In
our last School of Community meeting (Communion and Liberation Movement), our
leader, quickly and in passing--I almost missed it--referred to, "A moral
relationship with reality rather than a sacramental relationship with reality."
And I seized on the latter phrase.
Despite
my Catholic education and independent reading, I have always had the most
difficult time intellectually comprehending the concept of a Sacrament. It was
always taught to us in the most abstract way. However, I realize that at
an intuitive level, I have always had a sacramental view of reality, including
compared to most other Catholics, though within me the sacramental view has always
been in conflict with the moralistic view.
When
I read where Luigi Giussani wrote that the Medieval period was the greatest
time in human history, it knocked my brain out of joint. Life in Medieval times was primitive, full of suffering, and filthy. Most
people were illiterate. Science and medicine as we know it did not exist.
Neither did democracy--the ordinary people were at the mercy of those in power.
But,
from Giussani, I have learned that, for medieval man, God was the center of
everything. His religious orientation was that relationship was
primary, with morality being derived from relationship, the honoring of the
relationship. All of reality was positive. Things in themselves were not bad.
Actions were judged as good or bad according to the purpose--how you use
something, including yourself or other people.
The
forces of humanism beginning in the 1300's (the shift from God to man as the
center of all things, and from love to success as the most important goal in
life) followed by the renaissance (naturalism, nature as the guiding spirit,
the most transcendent entity), and then by rationalism (man is not enlightened
by the inner light of God but rather his own reason and conscience, without God
in the picture) had the effect of disconnecting and distancing man from God and
reduced religion to moralism--making morality the point of existence rather
than relationship.
Descartes,
Spinoza, and Leibniz were the modern rationalist philosophers, but the genesis
of rationalism was actually Martin Luther before them. As a result, reformational/classical Protestantism has a more highly moral relationship with
reality. By contrast, classical Catholicism--medieval man--had a highly
Sacramental relationship with reality. Of course, in modern times, despite what
the Catholic church teaches theoretically, Catholicism has become highly moralistic
in practice, more so in America than Europe, due to the influence of
Protestantism.
Descartes
is famous for saying, "I think, hence I am" of which a better
translation would have been "I have consciousness, hence I am. " An
alternative Christian anthropology would be N.T. Wright's, "I am loved, hence I
am," or the Biblical, "God made man in his own image and
likeness." The subtle difference is that Descartes proclamation is
self-referential and self-empowering, while the two Christian ones I just
stated refer outside of one's self. I did not make myself; therefore,
something else must have made me.
Luigi Giussani quoting Henri de Lubac quoting Teilhard de Chardin:
Everything in this world, things and events, and human relationships, had for Pere Teilhard a sacramental character. ... For the Christian whose eyes are open, there is nothing in the world that does not make God manifest. Everything in the world can lead to God, the "ultimate point" upon which everything converges: everything and, more particularly in the first place, what constitutes our constant daily portion -- work. And this does not mean only the (humanly speaking) specially privileged work that makes a man feel the he is "making history," ... or, again, makes him feel that he is helping to raise higher the continually growing structure of science. It means all human work without distinction, from the humblest household task to the most spiritual activity. In this order, no instrument is specially favored: God is at the tip of my pen, my pick, my brush, my needle, of my heart and of my thought.
A
sacrament is an outward sign of an inner reality (or higher or transcendental
reality). To medieval man, the universe was a sacrament, a sign of God. The
medieval saint saw God in all things. I need to think about the
sacramental view of reality. It has the look and feel of corresponding
much better to my "I" and to what a human being is, as opposed to the
relatively moralistic teaching and environment with which I was raised.
