Читать книгу The World's Christians - Douglas Jacobsen - Страница 36

The Catholic tradition sees the world as infused with the presence of God. God is everywhere, and God is constantly calling the world and all its people to a higher and holier way of life. This is the Catholic sacramental imagination: seeing the world as a place where both people and the material stuff of creation can become a means of divine self‐revelation and a medium through which grace (God’s free and unmerited favor or assistance) can be communicated to humankind. The twelfth‐century nun Hildegard of Bingen exuberantly described God as saying: “I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With every breeze … I awaken everything to life.”¹ Later, the nineteenth‐century Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins exulted that the world is “charged with the grandeur of God,” ready at any moment to “flame out, like shining from shook foil.”² It is not just the natural world that can communicate God’s grace to people in this way. Religious art (especially paintings or sculptures of Jesus, Mary, and the saints) can also serve as objects of devotion, conduits of God’s grace, and reminders of God’s presence. A great deal of popular Catholic piety involves these objects, which can be purchased at many Catholic churches and shrines (see Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.1 Number of Catholic Christians living in each region of the world with percentage of all Catholics worldwide.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Figure 2.2 Statues of the Infant of Prague (the baby Jesus) for sale at a shop near the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague (Czech Republic), where the original statue is on display.

Photo by author.

A sacramental experience is an invitation from God to become somehow “more” than one already is, to enter into a new depth of love and fellowship with God, with others, and with all of creation. God’s sacramental engagement with humankind is never a matter of imposition. Catholics believe that God does not force grace on anyone; it is an offer that must be actively received. The Catholic tradition sees human cooperation – religious effort – as a necessary part of spirituality. But while grace is never forced on anyone, it does come with strings attached. God’s grace is not given merely to enliven people or to help them with their ills; God’s grace is given for the purpose of drawing people closer to God and toward personal holiness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this in its very first paragraph, saying that “God draws close” to humankind as an invitation for individuals “to seek him, to know him, and to love him.”³

The logic behind this sacramental vision of spirituality comes from the ancient North African Bishop Augustine of Hippo (354–430), who declares in the first lines of his autobiography, the Confessions, that human beings were created by God and are unavoidably restless until they rest in God. This “rest” is experienced most intensely in the practice of prayer, which the Catholic Catechism defines as “a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God.” The Catechism further explains that humanity’s prayerful thirst for God is really a response to God’s own thirst for fellowship with humankind: “Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.”⁴

The sacraments of the Catholic Church represent one very concrete expression of this sacramental consciousness. The seven sacraments – baptism, confirmation, penance, the Eucharist, the anointing of the sick, marriage, and holy orders (ordination to the priesthood) – are understood by Catholics to be ritual experiences that communicate God’s grace to human beings in uniquely effective ways. Baptism inaugurates the beginning of faith, and confirmation signals the maturation of that faith. Penance and the Eucharist are repetitive acts that sustain the life of faith and help people to grow spiritually. And the anointing of the sick prepares a person for what used to be called a “good death” – the ability to face the end of life without fear and with trust in God. The sacraments of marriage and holy orders are somewhat different, representing alternative life directions: either to marry and live “in the world” or to become a celibate (unmarried and sexually inactive) priest wholly dedicated to God and the service of others.

The Catholic tradition also includes a variety of sacramentals, other actions that convey forms of grace in addition to the sacraments proper. Making the sign of the cross, being sprinkled with holy water, and receiving ashes on one’s forehead at the beginning of Lent are all sacramentals. Catholics believe that the sacraments and sacramentals represent the most predictable and consistent means of receiving God’s grace, but Catholics also believe that God’s mercy can overflow these containers, making it possible for God’s grace to suddenly appear in someone’s life in unexpected ways when people are in special need or specially open to God’s presence in the world.