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A Liturgical and Sacramental Approach to Justice
- Augsburg Fortress Publishers
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3 A Liturgical and Sacramental Approach to Justice Sacramentality—the idea that “everything is, in principle, capable of embodying and communicating the divine”1 —lies at the heart of Catholic tradition. While many other Christians share this perspective, sacramentality has particular influence upon Catholic liturgical practices and theological beliefs. With the belief that everything has the potential to reveal God, Catholics also maintain that Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate sacrament, instituted specific, tangible signs of God’s grace, disclosing the hidden reality of salvation in the world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church delineates how the seven sacraments recognized by Catholics touch all key moments of life from birth through death, thereby consecrating human existence.2 Sacramentality thus draws connections between our natural and spiritual lives, revealing human unity with the holy. Each sacrament in the church entails a liturgy, or rite, through which God’s grace is conveyed to its recipient. Since the sacraments consecrate our lives, Catholics (and other Christians who maintain a sacramental life) believe that the sacraments form who we are. The sacraments initiate Christian community; they sanctify our particular callings; and they offer healing when fallenness draws us away from both spiritual and physical wholeness. Through participation in the sacraments in our liturgy, Catholics believe we are drawn “into the compelling love of Christ” and that we are “set on fire” as “grace is poured forth on us.”3 We are sanctified, pulled closer to God, and called into activities in the world that share this grace. The formative character of the sacraments suggests that our sacramental lives relate to our moral lives. The disclosure of the hidden reality of salvation in the world, the revelation of God’s grace through a sign instituted by Jesus 1. Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism, study edition (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1981), 731. 2. See Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶1210. 3. Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, ¶10. 79 Christ influences our perceptions of reality, and our new perceptions ought to influence how we act in response to the challenges of our world. The rehearsal of the vision of salvation and grace through the liturgy of the sacraments should help us to envision the world, our selves, and our neighbors as God does. In taking on this vision in our sacramental lives, we are formed to see and act in certain ways in our moral lives. The hidden reality of salvation in the world revealed in the sacraments is the coming in fullness of God’s reign, inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although we cannot know the full reality of God’s reign in our own time and place, from the ministry of Jesus Christ we can know that one of its distinguishing markers is justice. If we are formed through the liturgy of the sacraments to envision reality as God does, then one aspect of the moral formation of the sacramental life is that we are called to seek God’s justice in the world as we witness the in-breaking of God’s reign in our own time and place. In this way, sacramentality, morality, and the pursuit of justice are linked to each other. The liturgy of the sacraments provides a starting point in Catholic tradition for theological and moral reflection about justice. Liturgical and sacramental ethics offer resources for discerning an adequate Catholic response to our criminal and social justice crises. Examination of specific sacraments and the liturgical practices associated with them illumines the ways that Christians should be formed in work for justice. In particular, the Eucharist, the paradigmatic practice of Christian sacramental life for Catholics and many Protestants, offers a framework for critiques of social injustice. As the Eucharist grounds practices of Penance and Reconciliation, these sacraments also provide a model for responses to individual wrongdoing, and thus, resources for examining criminal justice. Relating sacraments and liturgy to ethics and the pursuit of justice, however, can involve some significant difficulties. Among these difficulties are privatization and politicization of worship; pluralism both within the church and beyond it; injustice within church practices and institutions; and issues concerning whether and how participation in sacrament and liturgy can be morally formative. This chapter begins by elucidating these challenges to sacramental and liturgical ethics, and then proposes an interpretation of sacraments and liturgy that can alleviate these difficulties while providing a basis for linking the sacraments and liturgy to the moral life of Christians generally and their pursuit of justice in particular...