La Vida Sacra: Contemporary Hispanic Sacramental Theology (review)

James Empereur and Eduardo Fernández provide a comprehensive context for sacramental theology by examining the phenomenon of the Hispanic reality. The authors quote Roberto Goizueta, who says that being Hispanic is a special way of being human. “For Goizueta this distinctive way of being human is fundamentally sacramental, that is, there is an intrinsic connection between the world of nature and materiality and the world of transcendent reality” (p. 24). Family, mutual friends, comadres, compadres are all expressions of this communal, sacramental world. Empereur and Fernández place the Hispanic sacramental world in the larger context of the “theology of communion” with its roots in the nineteenth century. Johann Adam Moehler, a major proponent of this approach, asserted that universality needs to be grasped by recognizing commonalities in and through particularities. Many Hispanic theologians consider San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas to be a paradigm of Hispanic sacramentality, where popular religion has been invited into the Church itself. Empereur and Fernández point this out but do not fail to recognize that the Hispanic sacramental world includes not only the experience of Roman Catholics but also that of Protestant Hispanics. The authors seek to establish the thesis that the Hispanic tradition discloses a cosmic sacramentality for the benefit of pastoral theology today.

Topics considered in Chapters 2–5 are: “Beginning life in family and Church;” “The passage into adulthood,” with special attention to the celebration of Quince Años, and not merely Quinceañera; and “The witness of the Hispanic family,” where the extended family rather than the nuclear family is seen as a clearer manifestation of human friendship, for it is human friendship that makes visible in human form the sacramentality of the world. In the chapter on “The Ministry of Leadership,” the authors ask: Since more and more the Church is setting up multi-cultural offices rather than ethnic-specific ones, does that not leave Hispanics at the margins once again? In addition the authors point out the lack of a theology of gender, certainly of Hispanic gender.

In Chapter 6, “Encounters of Healing and Brokenness,” Empereur and Fernández describe the Hispanic sense of sin as social and reflect on the connection between anointing and social justice. The Hispanic family at its best knows how to live with the mystery of sickness, old age, and death. Cosmic sacramentality is “this world bringing God to us despite the fact that it is often difficult to see this happening. Anointing is such a cosmic sacrament because it is one of the most aesthetic. It engages the suffering where the real beauty of God is to be found. Suffering is the chaos of the cosmos but anointing says that this chaos is not really chaos” (p. 251). In other words: “Hispanics are doing practical theological aesthetics when they see the glory of God in the suffering person” (p. 251). A particular gift of Hispanic spirituality is the ability to see death as part of life and not simply the end of human living, the topic of Chapter 7. Raúl Gomez, S.D.S., is a liturgist who sees the His-panic worldview as comprised of home, society, life, and death. El día de los muertos and many customs associated with it show the place that death plays in life and that life plays in death. Hispanic spirituality is sensitive to the sacred in the secular and the holiness of the world.

Empereur and Fernández show the continual interplay between Hispanic popular religion and the celebrations of the sacraments of the Church. This contemporary Hispanic sacramental theology is both pastoral and spiritual. The book would make an excellent text for graduate courses in sacramental theology.