The Sacramentality of the Church

For this Sunday’s reflection, I wish that we read together some numbers of the Post-Synod Apostolic Exhortation “Sacramentum Caritatis” on the Eucharist and the Church and on the Eucharist and Matrimony. Here is what Benedict XVI teaches:

16. The Second Vatican Council recalled that “all the sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are directed towards it. For in the most blessed Eucharist is contained the entire spiritual wealth of the Church, namely Christ himself our Pasch and our living bread, who gives life to humanity through his flesh-that flesh which is given life and gives life by the Holy Spirit. Thus men and women are invited and led to offer themselves, their works and all creation in union with Christ.” This close relationship of the Eucharist with the other sacraments and the Christian life can be most fully understood when we contemplate the mystery of the Church herself as a sacrament. The Council in this regard stated that “the Church, in Christ, is a sacrament - a sign and instrument - of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race.” . . . she {the Church] is the sacrament of Trinitarian communion.

The fact that the Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation” shows how the sacramental economy ultimately determines the way that Christ, the one Savior, through the Spirit, reaches our lives individually. The Church receives and at the same time expresses what she herself is in the seven sacraments, thanks to which God's grace concretely influences the lives of the faithful, so that their whole existence, redeemed by Christ, can become an act of worship pleasing to God. 

On the Eucharist and Matrimony, Benedict XVI affirms:

27. The Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relationship with the love of man and woman united in marriage. A deeper understanding of this relationship is needed now. Pope John Paul II frequently spoke of the nuptial character of the Eucharist and its special relationship with the sacrament of Matrimony: “The Eucharist is the sacrament of our redemption. It is the sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride.” Moreover, “the entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist.” The Eucharist inexhaustibly strengthens the indissoluble unity and love of every Christian marriage. By the power of the sacrament, the marriage bond is intrinsically linked to the Eucharistic unity of Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church (cf. Eph 5:31-32). The mutual consent that husband and wife exchange in Christ, which establishes them as a community of life and love, also has a Eucharistic dimension. Indeed, in the theology of Saint Paul, conjugal love is a sacramental sign of Christ's love for his Church, a love culminating in the Cross, the expression of his “marriage” with humanity and at the same time the origin and heart of the Eucharist. For this reason the Church manifests her particular spiritual closeness to all those who have built their family on the sacrament of Matrimony. The family, the domestic Church, is a primary sphere of the Church's life, especially because of its decisive role in the Christian education of children. 

Let us therefore, pray for true Eucharistic renewal and true Christian marriages and families. 

~Fr. Justus