An Introduction to Sacramental Theology What is a Sacrament? An Introduction to Sacramental Theology

Challenge: What makes frogs cool?

Humans are amphibians. half spirit and half animal Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. - C.S. Lewis

Sacraments are that bridge between the material and the spiritual, the “animal” and the spirit

Mass on the Grass

Definitions of a Sacrament Definition #1: the 7 rites or rituals of the Catholic Church through which Catholics personally encounter and unite their lives to Christ (pg. 23 in textbook)

Definitions of a Sacrament Definition #1: the 7 rites or rituals of the Catholic Church through which Catholics personally encounter and unite their lives to Christ (pg. 23 in textbook)

Sacraments - CCC 1131 Definition #2 (THE definition): “An efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.”

Partner Reading Directions: CCC Passages Efficacious signs of grace CCC 1127, 1128 Instituted by Christ CCC 1114, 1115 Entrusted to the Church CCC 1117, 1118 Divine life dispensed to us by the Holy Spirit CCC 1116, 1129 Directions: Partner A reads two sentences out loud Partner B, in one or two bullet points, summarizes those two sentences in his/her own words BOTH partners write those bullet points in their own notes Partners switch roles and repeat until the whole text has been summarized

“Efficacious Signs of Grace”

Materialism - Philosophical claim that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are results of material interactions (Source: wikipedia. I’m so sorry.) Related to Functionalism: idea that all “things are merely things” to be used according to their function

What is a Sign?

What is a Sign? A tangible reality that expresses or communicates an intangible reality

What is a Sign? Conventional Sign - Agreed upon by community or culture

What is a Sign? Conventional Sign - Agreed upon by community or culture

What is a Sign? Natural Sign - Universal (do not need to be communicated or agreed upon)

Looking at a Meal Vs. Looking along a Meal

“Efficacious Sign” “Things are more than things . . . they are signs whose meaning extends beyond their immediate sensorial power.” - Ratzinger Signs point beyond themselves Natural Sacraments - moments or experiences through which human beings encounter something greater than themselves (meals, marriage, birth/death) Efficacious = “effective” Ex: A meal doesn’t just show us community, it actually forms community. In the Church’s sacraments, these natural sacraments are elevated and “effect” or cause grace in us

Dualism Philosophical claim that all matter, including the body (material), and the mind (immaterial) are two separate entities that only interact causally Mostly important related to identity and experience “I am not my body”

Incarnation - “Embodied Love” For Christians, it seems incorrect to separate the mind and the body God, who is intangible, reveals Himself to us through tangible things (sacrament) We encounter God through the material world, through our bodies

Incarnation - “Embodied Love” Christ is the primordial sacrament God “made flesh” - the Incarnation Through Christ, we encounter the Father By encountering Christ, the earliest Christians were actually encountering God. The 7 Sacraments are extensions of this encounter with Christ

Encounters with Christ What is the physical encounter that is happening in this story? What is the spiritual encounter? (Remember to provide textual evidence!) Luke 8: 40-48 - Hemorrhaging Woman John 9: 1-12 - Blind Man Luke 5: 27-32 - Levi the Tax Collector

Efficacious Sign of GRACE

CHALLENGE: What are different uses of the word “grace”? https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfgf2zi4rPAhUBUj4KHawYCEwQPAgD#hl=en&q=stopwatch

Grace - CCC 1996-2005 “Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive daughters and sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” - CCC 1996 Rewrite this definition in your own words. This did NOT work well… Would need to be more scaffolded. Otherwise, bored out of their minds and hard to come up with a common definition… Would posssibly work better to simply go through it together, or even just give them the chewed-up definition alone and use examples to clarify

Grace - CCC 1996-2005 “Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive daughters and sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” - CCC 1996 Grace is an unearned gift of God’s “help” given to make us more holy, more like God, so that we can one day share fully in God’s love (heaven) Grace is a free gift of God, from God, in order to help us return to God (and therefore to love God more perfectly)

A Good Man is Hard to Find Narrator (x3) The Grandmother Mother Bailey (Father) John Wesley (Son) June Star (Daughter) Red Sam Red Sam’s Wife The Misfit Bobby Lee

Let’s talk about Grandma . . .

What about the Misfit?

The Misfit Pg. 8 - “I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain’t recalled it to this day.” Pg. 8 - “I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.” Pg. 9 - “I call myself the Misfit because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment. . . Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?”

Grace is dynamic and violent Changes us

Grace leads to Conversion

Conversion - constant process of conforming our lives more and more closely to Christ

“Stories of Grace” Reflection: (2-3 thoughtful sentences each) How does the appearance of a whale (or absence thereof) become a reminder of God’s presence for this speaker? How does this moment of grace change her perspective on other aspects of her life? We say that grace is something supernatural (“beyond nature”), and yet in this instance, grace comes through something completely natural. How is this moment of grace still supernatural? At one point, the speaker describes grace as “potentially unnoticed gifts that are beautiful and abundantly loving, precisely because they are larger than and different from what we would have foolishly thought to demand for ourselves.” Why does this description tell us about grace? Describe a time in your own life where you had a “moment of grace.” Think about this term broadly - when was a time you felt something unexpected touch you deeply or change your perspective?