WE’RE NOW THE SACRAMENT
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
May 26, 2020
A long time ago I spent one mostly delightful year of my
ordained life teaching religion to 8th graders at a local Catholic
school. It was by far the most exhausting work I’ve ever done, but also one of
the very most rewarding.
One of the classes I taught was an introduction to sacraments.
I began by inviting the students to reflect on their behavior at professional
sporting events. “What’s the first thing that happens when the game begins?” I
asked them. The correct answer is that everybody stands, puts a hand over the
heart, takes off their cap, and sings the National anthem. Then I teased them
to consider the idea that that ritual may be nonsense.
I asked them, “Why in the world would you or anybody else
stand at respectful attention and sing a song to a piece of colored cloth that
is hanging on a wall or a pole? What kind of sense does that make?” I still
remember one of the students replying, “Stop it Fr. Mike, this is creeping me
out!”
Welcome to sacraments class. Literally, of course, that’s
exactly what we’re doing when we honor the flag. But the reality is that
there’s a whole story, a whole shared history, a whole universe of meaning
embedded in that piece of cloth. When we sing we are remembering, rededicating
ourselves, and pledging loyalty and commitment to something beyond what we can
see. Of course not all will agree on what that “something” is, which is why
every politician in America, of whatever party, is pleased to drape their
agenda with the flag. And it’s why some people in Iran occasionally gather to
burn it. It is loaded with powerful meaning, and makes that meaning present
just by its being there.
Jesus Christ has sometimes been described as the sacrament of
God on earth. He was that human being who could point beyond himself to his
Father in heaven. He was that man whom we could see and hear and touch and
dedicate ourselves to, because God Himself is otherwise an invisible pure
spirit.
I think the analogy of the American flag is a very good one,
but it’s not a perfect one. Because unlike the flag, Jesus didn’t just
represent something else. He made that something else actually present to us in
his own body. When he showed up in the midst of his disciples on earth, God
showed up. That’s bedrock Christian faith. But today’s liturgical feast of the
Ascension of the Lord presents us with something of a problem, and the first
apostles were quick to recognize it.
Because the Ascension commemorates that day when God’s
visible sacrament to the world, Jesus Christ, went away in bodily, visible
form. Today’s 1st reading (Acts) recalls his followers standing
there, staring at the sky because it seemed to them that God had gone away with
the physical disappearance of Jesus. If all that remained was a memory, a
story, a lost love, then it’s over now, no matter how powerful it once was.
Which is why Jesus was intent on assuring them that neither
he nor his heavenly father was withdrawing from them—or from us. But the visible
sacrament of his presence was changing. Jesus’ human flesh would no longer be
seen or heard in Israel. But the church would be. And not only in Israel, but
now in every corner of the earth—all those places where a single Palestinian
Jewish man could never go, could never be.
The very same mission that Jesus lived out as a lone
individual, empowered by the same Holy Spirit, is now entrusted to his
church—to us—until the end of time. That’s amazing, both as our honor and as
our duty. Our church is empowered and required to be the very sacrament of God
on earth, each and every day.
The problem now is that many don’t believe that. And even
those who do don’t respond to the call. And because it is hard to trust
sometimes that this fragile, imperfect human community has been chosen by God
to do the very same things that Jesus once did—to be a visible, audible,
touchable sacrament of divine presence in the world. To cause God to be here in
and through our being here. We don’t just talk about it. We don’t just point to
it, as a flag does. We are it.
Left to our own abilities and skills, that is quite literally
an impossible mission. And that is why Jesus has told us to await the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit before presuming to do anything in God’s name.
But when the Spirit moves, so must we.
And in this exceptional time of pandemic it is important for
us to remember again just who and what we mean when we use the word “church.”
To think only of what happens here in the beautiful building, or to think only
of ordained people or of parish professional staff is to make that word much
too small, even distorted. The church is the community of the baptized, whoever
we are, wherever we are. And its’ that “wherever” piece that needs to be
reclaimed now more than ever, because for the time being the wherever is not
here in the sanctuary.
In your homes you are church. Among your families and friends
you are church. In your places of work or recreation you are church. You are sacraments
of God’s actual presence—not just pointing to God or announcing God, but
bearing God in the way that Jesus once did for us. If that seems incredible, it
is!
For now we are missing that part of our Catholic experience
in which Jesus comes to us in Eucharistic bread and wine. We are right to miss
that. But we are also invited to, as St. Paul tells us today, “open the eyes of
our hearts” in order to see the many, many ways that we are true sacraments to
one another even when we are not here on this property.
Jesus of Nazareth has Ascended to God. He isn’t here
anymore—for now. But the Holy Spirit is, and Pax Christi is, and we are. The
world is still awash in sacraments of God. May we be always grateful.
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