Sitting in my car one afternoon in the fall in Wickenburg, Arizona I hit a beautiful brick wall. It was not the physical one but a stopping point of limiting my lens anymore for an old institution. The book was written by a “new kid on the block” relatively for me named Joseph Ratzinger. The world knew him better by that day as Pope Benedict XVI.
I was received into full communion with the Catholic Church months later in 2013.
Within weeks of soaking in more of the heart and mind of the Church I woke up one morning to see a surreal headline that he was the first pope to resign in over 600 years. This was confusing but yet with a beauty in the act and reasons in the decision.
Years later having read more of his books and his papal encyclicals I am in awe of his humility as much as his intelligence and wisdom. He wrote dozens of books but perhaps his greatest lesson was in saying to the Body of Christ and the world “It is not about me.”
Though I cannot be sure if this was the quote that was the final straw in my discernment of the Catholic Church, this was at least the theme in the book I was reading at that time.
And so we return to the “two trumpets” of the Bible with which we started, to the paradox that we can say of Christ both: “You are the fairest of all men”, and: “He had no beauty . . . his appearance was so marred.” In the Passion of Christ the marvelous Greek aesthetic, with its tentative contact with the divine (which nevertheless remains ineffable), has not been abolished but rather transcended. The experience of the beautiful has received a new depth and a new realism. The One who is beauty itself let himself be struck in the face, spat upon, crowned with thorns—the Shroud of Turin can help us realize this in a moving way. Yet precisely in this Face that is so disfigured, there appears the genuine, the ultimate beauty: the beauty of love that goes “to the very end” and thus proves to be mightier than falsehood and violence. Whoever has perceived this beauty knows that truth after all, and not falsehood, is the ultimate authority of the world. It is not the lie that is “true”; rather, it is the truth. It is, so to speak, a new trick of falsehood to present itself as such and to say to us: Over and above me there is nothing in the long run. Stop seeking the truth or even loving it; you are on the wrong track. The icon of the crucified Christ sets us free from this deception that is so overwhelming today. Of course it presupposes that we allow ourselves to be wounded with him and to trust in the Love that can risk setting aside his external beauty in order to proclaim, in this very way, the truth of beauty (Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger, On The Way to Jesus Christ).
Now I am coming up on ten years as a Catholic and now an Aspirant to become a deacon reflecting on that attitude. I hope to be of service in formation and, if God wills, as a deacon.
Though he was Pope Emeritus when he died, there will be some talk about church politics. Some of it will be needed but much not. My hope going forward for the Church is that we learn from his love for Jesus, the Church, the Bible and ecumenism with our fellow Christians (e.g. Catholic- Lutheran Accord of 1999). I also hope that the body of his written work is recognized on a fast-track for him to be canonized and even designated a doctor of the church. Less than 30 people in 2,000 years with that designation.
May we all hear the call of Christ and be “doctors” who speak in our spheres to the “truth of beauty” we find in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I read once about the cosmopolitan playboy turned priest that the day he entered the monastery was entering the “four walls of my new freedom” (Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain). When we think of religious structure one may see great freedom or one may see nominal freedom and detrimental walls.
There are very different views on formal prayer. For religiously faithful, it is rhythmic educating towards the good, true and beautiful. Secular humanists may see it as stifling and predictable.
I come from an experience of the whole spectrum on what is called the Our Father or The Lord’s Prayer. I know the views as an outsider and insider on that prayer. As a clinical social worker, one would assume I “evolved” from insider to outsider.
But that assumption would be incorrect.
I was born and raised by parents who were nominal at best on any intentional Christianity. In the rare occasions I went to church I had intolerable boredom. Due to my older siblings, a cousin and some friends I began an active Christian life when I was 14. In evangelical, charismatic Christianity the preferred term is The Lord’s Prayer and rare in groups. “Let the spirit flow” was the sentiment. Decades passed with exposure to various Christian denominations but little that were of the high church liturgical variety who pray this regularly.
Then my relationship with this prayer, taught by Jesus himself, changed in context for me at 42. It was a few months after my family and I moved out of state that I began to ponder the Our Father backwards, forwards and sideways. “What does it mean?” I thought. My ponderings trickled in my conscience to the point my prayer bubbled up adding “Lord, what does it mean about the kingdom coming? I felt should have seen it more fully by now but something is missing.”
After a few months of that I stumbled on persuasive Catholic material which gave me more context of the Our Father. This context opened up prayerful, historical, scriptural and sacramental lenses. I entered the Church early the next year. From then and for the rest of my life I will be going to mass where the Our Father comes shortly before the Eucharist. In the Our Father we in the mass pray this earnestly desiring to receive all of God’s grace.
But that is not the end of it. Recently I have been praying the second highest liturgy only to the mass called Liturgy of the Hours. Catholics can pray this solo or in groups. This has become a staple in my life especially because I may make a promise in four years in a deacon ordination in the Catholic Church to pray it twice a day.
In my formation toward the diaconate I pray it twice a day including the Our Father. The graces that flow from that have been grounding me more in the love of the Blessed Trinity.
Case in point the other day. When I was in the confessional a deeper sorrow for my sins welled up in my heart yet in the absolution I sensed a grace on me more than any other time I had gone into confession. What I used to find stifling I now see as liberating. The Our Father has been like a constant and key companion in this journey.
But the closest and central lens for this prayer is in Christ himself. Without Christ, the Our Father is only a spiritual poem. Christ gives context by being God Incarnate as God the Son in how “the Word became flesh and dwelt [tabernacled] among us” (John 1:14). The Incarnation is a founding context for the Our Father and complete with the Atonement and Resurrection.
It is in that sense Christ gives us the gospel by which we pray the Our Father. “But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ “(John 20:17b). Before the Cross, Christ taught the Our Father with knowing God as Father being a lofty concept. After the Cross, it is a living reality. It is because of Jesus “who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25).
The closeness of God the Father in the words and work of Christ can be a context of healing to those who have father-wounds. “Father” may be a scary term to those with wounds by earthly fathers. They reflexively may say they like Jesus but not Father (nor the Holy Spirit also).
Ponder the words of Christ who countered this assumption. He said at the Last Supper, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’ (John 14:9)?” Praying to God the Father with the Our Father is ideally Christ praying to the Father in us and through us by the Spirit.
We can pray to God boldly even through dryness. We can pray with expectation drawing from the deposit of the faith knowing more fully who the Father is. Then we contemplate who we are as his children more fully.
So what is stopping us? If you read this as a Christian you are a breath of faith away from praying the Our Father. If you are not a Christian, you are a breath of faith away from stepping into the transcendent adoption in Christ. So be humble. Be trusting.
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6).
Death, dysfunction of the body, or fear of it happens to all of us. Behind us we can see our birth, family of origin our victories, our failures, communities, rites of passage, opportunities missed and the family we built. All those have been experienced with our minds and bodies. But it is in the latter are the physical limits and the problem of pain. Pain comes with very difficult self-narratives to reframe.
To provide service to someone in that state calls for sober judgment and determination to convey compassionate words and a listening ear. The listening is for the practical needs like alleviating pain as doctors do. But a common response is also to validate them in the moment in their pain and their fears whether one is a doctor, therapist or layperson.
To be a worker to someone dying can be sacred and even joyful as that person’s life narrative is coming to a close.. I knew someone who spoke of his first weekend giving hospice care to someone in his last days of cancer. He stated that at the end “I was addicted to it.” As line staff it did not pay well and years later he left and missed it.
Among mental health therapists are those who provide counseling to the sick and the dying as well as their families. A therapist can talk with the client about their anxiety. There can be collaboration on what values they have and associated worries on how their loved ones will be impacted by their illness or impending death. The collaboration often is not easy. An unseasoned therapist could resort to cookie-cutter platitudes.
But the work needs to be done. The effects are hopefully a sense of acceptance if death is coming. Or maybe resilience for a health crisis that is not terminal. There is a power in community and listening to the hurt. We are integrated by nature and when the body goes down, the heart can as well if the ailing person feels isolated.
Which leads to the poverty of a hearing the pain. The operative term of “a hearing” applies in the sense of how one “prays” (as an old English term) for a stranger in a black robe to grant their petition. Some in their bed may ask “why” or “Can somebody do something?”
There can be a lack of natural supports and workers being there for that need on basic grounds: it can be “icky.” This term applies in the obvious sense with body fluids and dependence on hygiene. It also applies in the emotional need for someone to be present, listen and, with discretion, speak words of encouragement. There is no need for perfection.
Although perfection is not the requirement, I will confess that in my years as a therapist I have been averse to working in geriatric or oncology. A master’s degree does not block feelings of inadequacy starting with the fact that I am many years from being a senior citizen and I have not had cancer. Someone may ask if I know what they are going through.
To see where the struggle is the worst emotionally is in the area of what Erickson called Integrity Verses Despair. Integrity is a sense at the end of one’s life that there was a meaning and full functionality of their life. Despair in this theory is an overwhelming sense of falling short of what they should have done with no do- overs.
There are no easy answers for the person in Despair. What is hopefully the case is that there has been family and friends in the person’s life in the days, weeks and months before the last days. They can assure them of love, support and a kind of grace in the limits of human experience. Possibly a therapist can mediate where one party has fallen short of being healthy in the relationship. Would such conscientious people eliminate Despair for Integrity? That is the hope, but to lessen it is a start through reflective listening and affirmation to the dignity of the person.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next section to address the initiation specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
If one’s body is breaking down, it is better to have a tangible hope in an objective source than a subjective one. Case in point for aiming for the objective source of hope, when the breaking down is acute, in the religious realm.
I will describe it below through the perspective of theology and my personal “school of hard knocks.”
“You have a tumor,” the physician’s assistant said. Not the words I was hoping to hear at the ER. I had been struggling for over two years with what I thought was a strained IT band in my leg. The day before hearing these words I tripped in my garage the morning of my first full day at a new job. I fell on my knee hard which jammed the shock up my femur. My tumor was at the upper part and I also fractured my bone. Stupidly I went to work anyway limping on it. Big mistake.
So there I was, a medical layperson, not knowing if it was malignant or not yet. I was scared and needed some reassurance. I needed it for me, my wife and 7 children with two of them underage with special needs.
But along came a chaplain. He was not of my tradition but that did not matter. He listened to me and prayed for me. We believed in the same God who is love and a faith in him that he had a plan. That brief time that day was a linchpin to get through the day.
After a few months with waiting, research and a needle bone biopsy I needed that Higher Power and community assurance again but this time in the Sacrament of Holy Unction or Anointing of the Sick. I had a few butterflies in my stomach about asking my priest about it. I knew the theology of it since I came into the Catholic Church ten years ago. But I did not have even secondary experience with it.
I had it a few days before my surgery and again from a visiting priest a few days after it. In the latter I felt weak physically due to the blood loss of 3 liters. But my spirit within me was strengthened. The priest in the hospital encouraged me on my track of discernment to become a deacon, lowest form of clergy, in the Catholic Church (as of this writing I am in the program as an Aspirant).
There is no comparison in my mind about the sacramental anointing of oil by a priest because the outward sign contains an objective and powerful reality. The priest or bishop has been ordained through a line of apostolic succession with the laying on of hands (Hebrews 6:2) back to Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles. For those first twelve to receive holy orders they operated with the Holy Spirit doing the work spiritually and physically in the matter and form of anointing oil. “They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (Mark 6:13).
Historically, ordained elders have administered this sacrament of healing with the co- sacrament of reconciliation working harmoniously for the needs of the soul and body. It is an encounter with Christ whether a literal miracle happens or not.
Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective (James 5:14-16).
They should call for the elders of the church– – The Church is a called out community with elders in a sacred role. The normative means of communicating and empowering one with grace in the Church are the ones entrusted to oversee the souls of the faithful.
have them pray over them– – Despite the stereotypes, there is no “hocus pocus.” The priest does nothing in his own power including if God literally makes a medical miracle happen. The source of all grace is God.
anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord- – Jesus Christ is eternally the only begotten Son of God who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He is Lord in his involvement on earth in and through the Church in matter since he redeemed the world through matter. To invoke his name is to invoke his authority which he has over heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18).
The prayer of faith will save the sick– – The operative word “save” can be used in Greek to make an effect on the soul or the body. When applied it is a win-win even if literal healing does not ocurr.
and the Lord will raise them up– – The ultimate win is Christ’s resurrection and how all in the Church walking in friendship with him will know him in that context one way or another. The anointing by the Spirit aligns with that.
anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven- – While attending to the body and associated fears, why not attend the guilt and shame that comes with sin? For good reason both the Sacrament of Confession and the Sacrament of Holy Unction are called the Sacraments of Healing. This makes sense since the word sozo is both the word in Greek in the New Testament for saving a soul and for meeting a physical need.
Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed– – The objective reality in that anointing of oil does not have to be at the expense of reconciling to one another for falling short. The Sacraments of Healing inspire that in the community without competition.
The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective– – – The implication for these words is for that of a masculine figure in authority, singular, and not of just any believer among the “one another.” The word for righteous man is dikaios. It can be generally defined in Strong’s Concordance as righteous or virtuous but there is a more specific interpretation that it hones in on. “In a narrower sense, refering to each his due and that in a judicial sense, passing just judgment on others, whether expressed in words or shown by the manner of dealing with them” (Strong’s Concordance, G 1342). But no elder is righteous in himself. The true North Star, Christ, works through the faith of the elder.
Thus, Christ vicariously manifests himself to those in need through the presbuteros which is contracted into English as priest. This sacrament is for those in the “icky” place of pain, helplessness and sorrow. Christ is the hope for all. Christ was there when the priest anointed me. Truly God is with us.
Early on my way to becoming a therapist I heard there is a poverty in this world of being listened to or “getting a hearing.” The latter term sparks images of someone with a black robe and gavel. But burdened people instead want others to hear and validate them so they can go forward.
In such connections many nod at the saying “It felt good to get that off my chest.” This includes when the disclosure is of one’s failure either in a moral mistake or honest mistake. Ideally, especially if someone discloses their moral failure, they hope the hearer listens in a non-judgmental tone. Healing and sometimes personal redemption are the hope which will feel good partially in proportion to the safety of the environment.
As a therapist I give “the housekeeping speech” to assure such trust. “Everything you tell me stays here with the exceptions of a statement intending harm to self, harm to others or disclosure about a person of a vulnerable population being harmed.” There are laws in place to protect confidentiality. Otherwise people will see a therapy session under a form of a “Miranda” shadow of “everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law” (a police officer reading the rights to the accused upon arrest).” More commonly it would be a fear of being caught and under a pointing finger of shame.
Often it is a good idea to define guilt and shame in regard to what the disclosure is in failure. I provide clients with a definition of guilt as feeling bad because they did bad in light of their values. If they have a spiritual emphasis they integrate like 12 Step or a formal religion I call it spiritual pain. In the right context, there can be a process of seeing hope in that they must have values or they would have no guilt. In one feels guilty for stealing from their parents then they have values of honesty and integrity. Then we can consider their “next time” or “what next” to be true to our best selves. Thus guilt is like a pain in our back reminding us to lift with our legs instead. A hearing and some counsel can help with the pain and new insight.
Shame has more of a tendency to trap the client in the “what if” in the sense of a parallel universe in their mind where they did not do the unforgivable. Shame can mean “You are bad” instead of doing bad. This is a hard perspective to get out of often due to self-narratives that may come from parent’s narratives. Where guilt can be constructive pain, shame happens when it is misappropriated to spiritual shock. If you have back pain, then lift with your legs. If one is in shock, “What’s the point of change?”
It should go without saying, but the client does not need fault finding language in the session. Social media or the persons in person social circle may supply plenty of that. The need they were trying to fulfill could be opened up. Specifics are different to each person but some generalities can include feeling worthy, having pleasure, being powerful and being rich. As a therapist I can collaborate on how to see the needs being met. The less they are bound to shame-based self-talk, the more likely they will buy into the change they talk themselves into. It is in leaving shame, appropriating guilt in a rightly ordered way, that people can change after failure.
There can be other contexts. Find a trusted friend. If it is a common addictive or compulsive behavior there could be a 12 Step group for it. Some religious institutions have something for it. And some have an informal spirituality that has an effect.
Playing it safe in silence is dangerous. There can be a sense of safety in secrecy. One can hold the content of the bad act at the point of shame close to the vest. But like a blade of grass breaking through concrete, shame has a way of getting out. Will the person be validated with compassion or a lack of it? Finding the place for one’s “hearing” can make all the difference. Whether it is one’s Higher Power or a human being, no one needs to carry the burden alone.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next session to address the initiation specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
Many are put off about the concept of sacramental confession including those who are Christian and non-Christian. The common objection is that it includes an inappropriate power into a sinful man who stands in the way between the believer and God’s grace.
With a correct interpretation of the gospels, especially that of John, we can see that Confession as a sacrament through a priest is practical and a natural extension of Christ first in his incarnation, atonement and resurrection with justification (Romans 4:29).
We can see the foundation of the Incarnation in John’s prologue in his gospel “The Word [Jesus] became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The word for “dwell” is skenoo meaning “to fix one’s tabernacle, have one’s tabernacle, abide (or live) in a tabernacle (or tent). (Strong’s Concordance). Within a handful of verses Jesus, though without sin, submitted himself for baptism to the prophet John who was of priestly lineage “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15) with the Holy Spirit coming upon all of him. The principle in the Incarnation is thus Holy Spirit and flesh to continue through the work of the cross and resurrection working upon the soul and the body with meaning.
Such implications of the Incarnation and the sacraments go from Christ to his delegated authority in the middle of his ministry. When encountering a paralytic, Jesus addresses his need for healing and forgiveness. “But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins”……“Rise, take up your bed and go home.”…. When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men (Matthew 9:6,8, emphasis added).
Jesus as Lord and Savior fulfilled a messianic expectation for two messiahs with one who is kingly or militaristic and the other priestly though he was both.
Post-resurrection Jesus actualized what was rightfully assumed earlier about “men” (Matthew 9:8) “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ “ John 20:22-23). There is a strong case from church history that bishops and priests can provide an objective assurance to the penitent. This is because they have received holy orders by the laying on of hands and can trace through the Holy Spirit integrated in bodily context, back to the breath of Jesus.
This truth had expression in the heart of the Church in the early centuries. Below is one.
For they who inhabit the earth and make their abode are entrusted with the administration of things that are in heaven, and have received an authority that God has not given to angels or archangels. For it has not been said to them, “Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” [Mt 18:18]. They who rule on earth have authority to bind, but only the body: whereas this binding lays hold of the soul and penetrates the heavens; and what priests do here below God ratifies above, and the master confirms the sentence of his servants. For indeed what is it but all manner of heavenly authority has he given them when he says, “Whose sins you remit they are remitted, and whose sins you retain they are retained?” [Jn 20:23]. What authority could be greater than this? “The Father has committed all judgment to the Son?” [Jn 5:22]. But I see it all put into the hands of these men by the Son. For they have been conducted to this dignity as if they were already translated to heaven [St. John Chrysotom, The Priesthood 3:5 (c. A.D. 388, emphasis added)].
Common objections include that the priest who hears the sin may not be up to the wisdom to handle the information. Concerns can include being condemning, breaking confidentiality or acting on the information in some negative way.
The irony is that there are cautionary tales about this regarding mental health therapists open for the public to read about in the licensing board websites. I would suggest that the resistance to confession is more vehement because while we are designed to be moral creatures we struggle with pride, shame and a mix of both more with religion.
However, as moral creatures we can have good therapy and not be as challenged to examine the values in us that conflict with our bad moral actions. A therapist is supposed to be ethical but it is outside of the scope to provide direct moral counsel. In my code of ethics one of the tenets is honoring the self-determination of the client which can steer the conversation to the client’s subjective understanding of truth. The risk is there to let themselves “off the hook” by self-justification. If I am concerned their behavior is counter-productive I can ask questions and they may or may not talk themselves into change. And I only can break confidentiality due to safety concerns. Where I am “safe” in one view is that I cannot tell the client what is and is not sin. A therapist provides a non- judgmental setting.
Even with the best therapy, we may say, “Is that it?” And with that in mind I will discuss the priest role.
First, on the realm of confidentiality, a priest functioning en persona Cristi (in the person of Christ) is not as good as a therapist: he is better. A priest is never to violate the seal of confession and thus no “housekeeping conversation.” In the Middle Ages a king in Europe suspected his wife cheated on him and ordered her priest to tell him what she said in confession. He refused to the point of losing his life.
Bishop Fulton Sheen spoke against using even the information for his benefit for any reason. He said in a talk that if he heard a confession someone talking about how he stole a wallet off a desk in the church building that he could not act on that. This included if it was his wallet and he was in the habit of laying it on his desk. Bishop Robert Barron has said he was taught about confession two things: to always be available when asked and, “It never happened.”
Fear of condemnation is common as well regarding sacramental confession. It could be fueled by anecdotes of bad priests but also from the stereotypes of Hollywood. In my 8 years as a Catholic I know of many priests that were lions in the pulpit calling sin as sin but lambs in the confessional. The input the well-formed priests give is from the heart of the Church with faith and reason working together. Even if it is brief, a priest can give encouragement with words of grace and counsel to address the natural and spiritual consequences of the sin.
Furthermore, on the consequences a priest can do something a therapist cannot do: give absolution. The priest is part of a lineage through the laying on of hands from bishops back through time to the rabbi from Nazareth who was the God-Man breathing this gift on his apostles. It is the grace of Jesus Christ in his power that forgives and cleanses and not an intrinsic power the priest as born with. When a Christian sins, they do so against the Head and the Body. When one suffers, all suffer. When one rejoices, all rejoice. The absolution is a solid reality of being lifted up from being in shame and infecting the Body with it. “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). My therapeutic support to the client in forgiving themselves does not compare to the power of Christ.
Absolution can be powerful spiritually and psychologically to the one who confesses. The dynamic is that God concretely in this objective experience has forgiven them and there is a physical voice pronouncing it. As flesh and blood beings we are made for flesh and blood community. But also as spiritual being with are made for the invisible realities that transcend it. There may have been a healthy guilt or guilt leaning towards immobilizing shame but no more.
God uses fallible men in confession. The priest has his own sins and is usually very cognizant that they are a work in progress. The ancient principle is ex opera operato. The effectiveness is in the act itself. If you find out that the priest has grave sins in his life, then it does not matter. Confession is not the grace of the priest. It is the grace of God. So let the healing begin.
Marriage. Thank God there has been no politics about that. Okay. Maybe a bit. You may have heard of controversy here and there at least in the west.
There is frequently a marriage impulse in people from childhood on. The food for thought starts as a child looking at the grownups around when attending a wedding. Vows make an impact. The concept keeps going with both parties decide to start a family either biologically or through the adoption. The parties grow old together “until death do you part.”
But often it does not work that way. As a therapist I have supported men, women and children during in the aftermath of divorce. If one or most parties stay in the house, there can still be a sense of losing home as the end of a dream.
And yet many after a divorce get remarried. Are they just gluttons for punishment? Not at all. Love has a will for the good for another. That will, often with feelings, bonds the two and there is good in that. There can be a joy in the home as they build on the commitment and even a divorced person may long for that structure. In a roughly analogous statement of Thomas Merton in “The Seven Story Mountain,” he joined his monastery for “the four new walls of my new freedom.” Love in the context of commitment does not prevent life together from being mundane, but it gives it context of meaning for the self and the other.
A further context of love in the context of marriage is the complementarity. We can consider friendship as a further analogy.
What made us friends in the long ago when first we met?
Well, I think I know.
The best in you and the best in me
Hailed each other because we could see
That always and ever
Since time began,
Out being friends was part of the plan (George Webster Douglas).
But the analogies of monks and friends fall short in comparison to marriage. The stigma and formality of ending those roles are not the same and especially not the potential hard feelings. That is because marriage draws out a unique vulnerability and emotional investment. The spouses share of themselves with each other so much and holding less back.
Then in a macro level it is increasingly clear that divorces keep happening. A broad lens shows much damage with fatherless homes, at least strong correlation for adolescent depression, suicidality and more. I see the mutual and collateral damage often in my role as a therapist.
With that in mind, I would suggest the following things to consider at the foundation of a marriage, during it or both.
The two need a transcendent third beyond just the mutual bonding. Aristotle said of friendship that the two in a good friendship share a third source or object that is bigger than them individually. Examples in marriage could be shared values or a philosophy in life that connects to the bond of marriage.
They must have unity at each level where they can truly receive each other warts and all. While there are reasonable boundaries, they should not be on the defense in what I tell clients is, “the Great Wall of China” in isolating from each other.
They should attempt to meet the needs of the other holistically in love that love that wills the good of the other. If love is willing the good of the other then be mindful of their head, heart, body and social needs. This makes it an integrative relationship as the two are mindful on at list the gist of the essentials.
The two should consider what they can put out, of themselves and in accord with their transcendent third. Typically, their oneness between the two can result in an output of a third nine months later which they have to name. If children are not an option, then consider what can be produced together in other ways. The community of at least two can see a meaning beyond themselves while partly about themselves. An example is famous writer GK Chesterton and his wife who wanted children conventionally but instead fostered many needy children, semi-adopted one and charitably provided scholarships to many.
Hopefully marriage counseling could have many layoffs and the world would be better for it. This is, if the need was not there with the deficit in pre-marriage formation and the one-sided assumptions that the spouse needs to rescue the other. It is time for a healthy skepticism that fuels mature love and marriage to be more common again.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next session to address the initiation specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
Although there are no easy answers, there are principles to apply which sound unpleasing to devout believers of many post-modern philosophies regarding marriage. Those the Catholic Church emphasizes are free, faithful, fruitful, and forever. Free means both partners are free from a prior commitment or condition that would preclude that marriage and have reasonable amount of knowledge of likely conflicts the partner brings. Faithful means you are committed to fidelity at the time of marriage. Fruitful means that they are open to life (but infertility is not an impediment). Forever means that at the time of marriage both intend for this to be until death do them part.
It important in the Christian community that there are disciplines held by leadership to keep marriage sacred and without prejudice to either spouse. An example in the Bible that gives material sufficiency to that is, “Let mutual love continue…..Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterers”(Hebrews 13:1, 4).
If one or both spouses want to say later there was no valid covenant at the beginning, the annulment process should not be like a drive-through fast food experience. Such a process should be open to investigation in the interest of the souls of the spouses, children and the holiness of the Church.
Does it sound cruel? So is a child of divorce maybe keeping their house but losing their home because one parent found an attractive co-worker who “really understands.” It is also cruel to set up a child and community to see the gift of sex meant for bonding and babies have a shakable context. We see the consequences in the build-up of sexual immorality for a society and its collateral damage like heightened abuse (statistically abuse is more likely with the step-father or boyfriend of the mom), and hundreds of millions of abortions in the post-industrial age.
On the edge of the 20th Century Pope Leo XIII spoke truth that was sadly unheeded when he wrote an encyclical to America as a whole and quoted himself from a prior letter on marriage. In referring to divorce he stated the following which reflects the “Four F’s” written above. As early as the 1910’s there would be uprisings of sexual revolutions which included softening divorce with results that only proved his words true.
For difficult it is to imagine a more deadly pest to the community than the wish to declare dissoluble a bond which the law of God has made perpetual and inseverable. Divorce “is the fruitful cause of mutable marriage contracts; it diminishes mutual affection; it supplies a pernicious stimulus to unfaithfulness; it is injurious to the care and education of children; it gives occasion to the breaking up of domestic society; it scatters the seeds of discord among families; it lessens and degrades the dignity of women, who incur the danger of being abandoned once they have subserved the lust of their husbands. And since nothing tends so effectually as the corruption of morals to ruin families and undermine the strength of kingdoms, it may easily be perceived that divorce is especially hostile to the prosperity of families and States” [Arcani] (Pope Leo XIII, Longinquani Oceani, 1895, Paragraph 14, emphasis added).
There have been many who call themselves Christian that want to rewrite moral and natural law by modernist theories and even synthesizing them with their view of “the Jesus I believe in.” Then the counterfeits, too many to address in this space, come out with anecdotes and victim politics to supplant objective truth.
But Christ came in history, mystery and majesty with words and acts that reaffirmed a restoration to the sanctity of marriage before the Fall. When he “dwelt among us” (John 1:14) in his incarnation, he spoke truth to those accustomed to ungodly convenience of sending off a wife for any reason. Yes, he said things many can resonated with like loving one’s enemies but on the interest of marital justice, the primal social justice, he spoke inconvenient truth. When the Pharisees asked him about the divorce code introduced by Moses he pointed to the original experience above all other counterfeit challengers. “He said to them, ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery’ “(Matthew 19:8-9).
Was Jesus mean? Quite the opposite. The same love that propelled him to give himself up for the redemption of the world on the cross propelled him to speak wisdom for the redemption of marriage. Such was the fulness of wisdom and love of the same Jesus who built the Church that would withstand “the gates of hell” (Matthew 16:19).
And Christian couples have a calling to be the domestic church bearing the traits of the Church of the Nicene Creed as “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic (Council of Nicea, 325). Below I will list what can be virtues shared by non-religious people but with a new context in the deposit of the Christian faith.
They must have unity at each level where they can truly receive each other warts and all. While there are reasonable boundaries, they should not be on the defense in what I tell clients is, “the Great Wall of Chine.” – – One.
The two need a transcendent third. Examples in marriage could be shared values or a philosophy in life that connects to the bond of marriage.- – Holy.
They should attempt to meet the needs of the other holistically and in both directions and in love. If love is willing the good of the other then be mindful of their head, heart, body and social needs. This makes it an integrative relationship. – – Catholic, Katholikos, figuratively in Greek means universal. The literal translation means “according to the whole.”
The two should consider what they can put out, of themselves and in accord with their transcendent third. Typically, their oneness between the two can result in an output of a third nine months later which they have to name. If children are not the option, then consider what can be produced together in other ways. The community of at least two can see a meaning beyond themselves while partly about themselves. How can they carry on the good to the next generation?- — Apostolic.
To the Christian couple, please be patient among other things one can read in the “Love Chapter” read at many weddings (1 Corinthians 13). Be kind. Do not keep a record of wrongs suffered. This is the love that never fails. Will the good. Do the good.
It is high praise to say that someone’s role is the “lifeblood” that hold a group up. Sometimes a description of someone holding the enterprise together is that they are “the bones” of it.
Both analogies work together when one thinks about the blood factory aspect of bone marrow. If the bone has damage then the blood source runs short. Bone cancers are among the most painful. Also, bones give stability by not moving fundamentally unlike a muscle that can move, strain or flex in its essence. So too are those bone-type roles.
Keeping stability and nourishment in mind, it is rare we can find a person in such a role that provides both in the roles of truth and empowerment to the individuals and group through a lens of what is sacred.
The better the sense of objective truth underlying the roles, the better the better the grounding of objective truth they can provide. Unstable sense of truth in the subjective means lack of stability to those who receive the benefit. Stability in timeless values keeps the community going by speaking what is right into the situation and not with the fashionable theory of the day. This is difficult so hopefully the person is up to the job for each level of the group and its functions.
There are ceremonies of initiation into the group, a rite of passage of maturity and ceremonies that reaffirm realities that transcend and unite. When the first two happen, the major is on the individual and the minor is still on the group. For the third, it is inverse. Those special standard bearers serve the other at the cost of themselves which we can often see in some leadership roles in society.
Years ago in school I met a fellow student who had been a military officer and spoke of a sacrificial identity. He stated that for the men under him if it was 12 then he did not count the total number as 13. He subtracted himself from the equation because he took his men under him as his responsibility. That is service leadership in seeing the mission of his men’s safety above his own.
Additionally, we have follower norms who see the rank or office above the person who holds it. For example, when there a lower rank sees a superior officer they salute first. The officer may have a reputation of bad character or temperament but the saying is “you salute the rank and not the man.” If this were not the case then the military would make the personality the primary fabric and not the principle of the officer providing stability in the gift of delegated authority.
Yet there is cynicism to the concept of such solid authority in segments of society with fuel from hypocrisy. Some leaders having legitimate authority act illegitimately like we see in corrupt politicians. We see corrupt leaders taken down and want to cheer like the audience loved the scene in A Few Good Men when Colonel Jessup (played by Jack Nickolsen) gets his just dessert at the end.
But many of his comments he made on the stand that are isolated from the murder trial and valid questions hold true to the cynics of society of all authority. Cynical impulses demean all solid leadership that gives structure of any kind throwing the baby out with the bath water.
There was some truth when Jessup said, “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.” Someone needs to be in charge.
“Men follow orders or people die.” This has at least has some weight to it since an officer has intel beyond the micro perspective of a lower level and he may not want or need to explain the reasoning in the fog of ward. Commands are supposed to have clarity.
“You will address this court as your honor or sir.” This was the JAG judge admonishing Colonel Jessup when he was disrespecting him. The “court” is vested in the person of the judge while in session. Minutes later, that same judge who transcended both sides ordered Jessup detained. Justice works when applied consistently and not applied by personality.
It is incorrect to assume that the people should assume a person in authority rightfully can be beyond the accountability of authority. One can respect the office a bad leader holds and work within the system to suspend them from their duties and privileges.
It is this hope that made the audience cheer when Colonel Jessup incriminated himself, was under arrest and called Lieutenant Caffey (played by Tom Cruise) “son,” only to hear rebuke albeit against the rules in wording. “Don’t call me son. I’m a lawyer and an officer in the United States Navy. And you are under arrest you son of a bitch.”
But what happens in a society that walks around with Lieutenant Caffey lenses? Too often people will see a Colonel Jessup when there is none. If all society sees are the Jessup effect then the society will collapse. It would be in a sense a toxic cynicism rather than a balanced skepticism if primary principles do not flow out well.
Although there are times for a healthy skepticism, the default setting for those in authority is first a healthy optimism. This optimism is that the persons in authority now, and will continue to be, standard bearers. This can be in your family or community leaders.
For those who have been harmed by those with the higher ground in position they may see themselves as never having a chance before. But with a balanced perspective those fixed authorities can have a redeemed appearance among those harmed. Whether that is the same person who mishandled their power is another matter.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next session to address the initiation specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
In my time among the Christian traditions, like many Christians, I have felt the tension between giving proper deference and respect to the spiritual authorities to an activated skepticism to even temptation to be cynical. Just as there is in military the sayinng, “salute the uniform and not the man,” there are equivalent statements in Christian traditions.
One is “touch not my anointed servants and do my prophets no harm” (Psalms 105:15) which can, has and will be abused as a socially engineered escape clause for leaders having accountability. In the Judeo-Christian narratives there are many cases of those in legitimate authority who sinned, and heroic people who honored their office though they rebuked them. But along the way, there was a gaslighting effect with one of these verses in all-too-convenient use.
As a young Christian in my late teens, I first absorbed biblical narratives for this in the Saul and David saga. King Saul was jealous of David and was out to get him especially when the prophet Samuel told him that his kingdom would be given to him. David had chances to act or be complicit against Saul after the fact. Yet repeatedly he denied that idea. Saul had his Samuel who spoke truth to power.
Then up came David as the new “Lord’s anointed” and after years reigning committed adultery and murder. While Saul had his prophet Samuel, David had Nathan the prophet. Nathan spoke truth to power as well. Both kings and many of the other kings descended from David were anointed and grievously in error by sin, prudential judgment or both. In the case of King Joash who acted wickedly, those who killed him in a coup were themselves executed out of principle.
Such anecdotes impressed me when in the same years many of my favorite Christian preachers fell in scandal. It was 1987 and the names of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts went from famous to infamous overnight. Non-Christians around me had their comedy relief on the sexual scandals of one and a very silly “God told me” of a third. What I learned to absorb was their behavior made illegitimate their moral example but not their office. I had, and still have no doubt, that many people came into a life changing relationship with Christ through their ministries. This was a nugget I carried in the later years when in my very personal level I would see those I regarded as gifted in the Holy Spirit to speak into my life and those who were close to me fall very short of the Christian call of love and holiness. Some of the damage was so profound that I used a Bible for a year with minimal commentary and I re-grounded myself on related social sciences on spiritual abuse as well as foundational Christian apologetics (e.g. The Case For Christ by Lee Stroebel). Over the years I came to appreciate the words of St. Polycarp
before his martyrdom, “86 years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior” (Polycarp’s Martyrdom, ca. 69-ca. 155). Though a different context, it still holds today in principle.
By 2012 and 2013, a deeper understanding occurred on anointed leadership in the Body of Christ when I discerned and entered the Catholic Church. One trait of the Catholic Church is that it is apostolic. This means in part that through the laying on of hands from the apostles through the ages the priestly gift extended from Christ the high priest continuing in holy orders. Holy orders means an indelible mark for spiritually anointed servant leadership to be given to select men through laying on of hands as bishop, priest or deacon. For a priest the ordination includes anointing oil. After that, one can be laicized or discern out to be an ex-clergy but the mark is there for all eternity. One can be an ex-president but in the truest sense of identity, ontologically, never really ex-clergy.
Reading the early church fathers, I learned a more robust perspective to formal ordination by God’s grace through the principle of ex opera operato. This was articulated in the 3rd century and defended again the in the 4th by Augustine. It is the principle that a sacrament does not operate by an intrinsic holiness or other trait of the person for it to be effective.
So if a mass occurs through a priest that is secretly stealing from the church it is still a valid mass. One can also be a bad cleric with holy orders and still be a cleric dispensing sacraments or a sacramental blessing validly. This was encouraging to me on the objective reality of it though I had no illusions that an anointed priest was a perfect priest.
I had just enough reasonable expectations as I came into the “Summer Of Shame” in 2018. This included a Pennsylvania report on priesthood sex abuse over decades and the exposure of Cardinal Theodore McCarick. The latter was credibly accused of sexually abusing adult seminarians and several minors. He was the most highly esteemed cardinal in the US and some whispered could be the first American pope. Now he is laicized and is Mr. Theodore McCarick.
What gives me peace first is that God knows what he is doing as well as permitting. The apostles panicked in the boat in a deadly storm so they complained to Jesus. He calmed the storm and urged them to have more faith. Likewise, even the “barque of Peter” in the Catholic Church, the papacy, will not sink even when there is corrupt leadership.
Second, God raises Samuels and Nathans through the ages like St. Paul. When Peter, the first pope, wavered in his personal conduct about the inclusivity to the Gentiles Paul rebuked him in public. Peter may have implied a humility to that rebuke because years later he referred to Paul’s writings as scripture in one of his papal encyclicals.
Later is the example of St. Catherine of Sienna. For decades the main Vatican residence was in Avignon, France with financial corruption and plush living for the hierarchy. Pope Gregory XI wanted to move it back to Rome but was afraid of an assassination attempt, the cardinals would not like it and there was chaos in Italy. Yet she urged him in a prophetic voice.
“The wolf is carrying away your sheep, and there is no one found to help them … the hungry sheep await your coming to hold and possess the place of your predecessor and champion, Apostle Paul. For you as Vicar of Christ should rest in your own place. Come, then, come and delay no more; and comfort you, and fear not for anything that might happen, since God will be with you” (“Saint Catherine of Siena, As Seen in Her Letters,” Vida D. Scudder).
She was not a rebel but is a canonized saint and one of only a few dozen doctors of the Catholic Church in it’s 2,000 history.
In recent years there has been a voice of correction to Pope Francis in an open letter called a dubia. The cardinals who wrote it were Cardinal Raymond Burke, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, and recently deceased Cardinals Joachim Meisner and Carlo Caffarra. The cardinals tried to voice their concerns privately and due to no response made it public.
Last, is the priestly consideration for the believer. That is not a typo. Though one is a Christian without holy orders in apostolic succession through the laying on of hands, the Bible is clear about a royal priesthood and complimentary wording to this effect in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Though few have the prophetic calling to rebuke a spiritual leader, it is incumbent to all to pray for them. Furthermore, inquire on how to support the good and the bad. It is fitting to do so since to be Christian is to be a intercessor no matter what your calling.
This is on my mind at the time of this writing at a personal level. As I write this, I am an Aspirant to become a deacon in the Catholic Church. Is there another “Summer of Shame” to come again soon in the Catholic Church. It is my hope that by the grace of God, and my prayers as a part of it, that God in his court will make things right.
The other bone-type focus of service is in marriage which we will look at next.
There can be much connecting to above one’s self in community through food and drink. It is a meeting point for the unseen and seen parts of the person connect in the body but as community. Examples include shared coffee at AA meetings. beer and wings with friends watching a game on TV, refreshments at weddings and funerals and food elements in religious contexts (e.g.. Jewish Passover, Christian communion).
Sometimes meaning in communal eating accelerates pleasure as an end in itself like the saying, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:13). Many echo this in religious and secular genres. While looking at that phrase may get the heart moving, since those elements appeal to pleasure, it implies a cynicism about life. From stoic philosophers to major world religions there is a revulsion to such an attitude. Their countering perspectives would generally respond that eating and drinking only for pleasure of the day is overly reductive. The hedonist is communion goes no further than excitement with the endorphins of the food on the tongue and the brain pickling effect of the wine to “be merry.” The critique of being overly reductive is how hedonistic eating and drinking misses the consequences of excess and the benefits of moderation. Further, to center on receptivity on pleasure is to see too little of all other meaning groups can have in the gathering and receiving.
Many cultures have teachings and community norms that elevate food and drink to better purposes. The more a community has a full perspective of nourishment, communal eating and refreshing the mind the more inspiration for essentials like unity and determination. The better scenarios of communal eating give hope about life. Healthy communal eating strengthens the individual to the mission and the message for a better world in the elements and inclusion.
Case in point is knowing as a new or old member that there is a place at the table for you. When someone invites another for a meal they eat the same food and experience the same taste. They get to know sensually the taste of the pepperoni of their shared pizza while in shared conversation. To break bread together is an act of mutual acceptance. This translates to sharing the same bottle or cup.
Still, there are broad messages in society about food and individuals at the expense of bonding and healthy diet including commercialism, gluttony and restrictive eating. They play on dysfunction like low self-esteem and the lack of acceptance in their family of origin.
While a seat at the family table can provide acceptance, a seat at dysfunctional households tables convey shame. Such pain can be seen in those who over-eat (eating their feelings) or under-eat. For the latter, one may think the food is not good enough for them. But possibly they do not believe they are good enough for the food and the acceptance it represents. Furthermore, one may consider And as for community, one may consider how much the average person with bulimia thinks in turn they are not good enough for the community as well.
Where that is the case, they may know technically they have membership and have had a rite of passage in a community affirmation,but if they do not internalize the identity of worth, identity and ultimate direction, such foundations will not sustain. To internalize food in fellowship is to internalize the worth the healthy family or community reinforces.
This is where thanksgiving can come in for many communities that have a well-founded unity. In indigenous and dominant western cultures there are thanksgiving feasts to commemorate what is good in their life. Sometimes it is directly to a deity who they see as having taken initiative. This is key for those who may hesitate to take their place at the community table because of not feeling worth it. A nurturing elder can affirm they can partake knowing if the deity, group or both say they have worth then they have worth. Then they invite the shy or shamed person to grab a plate.
So whether it is an elder or peer, there is meaning to the invitation to a well-rounded meal of fellowship. Where the healing elements qualitatively are thanksgiving and celebrating what is to come. It is internalized hope but as a subjective reality. To have that sense of acceptance literally in the gut happens there.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next session to address the initiation specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
Grasping mortal life versus immortal life requires different modes with the former on a limited source and the latter an unlimited one. To have a meal is to sustain one’s ongoing life on mostly the physical. But to have a sacred meal is to sustain one’s ongoing and eternal life while intersecting with the body.
For the Judeo-Christian realm the sacred meal was not lost in the Old Testament and New Testament due to the view of humanity being spiritual beings having physical experiences, especially in communion, as later in practice in church history.
There has always been a theme of nourishment for the soul and the body. This is clear from the start.
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8).
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.– – We find a root here to God being both love while being a mystery. The first sentence has “Lord God” which communicates God is namable in “Lord” and in mystery in “God” as mentioned in awe and reverence. God’s mystery is maintained in priestly decorum through the Old Testament. Eden means, “place of pleasure and delight” so planting the garden there was a willful act of love towards humanity second to creating humanity in the first place.
Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree …..—-The second sentence has beauty and goodness but more importantly a resource of eternal life and a resource of life and truth that God creates to manifest his glory. As we know from the story of the Fall, Adam and Eve chose selfishness and even self-aggrandizement to be like God by choosing the one tree God told them not to eat of. God expressly said that they could not get access to the tree of life because they presumed to disobey and access knowledge and nourishment in a way that was gravely disordered. Cutting them off from the tree of life was an act of mercy because they had effectively excommunicated themselves from God’s community and if they remained as un-dying they would remain as un-changing and beyond redemption. This is why they were cast from this garden to further east. Man lost their way and that included an abundant life through the tree of life.
In the ages to come there were signs pointing to what was missing and what could be given again in redemption. It was in the form of bread and wine with Melchizadek and Abraham. God sent manna from heaven in the time of Moses. David and his men ate bread reserved for the Levitical priests under conditions fitting consecration. All were scenes of grace foreshadowing what was to come but they were indirectly from God in some sense and had limits in effect.
But in the fulness of time Christ came. He is the high priest. He is the new Adam. Jesus was hailed as the “Son of David.” Jesus came as the flesh and blood gift of life that was unlimited in power. But seemingly also unlimited in offense to those of dysfunctional understandings of what spiritual community and communion could ever be about.
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’ (John 6:48-51).
Christ had only begun to be offensive. His narrative in the Greek for “eat” goes from typical eating to the word for gnawing one’s food like an animal. Unlike most times that he spoke in metaphor, he gave no follow up disclaimer to qualify it. Most of his audience left although the day before he had literally fed them straightforward bread and fish.
Christ offers himself in the Eucharist in history, majesty and mystery building on the structure of the Passover of Moses. Christ instituted the Eucharist on the Last Supper saying “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” There was a fourth Passover cup to drink which they did not drink that night. But on the cross he drank sour wine from a hyssop branch, a Passover element, and then said, “It is finished” before dying.
On the day he rose from the dead he formed a spiritual connection in a sacred meal by his divine power. He demonstrated eating communally with the cross and the resurrection as connecting points in experience and understanding for the Christian. After the resurrection Jesus walked incognito with two disciples who were unable to recognize him and believed he was dead. He led them through a Bible study for the truth and then dispensed to them the reality of the Eucharist. “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them.And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight” (Luke 24:30-21).
What happened here was a demonstration of his authority as Lord over death but Savior as the high priest of the new covenant that saves and one may experience and respond to in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is “truly right and just” as a true thanksgiving sacrifice since the thanksgiving sacrifice for Jews, using bread, was the todah. Translated to the Greek for Hellenist Jews as eucharistia
These men had a blessing from the Bible readings, Liturgy of the Word, and the Eucharist which is Liturgy of the Eucharist. They explain the reality to the apostles later that day. The beauty, goodness and truth Adam and Eve only partly new in Eden was unfolding in Jesus, “who was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:29). To commune with and of Christ was to truly know him and the Real Presence. “Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:35). Luke ,in his second book, describes the Church flourishing with “the apostles teaching, fellowship, breaking of the bread, and prayer” (Acts 2:42).
As great as this sounds, there is the individual examining of one’s self before partaking. This holy sacrifice of thanksgiving is also a proclamation of Christ as Lord conquering death by death. If one presumes to partake of Christ the true tree of life in an unworthy state then Paul warned a kind of death happens.
For asoften as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself (1 Corinthians 11:27-29).
This examination is not a guilt trip but it is a healthy skepticism so one can avoid shame and death. To receive Christ in communion it to accept an intimacy of God for all of us. He wants all of us and we are in our best place when we receive all of him in all us. If one finds guilt in their conduct to a grave level with a fearless moral inventory then they have a choice: refrain or repent. To refrain is to not partake of the Lord’s table in an unworthy manner and in that act of omission may, just may, be a gateway choice to repent.
However, to take communion is still not an act of the perfect but for those who in friendship with God do not have unrepentant major sin. One who takes the Eucharist in an apostolic and sacramental church has had their baptism and often their confirmation or chrismation as forgiven and empowered sinners. The prior sacraments receive and strengthen the believer but with an important theme that it is not about them. All of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist are from the Head of the Body of Christ, Jesus himself, and the Body most completely shown in the Church. With that in mind, remember Christians are to be partakers of divine nature (2 Peter 1:3). .
“Welcome into our family,” or group, could be one of the strongest terms spoken in any language. It is powerful because it empowers the newly initiated member who has a new lifeline beside their biological lifeline. They find acceptance, security and a sense of identity to stand on. And if their life was incomplete or especially negative before being welcomed in, then so much the better.
When something new happens from the passing of the old, societies give it a name. If the new thing happens with a person as the object of welcome into the joint life or group, then a beautiful thing makes it formal. Across many cultures there may be a physical element, a form of words and ceremony. This is to make sure the person they welcome has an experience of initiation that is profound on their mental, emotional and physical person. The words may even be centered on birth, death and newness of identity.
Birth and death can overlap as one can see often in ceremonies and connected references. In the Ojibwe culture when someone announces that a member has died they say the departed has begun their journey. For those who believe in reincarnation the beginning of one life is but a new chapter of an old life that has passed. Yet, the beliefs about the life cycle is made sacred in an enhanced way when the new member is integrated into the family or community. People notice it as sacred and notice when someone varies in honoring it.
One passage of initiation into the family can be adoption with terms that support that integration but one deviating comment that can stand out: “No, I’m talking about your real family.” This is where someone outside of the family fails to see the fulness in the adoption process and differentiates between the kids that do and do not share DNA with the parents. Adoptive parents always see that as offensive and rightfully so.
The initiation of the new child into the family is far more holistic than adoption papers that a judge signs and is even biological in a way. When I used to work with prospective adoptive parents, I told them the adopted child becomes their biological child. They would give me a questioning look briefly before I explained. I cited poopy diapers, scraped knees, kisses on the forehead, midnight feedings, burping shortly after and all in the context of the smell of each other’s pheromones. Bonding biologically happens that way. And, by the way, the old legal name goes away and the new one comes in.
The kind of permanence that comes with being initiated into a family is unique because usually the adoptive parents knew the adopted child before the adoption and chose them anyway. It is with this respect to such responsibility that in ancient Roman law you could disown your bio-child but never your adoptive one. In a sense, one might think the higher dignity is in the adopted child because the adoption was a crucial event by choice of the parents on the pre-existing person who gained the new identity. The adoptee can hopefully look back at the moment with an enhanced sense of worth and meaning.
In life it is good for the sense of meaning in the person to have a turning point or micro-turning point where they had a sense of belonging. Maselow included sense of belonging in his hierarchy. Logically, he was right to make physical security as most basic but rightfully a sense of belonging was not be far behind. Where those belonging points happen that are healthy, they should be celebrated.
All too often there are unhealthy groups willing to accept new members. Gangs, cults, and extremist ideological movements come to mind. The difference starts with an unconditional regard for the new member as well as all people. That makes all the difference and there could be signs on the difference in the initiation.
This is worth follow up for the individual if one lacks that sense of belonging. Even some ancient sense of a reboot can lead to a healthy sense of connectedness. It is all a matter of the intrinsic nature of the group and the unconditional positive regard for the person in initiating.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next session to address the initiation specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
Deep down no one wants to be “kind of” accepted. A deep desire common to humanity is to be substantially accepted and the role of ceremony often has suggestion at the least of an objective reality of change in the person.
So it goes with Christian baptism. There is matter, form and declaration involved. It can be given to anyone without respect to their personal merits or other personal factors. While it is a form of godliness, often people can overlook what happens in it as only a symbol. Thus many underappreciate its value in how it joins one in a special way to God and the Church for the internal and external context. Baptism has an outward sign of cleansing the sin with a co-occurring internal reality. “Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit’” (John 3:5). Cleansing on the outside with water, cleansing in the inside by the Spirit.
Traditional Christian teaching is that when one is baptized there is an indelible mark on the person. The death and birth overlap in baptism is to “fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).
Paul wrote how the fulfillment is redemptive from the merits of Christ to the essence of the believer’s spiritual biography. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).
Where Paul saw the physical baptism as co-existing as a metaphysical reality in Christ, the redemptive death one is tied to in it is unmistakably in the cross of Christ. The Atonement fuels the Spirit’s work to initiate the believer into the Body in tandem with when the water and Trinitarian formula are used (Matthew 28:18-20). Christian teaching describes baptism as a metaphysical reality because it transcends how we may want to quantify the experience with common understanding of time, space, personal experience in the senses and others. It is the reality of the cross because the grace of Christ in baptism speaks to the initiative of Christ in it that, “while we were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
But we should not lose focus on the resurrection in baptism tied to the reality of Christ’s resurrection. Paul referred to Jesus as one “who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). Thus a few chapters later Paul refers to Christians being raised with Christ.
Paul wrote how our conversation in Christ enhances our autobiographies into the life of Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ;and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:19b-20).
Not only should the objective nature of baptism be appreciated but the oneness of identity in it. Paul had come from a religious zealotry understanding God played favorites by how one does in the birth lottery among ethnicities. For him turning to Christ meant to turn away from that understanding. So even his ethnic identity had a subjugation under the cross of Christ and in baptism. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus “(Galatians 3:27-28).
Yes, there can be an objective, salvific reality of a kind in baptism which can include babies. Consider how Peter said the baptism was “for you and all your household” (Acts 16:31). So the ontological change in the person is universal transcending age as well.
Although there is reason to think that as much as verses above can cure the under-appreciation of baptism, there is the chance of over-appreciating it. But in stating there can be an over-appreciation of Christian baptism what I want to focus on is the presumption that in baptism alone one can presume eternal salvation. For example, we should have no presumption that Adolf Hitler went to heaven by the graces of his baptism as an infant since he clearly did not choose to continue to walk in that grace. The Christian should not abuse terms like, “Jesus paid it all” and continue doing their sin.
Below we see some implications of the nuances of being a baptized Christian but still having the calling to be on good terms with the Head and Body of Christ.
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:1-6).
In reading the above passage, the emotions may draw the eyes to “baptism” and “one” and other words that are key virtues. What should be noticed in this passage that includes baptism in the experience is the freedom that includes doing what one ought to do in addition to freedom from sin.
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord– – He is an apostle about to emphasize something key in his apostolic instruction and is a self-made “prisoner” in that he lived a consecrated life with Jesus as king.
beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called- – Paul is speaking to baptized Christians and sees the calling and full initiation into the Church as the start and not the end. The Christian life has choices of cooperation as “workmanship created for good works in Christ” (Ephesians 2:10). This urging is by no means a guilt trip but a proposition for a life lived in God’s grace.
making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace– – “Making every effort” seems like a “work” which is abhorrent to those who emphasize “faith alone” doctrine. The correct premise for the Christian life is that it starts in grace, continues in grace and ends in grace. But in interpreting the Pauline approach as “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6), we see this is Christian effort expressed without a gap of the Holy Spirit as the soul of the Church. Augustine wrote that, “The Holy Spirit operates in the whole Church that which the soul operates in the members of the one body” (St Augustine. Sermons. 267.4). This is a logical development of doctrine from how the Spirit and water are normative in Christian initiation with baptism.
So to the newly baptized or long-term baptized I say welcome. Welcome to your first prayer. Welcome to your first reading of scripture. Welcome to your first Sunday morning at Church. Welcome to the unity of the Body of Christ. This is Christian life without a fuel of presumption but by love and thanksgiving.
There are healthy and unhealthy means to initiate someone into a group. It is important to examine how that rite of passage in healthy or unhealthy operations so one can get an idea of the health of the group.
The love bombing effect is a peculiar thing. Someone is in a setting where there is a coordinated “attack” from many sides in a group. Thus, the inquirer can have a compelling feeling that they belong too easily to walk away. Once they say the magic word like “yes” or “I will join you” then it is mission accomplished. In their judgment, the endorphins are in charge and the “aye’s have it.”
One can rightfully call this dynamic shallow, manipulative and even cultic. Often a corresponding negative level of energy has a door to also manipulate to keep the member like the “positive” energy that got them in so impulsively. Then it fuels shame to make sure as time goes by that you are in right standing due to outward and arbitrary standards. You are “stuck.”
To be initiated into ancient traditions all over the world can often be more meaningful than the fuzzy feeling and be more holistic. This includes the mental, physical and global perspective of the person like of philosophy or spirituality. Holistic initiations are perhaps the reason why those traditions have endured for centuries or millennia like the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism and many indigenous spiritualities.
There is a sense of gravity and permanence to initiation ceremonies. You were on one side before you joined. Now you are on this one. Post-initiation you could even be unconditionally a member in at least some standing even if you leave. There is a comfort to knowing the door is open.
There is also a sense of empowerment to go forward if the initiation comes in degrees. In the Jewish Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah then one becomes a son or daughter of the Law. In some Native tribes there is a period of fasting and a Vision Quest culminating in a naming ceremony. There is a reassurance in the person that they can go forward and the community is behind them. In even a dishonorable society, like the Maffia, one can be “made” and be mostly untouchable.
But then there is vacuum in a material post-industrialization that does not lend to traditional values that can undergird a sense of meaning, including group initiation, for the person. This lack of individual empowerment is ironically hindered by ideologies that laud the virtue of building an individualistic society at the expense of spirituality. For some, to find connection comes in spirituality for the higher need of the person like Belonging of Maslow’s Hierarchy. In the 1950’s there was survey of graduating psychiatry residents showing that 75% believed their jobs were not done until the patient lowered their religious or spiritual disposition.
I was struck by that survey many years ago in my new employee training. I was a new hire for a sub-acute psychiatric facility with mostly court-committed individuals. The diagnosis could be schizophrenia, bipolar, schizo-effective, major depressive disorder or a major personality disorder. The corporation I worked for, which was secular, had a spirituality assessment. We asked them questions off of that which were qualitative in nature. There was no right or wrong answer. Spirituality was not an obstacle but seen as a possible reinforcer to their dignity. More dignity meant more buy in. In fact, a disproportionate amount of our alumni that had sustained recovery became more intentional in their spirituality. And of that group there was an initiation or re-initiation to a religious group.
We cheered them on with what works for them and avoided the complications of a perceived proselytizing. There were times where I disclosed to clients that I shared their faith but many times I chose not to. This was because I did not want to be a distraction if I felt they leaned on me too much. In a healthy manner of speaking, no “love bombing” from me.
In such a polarizing society including on religion it is my hope now as a therapist that those in the social sciences grow in incorporating that which cannot be quantified like spirituality. For religion then it can be a billion here and a billion there. But if we meet each person where they are at in how they find meaning for their lives in their philosophy of life then we tap into a human phenomenon that is 7 billion and counting. Formal religion may or may not be a part of it during the time of encounter.
So although therapists will not be evangelists, we owe it to the holistic needs of our clients to at least be a sounding board on what matters- – – even if it transcends matter. We can provide a culturally informed reflective listening to that effect and possibly provide an environment for change. In that sense we can be catalysts for change in that they can have affirmation to take initiative to their initiation so to speak.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next section to address the initiation of spirituality specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
For a person to launch fully into their faith community like that in Christianity, there are themes in the ceremony that match on the outside what the faith infuses on the inside. This is done with the physical signs that correspond to the terms of what happens in the soul. In the concept of membership in the Body of Christ, the new person is to encounter the grace of God in Christ, obey and remain standing on that grace.
Terms like fresh start and clean slate communicate a sense of hope or renewal when one comes into their faith community such as baptism in Christianity. From the early centuries of Christianity one could believe and receive in baptism or receive, believe and remain due to being a member of a Christian household.
The welcoming in lends to a welcoming forward rather than a one and done legal standing alone. James wrote to those who were already Christians they should accept the engrafted word of God which can save their souls (James 1:21). That makes baptism an initiation that is just the start but can be a point of reference going forward. Christian tradition in the Catholic Church has a part in the Easter Vigil where they can renew their baptismal promises.
The roots of initiation can be described in traditional terms that lend to the macro traits of the Church. Baptism has an eternal and indelible mark on the soul that is so Catholic, in at least the definition of universal, that anyone can validly baptize. if an atheist were to baptize someone with the matter of water, the form of Christ (I baptize you in the name of….) and intent for this to carry out the Sacred Tradition then it is valid. Not only is there a universality in the dispenser of the sacrament but in the recipient so a valid baptism can occur for a baby. Clean on the outside to have a mark of “clean slate” on the inside. To be faithful to the graces of baptism is still up to the person and they are in need of spiritual and community support. This is where Confirmation comes in.
Confirmation is another sacrament of initiation. Like baptism it can be done only once. This is less universal in the sense that it is for baptized Christians. It ties to oneness in that the person has an empowerment of the Holy Spirit but the recipient has an objective empowerment to see it as “our Holy Spirit” rather than just by themselves in a room alone. As a Protestant for 30 years I can affirm that I had many encounters with the person of the Holy Spirit but none that unified me to the Body of Christ and raised my awareness to God’s agenda like those subjective times alone. I will admit that to receive Confirmation was difficult for me in part due to pride. But it was definitely worth it.
Confirmation also has a context of the preceding generation that hands it down and is less universal in who can dispense than baptism. Confirmation only occurs through a bishop or a priest. The objective unity in Confirmation is tied to a visible unity upheld by a visible and multi-generational hierarchy. The supernatural view is that on Saturday Easter Vigil in Wickenburg, Arizona a priest anointed me under the grace of Jesus Christ tied through laying on of hands for 2,000 years. The objective reality of that gift coming through the laying on of hands is tied to the resurrection power of Christ himself.
Another sacrament that effects spiritually what occurs physically is the Eucharist. It fills the stomach and also the soul. The social dynamic is to take the communicant (the one who receive the Eucharist) to the upper room on the night of the Last Supper. This is not in a literal time machine through our conventional concept of physics but transcending it in a metaphysical way.
All of the four traits of Nicea are in the Eucharist. It is apostolic in that only a bishop or priest can consecrate the bread and wine to become the body and blood of Christ. It is holy because Christ is truly and metaphysically present though not literally. One can understand the Real Presence as a metaphysical reality though the accidents, elemental experience, indicates typical food. It is of oneness in meaning in that the congregation does this in unity. It is universal in the sense that it can be done anywhere a validly ordained priest is. It can be at my parish, The Vatican, or on the hood of a jeep at a battlefield. Malachi prophesied of this “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 1:11)
I reference the traits of one, Catholic, holy and apostolic for the Eucharist for a reason. The Eucharist is the sacrament of initiation that can be repeated over a lifetime. It can be done every day as long as the person is in right standing with the Head of the Church, Christ, and the Body. Among many benefits is the point of humility one can have in receiving the Eucharist in that they are no more righteous in God’s eyes than someone who came into mass that day having committed a grievous sin that day and having fully repented. God does not have favorites and to come to the table the first time or the thousandth is to come in appreciation as a child of the Father saying, “Lord I am not worthy for you to enter under my roof. But only say the word and my soul will be healed” (from the Latin Rite mass).
Such is the Christian “love bomb” but not of coercion. It is the call of Jesus to “come and see” (John 1:39,46).
Ceremony, sacredness and appropriate secrecy are all important for those connections to count. When they are implemented in community correctly, the member does not need to hold back. And when they do not hold back there is strength and healing.
I like the “charge” of the coin. When I was a therapist first with an all women treatment center and later with all men I saw the members taking turns with the coin for the graduating member and saying, “I charge this coin with….” Many times the room was thick with love and positivity. The idea is that when they go back home the coin could serve as a reminder of the values of recovery and their self-efficacy.
One could call that a “religious experience.” I use that operative word but for the purposes here I do not mean cathedrals and hierarchy. Although they serve their purpose, the etymology is a reaffirming of connection. “Re” is again and “lig” is connection like ligaments. For a 12 Step addiction recovery group or grief group the members can process their common experience of a hell on earth and explore the way through it together. Such are the ties that bind.
Those connections go beyond even the formal meeting and I tried my best to point that out to my clients. If a client meets with their sponsor over coffee they are not in a meeting in the full 12 Step sense but they still work the steps and they do it in honesty. No judgment. No excuses. But in steps that include a “fearless moral inventory,” things are disclosed. What is said over coffee or a 12 Step Meeting stays there.
The value of the community with its norms and values are only as good as how well they sustain its members, individually and corporately, in their struggles. Though going to the group is not preventative insurance it is assurance if the person internalizes the principles. “Keep on working. It works if you work it and you work it because you’re worth it.”
And if one is alone at the airport and triggered towards their drug of choice they can even ask for a page. They can request some variation that sounds like “a meeting for the International Friends of Bill W will be meeting at the bench by Starbucks.” Many relapses have been prevented this way.
Many parts I identified above work well but are not for me yet are for me since I am not “a friend of Bill.” This is a term started with Alcoholics Anonymous and used for those who are part of that community. It has a family-like context.
But I am a human being with my own unmanaged behaviors. I see that and I see beauty, truth and goodness. As a more generalized therapist, I do not work as “a loosely affiliated associate of Bill W,” but I have inspiration to do something with the clients on the values they have and with what is the sacred. I am not a sponsor but I believe in the client. I work with the client and see where their path takes them and ask them if maybe, just maybe, they can see where the connection for them is.
Dear reader, I hope this has been helpful as an end in itself whether you are a mental health therapist or not. I will continue in this next session to address the initiation of spirituality specifically through a religiously informed point of view. So bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading.
Religious ceremonies were always lost on me in my youth. Where I saw or heard chanting, burning of incense, formulated words and other aspects of rituals I perceived a rut devoid of meaning about this deity of love I heard about.
Then halfway through my childhood I became a Christian without being raised that way and allowed some repetitive patterns to be a part of my walk with Jesus. Repeated prayers, robes, rules regarding matter and form and such were not in the evangelical circles I was a part of. I had rare exposure to high church liturgy among Latin Catholic, Maronite Catholic and Lutheran.
Then thirty years later, much to my surprise, I discerned and embraced the Catholic Church and what I had prior perception of as a “dead sacramental system.” My appreciation of the sacraments has not only been that they accomplish what they symbolize but partly as a therapist see how they are exceptional means of God for the longings of humanity.
By viewing the original human experience in Eden, we can see primary impulses echo past the Fall that Chris holistically redeems through the cross and the sacraments especially in the first and last chapters of John. Irenneus said that the “glory of God is man – – made fully alive” (Adversus Hereseus, 185 AD). Since Sacred Scripture says “grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17b), Christ’s sacraments most fully expressed through the Church accomplish grace. There are implications that exceed what conventional social sciences can do: they teach us of what partaking of his divine nature and reflecting heaven is all about. And they do this not as an obstacle to the cross but as Christ- instituted fruits of the cross.
Christ in unlimited divinity and perfected humanity came in incarnation at his birth, self-giving in the cross and glorification in the resurrection so that the Christian can be partakers of his divine nature per the calling of the gospel. God’s love language to us is the gospel, each sacrament is rightly ordered as flesh and blood applications of the gospel as if they are sub-dialects of a beautiful language. For each sacrament, I will draw connection to impulses in humanity that can be seen universally. Those impulses are met outside of Christianity at worst through the counterfeit of sin and at best through physical and social sciences.
There is a need for a tangible community context for the sacraments and this is why Christ founded the Church as “the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). It is a sacramental sign and instrument for God’s redeeming nature on earth that teaches redemption always with Christ as the formal cause. The Church is not an impersonal system like financial economy but an exchange of persons one can see in familial relationships. It is “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic” (Nicene Creed, 325).
My perspective in making the connection of sacraments and universal human impulses is from a blended background. I am a Catholic (received into the Church at 42), a licensed therapist and one who see my clients as “professors in the room.” In my consideration of impulses and sacraments I can see patterns emerge with Christ and the Church uniquely qualified to bridge the gap of unrequited desire for fulfillment. Some cases in point, mixed in detail to protect confidentiality, are like examples of wreckage in humanity’s longing for what is better.
There will be three central scriptural passages I will draw from: before the Fall (Genesis 1, 2), the first week of Christ’s ministry (John 1:14-2:12) and the last chapters of John 14-21. I use Eden because in man’s creation are tell-tale signs of original experience of God’s grace that God wants to restore in successive covenants. It was in a 7 -day period and 7 in Hebrew has close etymology with covenant which is an exchange of persons in honor, will and blood deeper than a one and done transactional covenant.
The first parameters of John have thematic correlations to the 7 -day creation story, and details of sacramental significance. John the evangelist lists out a chronology for that week that culminates with water becoming wine (two sacramental substances) at a wedding which is about marriage covenant. Holy matrimony is a sacrament that grounds the domestic church.
The Passion Week is also in itself another 7 day period, has more sacramental anecdotes and followed by more post-resurrection still in John without leaning on the Synoptic Gospels. There is bread, wine, priestly prayers, sacrifice and redemption. Without the events of Passion Week culminating in the cross, Christianity would lack the power of its ceremony and sacredness.
Below I will list the 7 Sacraments and how I see them related to the psychological and social desires in humanity.
I also tie in the four traits of the Church summarized at the Council of Nicea (325). In the first ecumenical council since 50 AD, the Church developed its first creed that included four traits: one, holy, Catholic and apostolic. One is about unity. Holy is about being set apart by God in unique identity and purpose. Catholic literally means “according to the whole” and universal. While the sacraments are both micro and macro, those four traits are macro in initial application but permeate to the individual. The sacraments and the four traits work harmoniously and are inextricably linked to the fullness of truth and salvation touching the deepest needs of humanity. This is why the Church is a sacramental sign and instrument.
The Church, in Christ, is like a sacrament- a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men.” The Church’s first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God. Because men’s communion with one another is rooted in that union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race. In her, this unity is already begun, since she fathers ment “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues”, at the same time, the Church is the “sing and instrument” of the full realization of the unity yet to come (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, paragraph 775)
POTENTIAL IMPULSES REDEEMED IN THE SACRAMENTS AND FOUR NICENE TRAITS
INITIATION
Baptism, Holy Church- – Renewal
Eucharist, one, holy, Catholic, apostolic- – To thrive
Confirmation, Apostolic,- – Affirmation of distinct identity
SERVICE- – Bones of the cultural mores, maintains the course of the culture
Holy Matrimony, One, Catholic, Apostolic- – To unite
Holy Orders, Apostolic- – To pass on
HEALING- – Provides course correction, restores the individual to right standing and health. Answers with substantial comfort to pain and shame.
Holy Unction, Catholic- – Desire for meaning for our present suffering and pending death
Reconciliation, Catholic— To live without shame
Last, I will offer the following disclaimer: contrary to stereotypes, it is not Catholic teaching that you have to do all of the 7 Sacraments to get to heaven. But it is very heavenly that the Christian learns from them and supports them in prayerful and sometimes material support. Many of the faithful die in friendship with God and never are married, yet, “Let the marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4a). Also, few Catholics receive Holy Orders (ordained as clergy). Yet the sacraments serve to uphold and push forward Christianity for the community that is fully alive and benefits from grace.
Whatever the calling, all are called in this theological truth meant for full expression on earth.
jembenjamin 