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3 REVERENCING THE SACRAMENTAL UNIVERSE Reflections on the sacramental quality of the world surfaced in the works of theologians throughout the patristic and medieval periods.1 This particularly powerful and pervasive concept conveys the belief that the visible world mediates God’s invisible presence and attributes. Some theologians described the world as a “book” through which God is self-revealing. Whereas few people during their time were able to read the book of scriptures, the “book of nature” was considered readily available for all people to read. This chapter begins with an overview of the diverse ways in which patristic and medieval theologians reflected on the sacramentality of God’s creation.2 The differences between the worldviews from which they wrote and the current understanding of the world are recognized, and the sacramentality concept is reconstructed to reflect broad scientific findings about the world today. The kind of behavior that is prompted when viewing the world through a sacramental lens is explored subsequently, followed by a regime of training that is needed to awaken the sacramental sensibilities of the faithful. Closing the chapter is a digression on the need to ritualize these reverential actions and the availability of God’s grace to facilitate acting reverently toward Earth and its diverse constituents. The Sacramentality of the Physical World in Patristic and Medieval Texts Catholics understand sacraments generally as visible signs of invisible grace imparted to persons who are engaged in approved rituals. The materials used, words spoken, and actions taken mediate God. A connection between the visible and the invisible occurs as God gratuitously self-communicates to the participants . Their reception of God’s self as grace constitutes a heightened moment of encountering God, and the grace imparted enables individuals to orient their lives to God.3 65 As Martos explains in his historical exploration of the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, the term sacramentum had been defined more broadly by Augustine as a sign of a sacred reality. All natural entities that constitute the world can be acknowledged as having a sacramental character because they signify God and convey something about God.4 More specifically, they signify God’s presence and aspects of God’s character. Patristic and medieval theologians based their perceptions of the world’s sacramental quality on passages from the Old and New testaments.5 They found readily adaptable to Christianity the Neoplatonic understanding that humans have a capacity for knowing about God by studying God’s creation. Thereby, they participate in God’s knowledge and wisdom about the world and how it functions. During the first few centuries of Christianity, theologians underscored the sacramental quality of the world. Often citing Romans 1:20 and occasionally Wisdom 13:1–9, patristic theologians reflected on the world as the first stage toward knowing God, as a means through which God’s presence can be experienced , and as the vehicle through which God’s attributes are discernible, however dimly and incompletely. They also taught that the sacramental quality of the world should elicit a response of gratitude to God. To this array Augustine of Hippo added an intriguing Trinitarian perspective, whereby characteristics of the three persons in the Blessed Trinity can be discerned when studying the world. Medievalists elaborated upon approaches introduced by earlier theologians, especially Augustine. They underscored thinking that the entire physical world in its diversity and unity best manifests God, that its sacramental quality requires a response of gratitude to God for self-communicating through the world, and that its contemplation should prompt transformations in human behavior. Also surfacing during this period were reflections on the importance of bodies and the human senses, the need to train the senses to be sacramentally sensitive, and the instructive role the sacramental world plays in deepening a person’s faith in God. Mystics conveyed a heightened sense of God’s presence that they experienced through the world. The richness of these reflections makes the concept of the sacramentality of creation appealing for exploration today when attempting to respond to the realities of Earth’s degradation by humans. Saint Clement of Alexandria and God’s Discernible Power Clement (ca. 150–216) taught in Stromateis that the contemplation of the universe leads eventually to recognizing the powerful rule of God. Though God transcends the created world and is “hard to catch” and “hard to hunt down,” God draws near and is “close” by the exercise of “power that has enfolded all...

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