Even if we think that we believe that God our Father Almighty created us, and that Jesus is true God and true man, who saved us from our sins, who founded a Church, and that the Holy Spirit reminds us of all that Jesus taught us - even if we think we believe all those truths contained in the Creed that gets recited in many Christian Churches on Sundays - do we understand and believe that God personally desires that those truths become enfleshed in our individual lives?
Is our belief empty because we have not yet personally encountered Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, in our own lives? Are our hearts ambivalent, not yet ready to embrace the Good Shepherd who daily wants to meet us, heal us, and set us free from the psychological and sinful wounds that still keep us imprisoned? The Sacraments are the lifeblood of the Church, times of powerful Encounter with the living Christ who still acts in this world to bring us unity, healing, strength for our faith journeys. If we lack the faith to recognize the Divine Physician himself in the Sacraments, we will receive little healing from him through them.
Jesus our Shepherd and Healer waits for us to encounter the power and healing force of his life through his Presence in the Sacraments, which, as therapist Bob Schuchts reminds us, "have existed in some form or other in all the Christian Churches and throughout the entire history of the Old and New Testaments." ( from "Be Healed," Ave Maria Press, 2014). The Sacraments are precious gifts, pouring forth from Jesus' side on the cross. Every sacrament is a tangible, real participation in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, tangible because we use things of this earth to celebrate them - water, bread, wine, oil, human touch. Jesus, the most tangible Sacrament of all, comes to us in the Sacraments as truly as he walked this earth and touched, healed, fed, forgave, and galvanized people so that they would never be the same.
But - Jesus waits for us to spiritually enter his Presence during a Sacramental experience, waits for us to spiritually cooperate with him so that he can touch us. And, how often are we bored? Bored during a Baptism because it's only a culturally expected ceremony? Bored during the Mass? Bored during Confirmation while the Bishop waves his hands over us? Quick to wiggle out of going to Confession? Bored during the Marriage or Ordination ceremony till we get to the party? And, who needs the Sacrament of the Sick until they're dying, anyway?
We can ask ourselves why, if the Sacraments are supposed to unleash Jesus' healing power in our lives, we haven't experienced this illumination, this healing, this peace, this joy? Perhaps our unhealed wounds and sins are keeping us bound so we can't awaken to his Presence as our Physician. Perhaps we haven't awakened to this teaching about the Sacraments that we've heard all our lives because, at a certain unconscious level, we've rejected the teaching because we're afraid of such intimacy, afraid of what Jesus, really Present in the Sacraments, can really "do" to us to de-rail our lives as we know them.
The graces (or life of God) of the Sacrament of Baptism in which we truly became adopted sons and daughters of God our Father, and the graces of the other sacraments we've received, perhaps haven't been released in their full power in us yet due to our lack of faith and those strongholds we've erected against God because of our unhealed wounds and sins.
All those wounds from lack of love and from abuse - wounds of abandonment, fear, powerlessness, hopelessness, confusion, rejection, and shame - and the resultant false identity beliefs about ourselves - may have kept us too crippled to fully welcome Jesus when he comes to us in the Sacraments. We feel too all alone, too afraid, incapable of change or growth, unloved and unlovable, bad, dirty, tainted. He gives himself fully; we give ourselves partially, if at all.
Father Raniero Cantalamesa, the respected household preacher to St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, explains:
"The outpouring of the Spirit actualizes and revives our baptism....Catholic theology can help us understand how a sacrament can be valid and legal but 'unreleased' if its fruit remains bound or unused....Sacraments are not magic rites that act mechanically, without people's knowledge or collaboration....The fruit of the sacrament depends wholly on divine grace, however this divine grace does not act without the 'yes,' ....the consent and affirmation of the person....God acts like a bridegroom who does not impose his love by force, but awaits the free consent of the bride." (from "Sober Intoxication of the Spirit: Filled With the Fullness of God," Servant Books, 2005.)
Yet, if we say 'yes' to the Divine Bridegroom, and we take down the gates that bar our hearts from intimacy, and open ourselves to the Presence of the Lord, the sacraments can act as light switches for spiritual electrical current in our lives. Therapist Bob Schuchts talks about being a very wounded man, wounded by his family members and other traumatic events. Yet at a Christ Renews His Parish retreat, he opened his heart enough to say "yes" to Christ, and began a deeper time of healing than he'd ever experienced before.
"I spent the first twenty-four hours of that retreat in a hellish desolation, watching everyone around me fully engage the Spirit.....As soon as I confessed my sins and received absolution, I sensed an immediate lifting of this oppressive spirit. Soon after confession, I heard a seventeen year old give witness to the real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I don't remember what he said, but I remember his confident faith and joyful gratitude to Jesus. As he spoke, my spirit suddenly awakened to the Church's teaching, which I had heard about all my life, but never fully believed in my heart. Like a light switch, suddenly turned on, I could finally accept what I had been taught all those years.
"Receiving the sacraments that night, my heart awakened from death to life. I was encountering the life-giving presence of Jesus, the physician of my soul and body. He revealed his presence in several ways: in the consecrated bread and wine; in the priest (the Sacrament of Holy Orders),; and in our community united with him in the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion. We were experiencing the joy of being 'one heart and mind' in our collective identity as the Body of Christ (Acts 4:32).... Three hours later, as my friends and I prayed together, the graces of our Confirmations manifested in a new way, as we experienced the corporate outpouring of the Holy Spirit similar to the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4).....
"When I returned home that weekend and embraced my wife and daughters, I felt a love I never knew before. This experience gave me a greater insight into the love Jesus called us to when we received the Sacrament of Matrimony. I caught a glimpse of what it means to love my wife and children 'as Christ loved the Church' (Ephesians 5:25). In less than a day, these once 'boring' sacraments became alive in my heart and changed my life forever." (from "Be Healed.")
Mother Angelica has said "A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality."
That invisible reality is the presence of Jesus the Christ, alive now and forever, impacting on your soul, as the Sacrament is visibly impacting on your body, through the agency of the priest or deacon.
Do you feel abandoned, unloved, living without family? Here comes Jesus to deluge you in water and bless you with God as your Father and a whole world, a Mystical Body, of brothers and sisters in Christ.
Do you feel wounded, blind, deaf, dirty, a leper, dis-engaged from life, bound up in solitary, loveless living, even dying? Here comes Jesus, standing right in front of you, touching you tenderly, anointing you, healing you with oil, or laying gentle hands on your head and forgiving your sins... Or taking you by the hand and leading you into eternal life....
Do you feel physically starving and thirsty, dry as dust from overwork and burn-out? Here comes Jesus, giving you his total self in living Bread and and the spilled blood and honey of Wine.
Do you feel spiritless, ungifted, bored, useless? Here comes Jesus, anointing you again and blessing you to unleash his beautiful, bountiful, burning Holy Spirit on and into your life so that you suddenly discover you are loved and gifted and enthusiastic beyond belief. Come, Holy Spirit, and fill us with the fire of your Divine Love!
Do you yearn to discover what your true identity is, your true pathway in life? Here comes Jesus to show you intimacy in committing yourself to the beloved body of your beloved spouse, or committing your life to your beloved spouse the Church. It is He who is our Peace, who makes the two of us one, who makes our community one, breaking down the barriers that have kept us apart...
Jesus the Christ walks with you, present to you at all the apex moments of your life, from birth to death, in the Sacraments of the Church. Every sacrament is a Feast at which you can nourish yourself with the life of God and learn how to truly live. And yet, if a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality, than every moment of your life is likewise a sacramental moment, a visible reality in which our invisible God can be glimpsed, encountered, and loved.
Noted spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill said, "God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament."
At every moment of your life, no matter how wounded and unfree you are, how blind, deaf, shunned, or abused, God waits to love you, heal you, strengthen you, in every sacramental moment and in the Sacraments of the Church. Because God not only created you; God chooses you to be FREE! Freed from your wounds, your sins, freed from what cripples you and holds you back from becoming fully the person God dreams you can be. Wait for God, call out to God, open the gates that wall God out, that bar entrance to your hearts, and invite God to stop, to encounter you, to enter and change your life forever.