacramental moment. What justification

could be provided to support this stance? Create a visual representation of the “ah-ha” moment at the Pump. Consider the significant moments in a Christian baptism and Helen’s pump encounter.

The experience of Helen Keller at the pump could be interpreted as an experience of God’s loving care and presence in the world partly because of the profound experience that brought great changes to her life.

If we are open to recognising the presence of God in the world, we may see Helen’s experience as a sacramental experience because it shows us how ordinary moments can become sacramental moments.

The psalmists

1 | P a g e

The psalmists in the Hebrew Scriptures have described the presence of God in the following manner:

Psalm 8 – Divine majesty and Human Dignity.

To the leader: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

1 O Lord, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.

2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants

you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,

to silence the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

and crowned them with glory and honour.

6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under their feet,

7 all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

This psalm was once a contemporary way of celebrating the simplicity of nature and the important role humans play in the world.

Respond to the questions below:

What evidence can you find to indicate that nature is important?

2 | P a g e

That humans are important? Select quotes for the psalm to support your response. What references is made to the relationship between humans and nature? What message is implied by such a relationship? Who is being addressed in this psalm? What feelings or emotions does the speaker have for the person being addressed? How do you know? Sometimes, people have trouble relating to God because God cannot be seen or heard. What message is the writer of this psalm presenting about God? To be fully human is to use our five senses and our intellect to connect with each other and with nature. Why is the writer saying this is important?

Read the famous Australian poem ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, paying particular attention to stanza four:

Clancy of the Overflow

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better

Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,

He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,

Just `on spec', addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in writing unexpected,

(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)

'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

`Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy

Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;

As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,

For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him

In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,

And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

3 | P a g e

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy

Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,

And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city

Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle

Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,

And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,

Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,

Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,

While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --

But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'.

Respond to the questions below:

Why is the writer envious of Clancy? What does he miss out on by living in the city? What similarities are there between Psalm 8 and Clancy of the Overflow? Look for specific examples. Many describe being in the bush as being a ‘spiritual’ experience. If human response to nature is like

entering into a conversation with God, what might Clancy have experienced while he was’…gone to Queensland droving’?

4 | P a g e

The Hunger Games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocK8_01q9oQ

In Suzanne Collins’, the Hunger Games, Katniss honours the short, wasted life of Rue by covering her body with flowers. The objective of the games is to strip the competitors of their humanity, yet Katniss restores Rue’s humanity in her death. To what extent do you believe this event could be considered a sacramental moment?

The sacraments of the Catholic Church have grown out of this broader understanding of sacraments and originated in the human experience of the followers of Jesus. In many ways, Jesus was a sacrament for them because he enabled them to see God in a new way. The visible Jesus revealed the invisible God to the disciples. The followers of Jesus not only told the story of Jesus to others, but they also lived the story of Jesus through their actions and way of life. They prayed for each other, broke bread and shared it as a symbol of God’s love.

How do we make sense of our lives?

Everyone experiences moments that prompt them to look at the bigger picture and to question what life is really all about.

These experiences are often linked to such life-changing events as the death of a friend or loved one or the birth of a child. Experiencing such moments can be turning points in our lives, significantly influencing our future decisions and choices.

Conversation:

Share with a partner any experiences that have prompted you to ask the question, “What is life all about?”

Were these experiences turning points in your life? Explain. How have you acted, felt or thought differently as a result of these experiences?

So much depends on how we look at things

When we encounter a person for the first time, visit a new place, or have a new experience, we spontaneously and even subconsciously interpret what has happened. We might judge an experience to be worthwhile, offensive or affirming, instructive, enjoyable or even frightening – the list goes on and on.

The interpretation we give to a particular experience has consequences for our attitude toward other people and the world. More significantly, it can shape the way we understand ourselves and how we grow in our sense of self-identity.

Think, Pair Share

5 | P a g e

Think of one experience you have had that you believe has been significant in shaping your understanding of yourself and your world.

Share with a partner how you think your background, your culture and the society you have grown up in affected your interpretation of the experience in question.

Let’s probe deeper

We use many personal criteria, such as our cultural, ethnic and family backgrounds and the values and prejudices of the society in which we live, to interpret our experiences. Some people name these criteria our ‘baggage’; others might use the term ‘internal compass’. Christians may include in their criteria ‘the promptings of the Holy Spirit’.

Talk about a situation where you know that your cultural and religious background influenced your reaction. Think how you might have reacted differently if either or both of these criteria were different.

‘God Moments”: God Encounters.

Ordinary, everyday experiences, as well as major, out-of the ordinary experiences can make us aware of God’s presence in our lives. We might call these experiences “God moments’ or ‘God encounters’. ‘God moments’ put us in contact with and heighten our awareness of the transcendent, that which is beyond us.

Talk it over

People are truly in the presence of someone when they share awareness and they are attentive to each other. God is always fully attentive to us, fully present with us.

When have you had the experience of being physically with someone, but their mind as thoughts seemed to be miles away? For example, when have you been present in class, but your mind and heart and your attention were somewhere else?

What about you personally?

What personal experience can you recall that you now see as being a ‘God moment’ or ‘God encounter’ in your life?

What made you aware of God’s presence? What overall effect did this experience have on you?

Journal Exercise

Describe the difference you think it would make if you were to become more aware of God’s presence with you in your everyday life.

Think of and write about something you will do that will enable you to be more alert as attentive to God’s presence with you.

Hear the Story: The sacramental reality of all life.

God and creation are inseparable. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. The Church captures this truth in the ‘principle of sacramentality’. This principle reflects the mystery that God’s constant and continuous presence with us is a fact of reality- this is how the world is.

6 | P a g e

Fr Michael Himes writes

In the Catholic tradition, we call the occasions when grace or God’s love is made effectively present for

us sacraments….By sacrament, I mean any person, place, thing, or event, any sight, sound, taste,

touch, or smell, that causes us to notice the love which supports all that exists, that undergirds your

being and mind and all the beings of everything about us. If there is one thing that defines what it means

to be Catholic, I think it is this sense of sacramentality.

As Himes observes, the “Catholic conviction is that if one sees what is there to be seen, one will discover grace,

the love that undergirds all that exists…At its best and wisest, Catholicism is shaped by the conviction that grace

lies at the root of all reality.”

If we only but look, we can find God in all things.

The key task of the Christian life is to train oneself to become more aware of God’s love and to share in it more

profoundly.

“The whole sacramental life is a training to be beholders “so that we can truly see and more fully appreciate what

is really there.

Himes: What is always and everywhere the case must be noticed, accepted, and celebrated somewhere sometime; “it must be brought to our attention and embraced (or rejected) in some concrete experience at some particular time and place.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwfSW6ldCFc

Acknowledging the presence of God in the world and in people’s lives is the starting point for understanding sacraments.

How many such sacraments are there, asks Himes?

The answer is a “virtually infinite number,” for there is absolutely nothing that cannot be a sacrament.

The principle of sacramentality reaches its climax in the celebration of the seven sacraments.

It is there that we encounter God’s presence in a unique and most effective manner.

Review and Share what you have learnt in this session:

7 | P a g e

What are some of the best insights that you have learned from you study of Sacramentality? What practical decisions do those insights invite you to make for your life today?

8 | P a g e