–Sacred, secular, secularization, secularism… All that was discussed years ago, but it is no longer a current question.
–It is a very current question, because it greatly influences the life of the Church, even though it is spoken and written of less.
The Church, which in the sacred Eucharist has its life-giving “center” (Vat. II, CD 30f), is sacred in its Scriptures, in its Pastors and sacraments, in its people of the baptized and in its sacred ministers, in its temples, etc. The whole Church is, as we shall see, “a sacrament,” a sacred reality constituted by God among the peoples.
In the work Sacralidad y secularización I have studied this question more extensively. There the bibliographical references that I give here in abbreviated form may be found more completely (Fund. GRATIS DATE, Pamplona 2005, 3rd ed.). (( http://www.gratisdate.org/nuevas/sacralidad/default.htm ))
Some years ago, “great” theologians uttered great nonsense in the Church about the sacred, above all in the time of Vatican II and of the post-Council. (They said it, and they still say it.) Authors who in some works respected the biblical and traditional truth of the Christian sacred –sacraments, temples, sacred ministry, etc.–, in other writings, disconcertingly, denied its existence, letting themselves be carried away, lamentably, by the fashionable ideological winds.
Yves Congar, author of El misterio del Templo (!), declares that “Jesus Christ decidedly erased every line of division between the supposed sacred and the alleged profane, and this whether it be a matter of persons or of places or things” (Situación de lo cristiano en régimen cristiano). Could such an affirmation be true?… Indeed: “by this worship which he inaugurates, Jesus surpasses all religion, overcoming the split between sacred and profane” (André Manaranche, Al servicio de los hombres). Dozens of Catholic authors spread the same idea.
Did these authors know what they were saying?… They are theological absurdities, of very bad effects in the life of the Church, which still endure and contribute to a profound secularization of so many local Churches. Is the sacred Eucharist not sacred? Is it like an ordinary banquet? Is there no distinction between the sacred place of a Temple and the space of any house whatever; between a chalice and a beer mug?… Or is it that now it turns out that the term “sacred,” of such long and unanimous tradition in the Church, means nothing, is in-significant, and must be withdrawn?… It is true that sacrality is a polyvalent term, with very diverse acceptations. Nevertheless, we do not discard that biblical and traditional term, for other words of profound Christian significance, such as love, sacrifice and so many more, undergo the same semantic polyvalence, without our therefore dispensing with them. More ambiguities would arise if, suppressing the terminology of the sacred, we took in its place “other” words foreign to the Christian tradition, or if we simply denied that verbal category.
The purely philological consideration of the vocabulary of the sacred does not give us great light for theology. “Some cling to the Latin sense: sacer, inviolable; others go back to the primitive Greek signification: hiérax, which has an areligious content, before the word hierós is born; others, in short, define the sacred in terms of the profane, profanum, the vestibule of the sanctuary. It seems dangerous to us to limit ourselves to the semantic dimension. Let us think, for example, of the word leitourguía: in pre-classical Greek, liturgy means public works, service of the State” (J. Grand’Maison, Le monde et le sacré). Holy-hágios and sacred-hierós are terms sometimes distinct, sometimes synonymous.
The natural sacred is a very important category in the phenomenology of religion. The sacred is clearly differentiated from the profane. As E. Durkheim observed, they are two distinct worlds: “It cannot be said, however, that a being can never pass from one of these worlds to the other: but the manner in which this passage is produced, when it happens, makes evident the essential duality of the two realms” (Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse). The rites of initiation, of sacrifices and of consecration would illustrate such assertions.
In the constitution of the sacred the free initiative of God is decisive. By it, any created being –tree or stone, spring or person, place or ritual ceremony– can come to be hierophanic. Sanctuaries, holy places, for example, “are not chosen, but can only be found” (Van der Leeuw, Fenomenología de la religión). It is the gods who constitute a sacrality by a free intervention. Otherwise the sacred would have no mana, it would be a mere human creation, drained of power. The hierophany, situated perhaps in the mythical origins of the tribe and transmitted afterwards by popular tradition, is always at the beginning of a sacred reality, which in a past time manifested itself as such, and in whose reality the faithful believe. As Mircea Eliade says, “it is always a matter of the same mysterious act: the manifestation of something ‘completely different,’ of a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that form an integral part of our ‘natural,’ ‘profane’ world” (Lo sagrado y lo profano).
In this sense, even in the natural religiosities that impassable abyss between the sacred and the profane is not insurmountable, because “in manifesting the sacred, any object whatever becomes something else without ceasing to be itself, for it continues to participate in the surrounding cosmic milieu. A sacred stone remains a stone; apparently nothing distinguishes it from the other stones. On the contrary, for those to whom that stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality” (Lo sagrado).
Moreover, it is clear that one cannot speak of the natural-sacred in a univocal sense. For this reason, with Grand’Maison, we shall distinguish in the sacred at least three fundamental species: “When the profane, respected in itself, is bound back by man to God in a sense of submission and of thanksgiving, it is a matter of an authentically religious sacred; whereas the magical sacred uses the beyond without respecting the profane, and the taboo sacred flees from the beyond for fear of losing the security of ordinary profane life” (Le monde et le sacré).
The natural-sacred is an anticipation of the Christian-sacred. These cursory approaches to the natural religions are sufficient to show us the point of connection between them and Christian sacrality. Mircea Eliade already understood the natural hierophanies as “desperate attempts to prefigure the mystery of the incarnation” (Tratado de historia de las religiones). And Louis Bouyer showed well how “the Incarnation will not erase, will not render useless or fallen into disuse, this primitive category of the sacred”:
“The Incarnation, then, is not going to lead us to a disappearance of natural sacrality, but to its metamorphosis. This sacrality, in spite of all its insufficiencies and even of its deformations, remains in man as the receptive stone of the Incarnation. To eliminate it would be equivalent to making the Incarnation impossible, closing off in man every path of access for God himself. And just as the Incarnation would have no meaning for us if it were made in a flesh distinct from ours, so the new sacrality that results from it could not be accessible to us if it did not make its way toward us through the channels maintained by the sacrality of always.”
For Christian theology it is as inadmissible to conceive a sacred absolutely foreign to man –without natural form–, as to deny absolutely the category of the sacred in Christianity, on the plea that all reality must be assumed in the sacrality of the Incarnation. “The first error, Bouyer goes on to say, amounts to wishing that the flesh of the Incarnation fell from heaven, which in fact supposes denying the reality of the Incarnation. The second amounts to confusing the flesh of the Savior with any other flesh indistinctly, which, in the final analysis, is but another way of denying that He has one that is His own” (Le rite et l’homme).
The Jewish-sacred, constituted by God, is a proximate anticipation of the Christian-sacred. In Israel the sacred always comes instituted by Yahweh himself. Let us recall, for example, the book of Leviticus. Certain creatures, places or persons, writings or rites are sacred, especially chosen by Yahweh for the sanctification of men and for His own worship. And as in the natural-sacred, so also in the Jewish-sacred there are diverse levels of sacrality, always founded on perfectly free choices of God. According to this, the people of Israel is sacred among all peoples, for the Lord has consecrated it to Himself (Ex 19:5-6, 24). And within Israel, the Levitical priestly lineage is clothed by God with a particularly intense sacrality, that is, it has received a special destination to the sanctification of men and to the worship of Yahweh.
A carnal understanding of these mysteries led many Jews to understand their election as an exclusive-consecration, by which the other peoples remained foreign to the divine blessing. Some prescriptions of the Law, being purely pedagogical, such as the prohibition of marriages with foreigners, could give occasion to this error, whose true origin lies not in the Mosaic Law but in the pride of the carnal Jew. In reality, Scripture shows clearly from the beginning that the election of the people of Israel grounds a diffusive-consecration, since, as Yahweh says from the beginning, in the descendants of Abraham “all the kindreds of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3).
The world, moreover, is for the Jews, and for the Christians, a sign of the glory of God, but it is not sacred. And if the pedagogy of the Law distinguishes between clean and unclean creatures (Lev 10:10-11; Ez 22:26; 44:23), there will remain after Christ no trace whatever of this distinction: “all things are clean to the clean” (Tit 1:15); something which, at first, cost St. Peter effort to understand (Acts 11:7-10).
In Israel there are diverse degrees of sacrality. The people of the Jews, among all the peoples of the earth, is sacred; but in the Levitical priests there is undoubtedly a sacrality of special intensity. The Scriptures, as the Word of God, are in the extreme degree Sacred Scriptures. The time religious of Israel does not pass in a homogeneous manner, but rather certain feasts, such as the Passover, and especially the day of the Sabbath, by divine institution, are especially sacred days.
As regards the sacred places, we likewise appreciate within Israel, as in a regime of concentric circles, a graduality from lesser to greater sacrality. All the space given by God to Israel is Holy Land (2 Mac 1:7), but Jerusalem possesses a special sacrality (Ps 84), and within the holy city, the Temple, with a limit “still” impassable for the Gentiles (Is 56:7); and there is then the court of the women, further within that of the Jews, then the Holy, and finally the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest may enter, and only on the great day of the expiation (Lev 16:2). The New Testament, in some of the ancient prescriptions, will see, it is true, a sign of the imperfection of the Old Covenant, which had force only “until the time of the new order” (Heb 9:7-10).
The Christian-sacred, in the fullness of the times, is constituted in Christ, leaving behind the sacral order of the Mosaic Law. The Master underlines the fundamental interiority of holiness, which is not to be limited to ritual exteriorities. For this reason he deals with Samaritans, publicans and sinners, and announces, to the scandal of his hearers, the diffusive-election of Israel to all peoples (Lk 4:25-27). The Temple of Jerusalem has now ended its cultual and salvific function, and now the temple is He himself (Jn 2:21), and in Him, in his Church, a new worship is to be offered to God “in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:21-24). The ancient sacrifices, which prefigured the Cross of Calvary, are no longer valid (Heb 7-10). Neither is the Law valid: Christ himself is the Law and the Sacrifice, as he is also Lord of the Sabbath. Now all things are already clean, none is unclean of itself, and impurity is only in the very heart of man (Mt 15:1-20; Acts 10:15; Rom 14:14, 20).
But Christ establishes a new order of sacralities, now abrogating the Mosaic sacralities, which were only prefigurations of the Christian sacralities. In the Church, in the new Israel, God is Holy, he is not sacred. On the other hand, if by sacred we understand that creature which God has chosen and anointed in order to manifest himself and to work through it sanctification, then Christ is the supreme Sacred, “ho Khristòs toû Theoû ho eklektós” (Lk 23:35), and he is at the same time the Holy One, “hágios” (1:35). He is the source of all the Christian sacralities.
The family of the baptized who live of Christ, who are his own Body, form among all the nations a People holy and sacred, a Temple of the Spirit (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:20; 4:12-16), a Church, a community holy, chosen, pure, immaculate (Phil 2:15; Eph 1:4; 5:27; Col 1:22). And within this sacred People, Jesus constitutes a priesthood and a sacred and royal ministry (1 Pet 2:5, 9; Apoc 1:6; 5:10).
All Christians, personally and communally, have been sealed by the Spirit (2 Cor 1:21; Eph 1:13), all are offered in a permanent sacrificial worship (Rom 12:1; Heb 13:15). As St. John says, “you have the unction of the Holy One (chrísma toû Hagíou)” (1 Jn 2:20). In reality, as Vielmetti observes, “we always move within the ambit of a sacred terminology” (Presupposti biblici della sacralità).
There exists, then, a genuine Christian sacrality, which, as we shall see presently in more detail, admits diverse degrees, affects persons, places and feasts, and is always a function of the humanity of Jesus Christ, the Christian fontal Sacrality. It makes of the Church –ministerial priesthood and sacred people, sacred Scriptures and sacraments, sacred virgins– the “universal sacrament of salvation” for all peoples (Vat. II, LG 48; AG 1).
It is true that the terminology of the “sacred” and of the “priesthood,” apart from the letter to the Hebrews, has scant explicit development in the New Testament; but not for that reason is a purely interior Christianity established. It was necessary at the beginning of the Church, as diverse authors have already explained, to avoid that those sacerdotal, sacrificial and sacral terms be understood according to pagan or Jewish keys, which would conceal the originality of the new Christian sense (Colson, Les fonctions ecclésiales: aux deux premiers siècles; Guerra, Problemática del sacerdocio ministerial en las primeras comunidades cristianas). That danger past, the Fathers use the terminology of the sacred and of the priesthood with great frequency, and that traditio comes in continuous form down to our own days, as we shall presently verify in the Second Vatican Council.
Neither is it acceptable to adduce here texts such as that of John 4:21-24: “henceforth they shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth” in order to eliminate all exterior sacrality in Christianity. As Fr. Maldonado, S. J., observed centuries ago in his commentary on this text, the Calvinists themselves, singing psalms in their temples, did not seem wholly convinced of the absolute interiority of Christian worship. And today not a few Protestant authors, such as J. Marsh, in his celebrated commentary on Saint John, admit with the Catholic scriptural scholars that in those texts an exclusively interior, and therefore non-sacred, Christian worship is not grounded.
The Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II, the XXI Ecumenical Council, used with all precision and frequency the terminology of the sacred, as its very name of Sacro-sanctum indicates, faithful to Tradition and to the apostolic Magisterium. The desacralizing orientation of the theology of secularization, and the allergy against the terminology of the sacred, is post-conciliar –and to a certain degree also pre-conciliar–, but in no way can it be considered conciliar. In the constitution on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, it is used with great frequency, and also in other important documents of Vatican II. I shall recall only the dogmatic constitution on the Church.
In the constitution Lumen gentium the adjective sacred–sacer is applied to diverse intra-ecclesial creatures. The sacred Council (1a, 18b, 20c, 54a, 67), the sacred Scripture (14a, 15, 24a, 55), the sacred liturgy (50d), and also qualified as sacred are worship (50d), baptism (42a), the anointing (7b), the eucharist (11b), the eucharistic assembly (15, 33b), communion (11a), the priestly Christian community (11a). Likewise qualified as sacred is everything referring to the presbyteral priesthood: thus the order (11b, 20c, 26c, 28a, 31ab), the ministry (13c, 21b, 31b, 32d), the ministers (32c, 35d), the priestly power (10b, 18a), the presbyteral office (28a, 35d); and the same with the condition of the Bishops, sacred pastors (30, 37abc), the character (21b), the ministry (26a), the power (27a), the office (37a), the right to govern (27a).
The substantive consecration-consecratio is said of religious (44a, 46b), and four times of bishops (21b, 22a, 28a). The verb to consecrate-consecrari is applied to the baptized (10a), to religious (44a, 45c) and to the consecration of the world (34b). The verb sacrare is said of the bishop (20c), of the baptized (44a), of the virginal integrity of Mary (57).
An analogous use we find in the other conciliar documents. Nevertheless, after several decades of profound secularization of Christianity, that terminology having been effectively prohibited, we now scarcely even remember the great frequency with which it was still employed in the Second Vatican Council. For example: “In the sacred rite of ordination the Bishop admonishes the presbyters to be ‘mature in knowledge’… But the knowledge of the sacred minister must be sacred, because it is drawn from a sacred source and is ordered to a sacred end. Thus, then, it is drawn first of all from the reading and meditation of the Sacred Scripture” (PO 19a). Today, however, very few priests will be those who understand themselves as “sacred ministers” of the Lord, at the service of divine worship and of the sanctification of men. Assimilating in the vocabulary a Protestant trait, one no longer speaks so much of priests, as of pastors
—The theology of the sacred, grounded on Sacred Scripture and on the patristic, magisterial and liturgical tradition, gives a precise definition of that so important Christian reality. Sacred is that creature especially chosen and consecrated, dedicated and empowered by God and by the Church, in order to glorify God and to sanctify men. Sacred is that creature which especially manifests and communicates God himself. Let us go by parts.
–The sacred is always a creature. In the first place, the humanity of Christ is sacred, and is the source of all Christian sacrality. Only in Him do the Holy and the Sacred coincide. And in his Church, “universal sacrament of salvation,” sacred are those creatures –persons, things, places, times– which, in a manner manifest to believers, have been chosen by the Holy One in order to work especially through them sanctification.
–God calls especially to holiness those whom he has especially consecrated. But holiness and sacrality are distinct (hágios and hierós). A sacred minister, for example, is especially called to holiness (Vat. II, PO 12). If a priest is a sinner, he is not holy, but he remains a sacred minister, and he can perform with efficacy and validity certain sacred functions that are exclusive to him. Neither are the profane and the sinful confounded: things are profane, simply, in the measure in which they are not sacred. The cosmos, concretely, is not sacred for Christians, however grandiose it be; except in a most broad and improper sense.
–The Christian-sacred arises by divine initiative, because God wills to choose especially certain creatures in order to sanctify others through them. He could have sanctified men without creatural mediations, but, only out of goodness and out of love, he willed to associate in a special manner in the Church certain creatures to his sanctifying causality. In a completely free decision, the Lord willed to choose-call-consecrate-send certain creatures (priests, councils, temples, water, oil, bread, wine, books, rites, places, days and times), communicating to them an objective sanctifying virtuality, and making of them places of grace, privileged spaces and moments for the encounter with Him.
It is the Lord who constitutes the sacred, but normally he does it with the Church. Let us not forget that “Christ always associates with himself his most beloved bride, the Church” (Vat. II, SC 7) in his doxological and soteriological actions; for example, in a sacred priestly ordination, in the consecration of a temple or of a Christian virgin, etc.
–The Christian-sacred is always visible: temples, men, Scriptures and books, rites, places. It is the economy proper to the sacraments, which are visible signs, performed by men, of invisible actions of the grace of God. The sacred arises from the fact that God willed to communicate himself to men in a manifest and sensible manner –patent, be it understood, to believers, to those who have the faith–. Thus God accommodates himself to man and dignifies him grandiosely. In this sense, the foundation of the sacred lies in the mediate character of our experience of God. As Jean-Paul Audet well notes, places, rites, temples, “all this would not exist if, instead of a mediate experience of the divine, we could have from now on an immediate experience” (Le sacré et le profane: leur situation en christianisme). We know, then, by this, that every sacral structure –including the Gospel and the Eucharist–will vanish in heaven, when “God shall be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28; cf. Ap 21-22). It is now, in time, that God grants to man the help of the sacred.
In two ways God communicates himself to men and sanctifies them. In the first, God sanctifies the man who scarcely knows him in a non-manifest and non-sensible manner. In the second, God sanctifies believers in a manifest and sensible manner: indeed, the invisible action of the Spirit becomes visible in the Church in many ways, concretely in the sacraments; which makes the Church be at the same time “visible assembly and spiritual community” (LG 8a).
–Consecrated-consecratus and dedicated-dedicatus, or dicatus, are synonyms in the patristic and liturgical tradition, at least in the more intense sacralities. A chalice remains consecrated and dedicated to eucharistic worship: no other use can be given to it. In the Ritual of the consecration and dedication of a temple or of virgins, consecratio and dedicatio-dicatio are equivalent, although in this case the sense can be less strict: a temple, exceptionally, can be used as an auditorium for a musical concert or as a shelter for refugees from a disaster; a consecrated virgin can be a telephone operator, a nurse, etc. There is here so varied a gamut of nuances that it is not possible to describe it, and which the virtue of prudence must discern in each case.
–There are degrees in sacrality. Although the whole Body of Christ, the Church, is sacred, diverse degrees of sacrality are distinguished, according to the greater or lesser empowerment made by God in creatures in order to sanctify; that is, as a function of an objective order of grace. And on those degrees is based the Christian language of the sacred, which habitually reserves that qualification for the most intensely sacred creatures.
One could speak, no doubt, of the “sacred laity” or of the “sacred agriculture”: they are persons and works sanctified by the Holy Spirit. But the tradition of Christian language, and concretely of the Second Vatican Council, is wont to speak of “sacred pastors,” of “sacred ministry,” of religious of “consecrated life,” because over and above the first consecration of the baptismal anointing, these Christians have been “nuevo modo consecrati” (PO 12a), since the Lord has chosen, consecrated and sent them in order to sanctify, granting them a “peculiar consecration” (LG 44a; PC 1c; 5a). And so too, in a similar manner, the Church reserves the qualification of sacred for Scripture, preaching, the council, the canons, the temple, the liturgy, etc. For example, all the days of the year are, and are to be, holy and sacred; but Sunday is the Day of the Lord, it is a sacred day, especially dedicated to the worship of God and to the sanctification of men. It is not “all the same” in Christian life whether it be Sunday or Wednesday.
–The sacred heals and raises up the secular. The sacred elevates creatures to a new dignity, above that which they already had by their very nature; whereas, on the contrary, desacralizing secularization lowers them in a descending movement.
When the eucharist, for example, is celebrated in sacred forms of beauty, the family meal, consequently, is also elevated by the prayer of thanksgiving (ascent). Or, on the contrary, if the eucharist is celebrated as an ordinary meal, then the laity eat in their homes just as if they were pagans, without thanksgiving (descent). The dignity of man and of nature is seen preserved and elevated by the sacred, whereas desacralization lowers and degrades the very natural order. This is of universal experience, not only in the Christian world.
–The Christian-sacred is of union, not of separation. It has nothing to do with the taboo-sacred, because it is not of separation, but of greater union. For this reason the external distinction of sacred persons and things by means of certain sensible signs –the habit, for example, and other signs–, far from being destined to cause separation, is to occasion a greater union. Indeed, the eucharistic bread is not touched by just anyone, of course, but it is made precisely so that Christians may eat it, not so that they may not touch it. The temple is sacred, and has a peculiar visible form, distinct from ordinary houses; but precisely for that reason it is open to all, unlike private houses. A priest, being a sacred minister, must be identifiable even exteriorly, and can be approached by anyone, whereas a layman does not have to be so identifiable and accessible to all. It is evident: the Christian sacralities are not of separation, but of union.
—The spirituality of the sacred is at the center of Christian life, which is always baptismal and eucharistic. Let us not forget the insistent teaching of the sacred Second Vatican Council, which sees precisely the sacred Eucharist as “source and summit of all Christian life,” personal and communal (LG 11; CD 30; PO 5;6; UR 6). I indicate, then, the notes proper to the Christian spirituality of the sacred.
–Love of the sacred is something essential in the Christian spiritual life. Never does a faithful Christian ignore or despise the sacral order arranged by the Lord with all love, but rather he enters into it joyfully, without ever confounding the sacred and the Holy, and without fear of false illusions, for the Church already takes good care that the Christian sacralities do not fall into idolatry, superstition, taboo or magic. The estranged, practically, cease to live the Christian life.
The saints have always shown a humble and moving love of the sacred. Let us recall, for example, the love of St. Francis of Assisi for the churches, the priests, the bells, the objects of worship, chalices and corporals, everything related to the sacred Eucharist or to the sacred Scripture (Letters to the whole Order; 1st to the custodians). He, who repaired several temples, confesses in his Testament: “The Lord gave me such faith in the churches that I would pray and say thus, simply: ‘We adore You, Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Your churches which are in the whole world, and we bless You, because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.’”
And if anyone suspects that a love so tender for the sacred be only medieval ingenuousness of the Poverello, let him look at St. John of the Cross, the most stripped-bare and intellectual of the spiritual masters; and we find in him the same devotion, the same faith, the same love: “The reason why God chooses these places more than others to be praised in, He knows. What befits us to know is that all is for our profit and for the hearing of our prayers in them and wherever with entire faith we pray to Him; although in those which are dedicated to His service there is much greater occasion of being heard in them, because the Church has them designated and dedicated for this” (3 Ascent 42,6).
–The true Christian is a practicing one, of course: he seeks assiduously the Holy One in the sacred things of the Church: in Scripture, in the temple, in the sacred ministers, in the sacraments, in the assembly of the faithful, in the apostolic Magisterium, in Sunday and the liturgical Year, and also in the sacramentals, such as holy water (SC 7, 47-48, 59-60, etc.). The Christian, in short, seeks the Holy One in the sacred, not exclusively, but indeed principally. He seeks Him in the sacred, because there is where the Lord has willed to manifest and communicate himself with special intensity, certitude and sensible signification. This is a constitutive trait of Catholic spirituality.
The non-practicing Christian, who distances himself from the sacralities of the Church, is not Catholic. He is Pelagian, or at least voluntarist, and for that reason does not duly appreciate the sacred. And this is because he does not seek his sanctification in the grace of God, but rather in his own personal effort.
The Pelagian does not seek so much to be sanctified by Christ, as to sanctify himself according to his own forces, modes and manners. He does not understand the gratuitousness of the sacred. He does not comprehend that sanctification is above all a gift of God, which he confers on believers especially through the sacred signs that he himself has established for it. He does not believe in the special sanctifying virtuality of the sacred: “Why pray the Liturgy of the Hours, and not a prayer more to my taste and devotion? What does it matter whether one goes to Mass on Sunday or on a working day? What interest is there in dealing with priests? What has the temple that any other place whatever does not have?”… He trusts only in his own mind and will in order to sanctify himself: for him only what gives more devotion to his sensibility counts, what his mind grasps better, what most accommodates itself to his manner of being. The order of sacralities arranged by God is for him insignificant. For this reason he either distances himself from the sacred or uses it arbitrarily, only if it coincides with his inclination, or if he can adapt it to his tastes and criteria.
–The Catholic Christian especially appreciates the sacred. He seeks, procures, builds, conserves, defends, venerates all the Christian sacralities, sacraments, ministers, temples, religious feasts. Whoever knows, recognizes and loves the sacred, procures it: he repairs, for example, or builds a temple, keeps holy water in his house, embroiders ornaments for worship, etc. All things being equal, he prefers that the Mass be celebrated in a consecrated temple rather than in an ordinary hall. He prefers to hear the preaching of a Bishop, presbyter or deacon rather than that of a layman –all things being equal–, because he knows that the Lord, through the sacred Order, empowers precisely those who have been sacramentally ordained for the ministry of the divine Word (Vat. II, CD 12-13; PO 2;4). He lives the liturgical Year with great intensity. For him it is not the same to be on Sunday or on Wednesday. He prefers, for example, to intensify in Lent his personal penances, for he hopes in that time “of grace and penance” to receive from God special helps of his grace. All this, I insist, has no sense whatever for the Pelagian Christian, who in the things of divine grace does not distinguish a bull from a cow.
—The Church configures the sacred by means of a special discipline. The concrete forms of the sacred being a most important collective and pedagogical expression of the mystery of faith, one easily comprehends the right and the duty that the sacred Pastors, and especially the Pope, have to configure the sacred, establishing certain usages, or at least approving certain customs. It is the Successors of the Apostles, presided over by the Pope, who have authority to care for the visible manifestation of the Invisible. The Church, indeed, which guards the faith and transmits it, must watch with apostolic authority over the concrete configuration of the sacred: images, temples, priestly life, religious life, chants, rites. For this reason “let no one, even if he be a priest, add, remove or change anything on his own initiative in the liturgy” (SC 22). And there is in the faithful, of course, a corresponding obligation to obey the liturgical norms of the Church.
Let us see, by way of example, this question in the liturgy, and let us apply the same principles, mutatis mutandis, to the configuration of the sacred in all its specific realities, persons or places, feasts or rites:
1.-The sacred is a language, verbal or non-verbal. It does not admit, then, an arbitrary and changing creativity. Language is a vehicle of intelligible communication provided it respects the social rules of its structure. Language has, evidently, a development in history. But if it is an improvised, arbitrary, individualistic language, it does not establish communication, except among a group of the initiated.
2.-For this very reason, the liturgical rite implies in itself traditional repetition, serenely foreseeable. Thus it is that the sacred rite becomes a channel along which flows in a gentle and unanimous way the spirit of all who participate in it. Thus it is that in the heart of the faithful –sursum corda– the elevation –habemus ad Dominum– is favored, without the distractions normally occasioned by the strangeness of the unaccustomed. Thus it is that there is celebrated communally the cyclical memorial of the great salvific events, which in this way remain from generation to generation always current.
3.-The sacred minister, performing in obedience the sacred rites, hides himself humbly in his sacred ministry; he disappears, when he faithfully carries out his cultual and sanctifying mission. The sacred minister receives from God the sublime function of manifesting the Holy One, of re-presenting him. But if he does not keep the norms of the Church, if he falls into arbitrary individual, subjective, a-ritual expression, he does not make the Holy One transparent, but rather draws upon himself the attention of men. And thus he gravely breaks the very structure of the sacred ministry and of the liturgical rite, and in a certain way destroys them.
The secularizing ideology, assaulting the sacred, ruins the Church, which is sacred. Of this I shall treat in the next article, God willing. The loss or the grave diminution of the sense of the sacred is a very sufficient cause to explain the absence of priestly and religious vocations, the massive distancing from the Sunday Mass, the devaluation of the Church as a sacrament necessary for the salvation of the world, the paralysis of the missions, etc. There is no need to reason much to know what it is that increases the Church, and what it is that ruins it.
Reform or apostasy.
Author: Fr. José María Iraburu
