Communicating Christ’s Grace - Newman Connection

Introduction to Liturgy & Sacraments

Communicating Christ’s Grace

Making Us See His Love

Heeding the Call

Divine Liturgy makes the work of our redeemer a present actuality…[it] is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church.

Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy

Leito (‘public’) + Ergos (‘that works’) =LITURGY

Liturgy

Makes Redemption

Present

Shows the Nature of the

Church

The Real Nature of the True Church

It is of the essence of the Church to be both human & divine

Jesus Christ is both human & divine.

THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST, Visible yet endowed with invisible resources.

The Real Nature of the True Church

The Mystical Body of Christ daily builds up its individual members by enabling subordination of the human to the divine, the visible to the invisible, action to

contemplation, and the world to the Kingdom of God.

It was Christ in His divinity & humanity who became the instrument of our salvation. Likewise the Church is now situated. A Church-Member is

a Christ-Member, an Body that joins to the Saving Work of Christ.

The Saving Work of Christ: The Paschal Mystery

Paschal Mystery:

the Passion, Death, & Resurrection of Christ

Recruitment Call

Recruitment Call

The Genius of God’s Mercy which satisfies our debt to God and enables us, who alone are incapable, a means

to participate in the work of Redemption

by joining ourselves to Christ’s work.

Recruitment Call

Col. 1:24: “It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body the Church.”

1 Cor. 3:9: “We are fellow workers with God; you are God’s farm, God’s buildings.”

The Divine Junction

This ability of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy to join the

Faithful with Christ is what gives the Church power,

making it the source of our spiritual lives. Because in this Sacred Time Christ is

made fully present to us and we are fully joined to Him.

Conformity to Christ

Christ’s Life is ever-pleasing to God the Father. Christ,

His best thought, His Word, is the very recipient of all His

Love, the Holy Spirit.

By our conforming to Christ through the Sacred Liturgy we are perfectly glorifying God and becoming holy.

Perfect Glorification

The Church, the Bride of Christ, cleaves and unites to Him in the Liturgy becoming one Mystical Body of Christ– Christ who always acts and offers

perfect worship to the Eternal Father.

The Father’s Will is done: “Liturgy belongs in the order of doing, not of knowing. Logical thought cannot get far with it; liturgical actions yield

their intelligibility in their performance and this performance takes place at the level of sensible realities, not as exclusively material, but as vehicles of overtones capable awakening the mind and heart to acceptance of realities

belonging to a different order.”

Liturgical Action = Christ’s Action

“In the liturgy by means of signs perceptible to the senses, human sanctification is signified and brought about in ways proper to each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Christ, this is by the Head and His members.”

Const. on Sacred Liturgy

Our Unity with Christ

“Let us congratulate ourselves and give thanks, that we have not only become Christians, but Christ…be astonished, rejoice, we become Christ; for when He is the Head, we the members, then the whole Man is He and we.”

Our Unity with Christ

“The Body and the Head compose the whole Christ.”

“Christ preaches Christ, the Body preaches its Head and the Head protects His Body.”

The Four-fold Presence of Christ

The PRIEST: who sacramentally conforms himself to Christ.

The EUCHARIST: makes present His Body & Blood, Soul & Divinity.

The WORD: it is He Himself who speaks.

The ASSEMBLY: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:20)

Christ the Priest

“Every liturgical celebration because it is the action of Christ the Priest and of his Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its effectiveness by the same title and to the same degree.”

The Summit & Source: Christ as an End & a Means

“The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the fount from which all the Church’s power flows.”

“The liturgy is the source for achieving the most effective way possible both human sanctification and God’s glorification…”

Liturgy: the ritual of illumination Constrictive or Expansive? Liturgy is a precise model meant to effectuate a precise result: unite the Church and make present Christ.

Liturgy is not the be-all, end-all of the Christian Life: we still pray in private, we still must undergo conversion, we still must go into the world and bear Witness.

But this ritual must be preserved, as there are necessary elements whereby the the Christ’s presence can be manifested. Liturgy is not primarily a social construction– it is a divine action.

Liturgy: the ritual of illumination “The rise of consumer-friendly rites and a demand for lose and lax ‘happy clappy’ events full of meet-&-greet transactions– these trivialize the social, preclude deeper meaning being read into the action and skate along the surface of some very thin ice where all attention to danger, awe and reverence is bracketed. These are rites of the immediate that demand instantaneous theological results.” (K. Flanagan)

Not necessarily happy, chipper festive moment, but it is a crucifixion of Christ & ourselves.

It is SACRED.

Liturgy: the ritual of illumination The stuffiness of ritual, cramping style? No.

I am the light of the world. He that follows me walks not in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Jn 8:12

“Those who have accepted the conditions of confinement find they are present at a miraculous birth, limited by time and place, fully human, before which even angels cover their faces.” D. Martin

Liturgy: the ritual of illumination “The shortest way to creativity is habituation to technical means of expression and steady soaking in an historical context.”

“What is done by rote and performed in ritual provides the necessary substratum of habit on the basis of which experience becomes possible”

Liturgy: the ritual of illumination Sacred Liturgy catches us up in a mysterious conjecture of time and eternity, material and spiritual, immanence and transcendence. The elements of the Sacred Liturgy are meant to challenge us, confound us, and call us out of ourselves and our comfort zones.

The Physics of Unity The Superabundance of Christ’s

Merit:

0 < 1

“In the Church’s liturgy the divine blessing is fully revealed and

communicated. The Father is acknowledged and adored as the

source and the end of all the blessings of creation and salvation. In his Word who became incarnate, died and rose for us, he fills us with his blessings. Through his Word, he

pours into our hearts the gift that contains all gifts, the Holy Spirit.”

CCC 1082

The Unifier “When the Spirit encounters in us the response of faith which he has aroused in us, he brings about the genuine cooperation. Through it, the liturgy becomes the common work of the Holy Spirit and the Church.” CCC 1091

The Spirit prepares the Assembly to encounter Christ, recall Christ, make Him present, and unite us to Him.

The Lord and Giver of Life

The work of Christ’s Liturgy is an action of the Church with engages new life in the Faithful through the workings of the Holy Spirit.

“The whole liturgical life of the Church revolves around the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments.” CCC 1113

The Bonding Agents: Sacraments

“A sacrament is a sign that:

commemorates what precedes it– Christ’s Passion;

demonstrates what is accomplished in us through Christ’s Passion– grace;

& prefigures what the Passion pledges to us—future glory.” III.60.3

Timelessness

Liturgical and Sacramental Action break us into Eternity, they catapult us out of time and unite us to the forever-on-going moment of Christ’s sacrifice, which is God’s Love for us. It is an event that occurs at a time in our life

which carries us backward and forward simultaneously.

“In the liturgy, it is principally his own Paschal Mystery that Christ makes present…it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and they pass away swallowed up in the past. The Paschal Mystery of Christ, by contrast,

cannot remain only in the past, because by his death he destroyed death, and all that Christ is– all that he did and suffered for all men– participating in the

divine eternity, and so transcends all times being made present in them all. The event of the Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward

life.” CCC 1085

“Sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church,

by which divine life is dispensed.” CCC 1131

Effect-producing. The sacrament is

the cause of something in the

recipient.



Sense-perceptible. “The Word added to the element and it becomes a sacrament.” Weds material to the spiritual, hence finds its roots in the Incarnation. Not mere symbols, because they actually deliver…they are efficacious…of what they symbolize. Stuff used by Christ, and our rationality is prone to empiricism; too, our nature appreciates ceremony for assurance.



Convey the merits of Christ to us in order to draw us into union with God. Grace builds us

up and gradually sanctifies us. Grace is

entirely a gratuitous gift of God.



“The mysteries of Christ’s life are the foundations of what he would dispense in the sacraments…for what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries.”

Baptism (John 3:5, Mk 16:16, Mt 28:18); Confirmation (Acts 8:14-17, 19:5-6); Eucharist (John 6, 1 Cor. 10-11); Reconciliation (James 5:16, John 20:21-23); Anointing of the Sick (Mk 6:13, James 5:14-15); Marriage (Mt 19:6); Holy Orders (John 19-23).



The Church is guided by the Spirit in all

truth, and is therefore, the faithful steward of God’s mysteries and

determines the number and dispensation of the

sacraments.



Through the Sacraments we are born into a community– the Church. We are made children of God and nurtured for the rest of our life that we may achieve our ultimate end– entrance into the Communion of the Most Holy Trinity through membership in the Mystical Body of Christ, the Son.

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Communicating Christ’s Grace - Newman Connection