inside america
by lorenzo albacete

HUMANITY AND
SACRAMENTALITY
What can definitively defeat the dualism between faith and
reason? Acknowledging that human existence has a sacramental structure, which means that the divine is inseparable from
the human, and the human from the divine.
The more the confrontation between the ideology of secularism and faith deepens, the more clear it becomes that the way to overcome the dualism between rationalism and fideism is to understand–and live–what the Catholic Church calls a “sacrament.” But what exactly is a sacrament?

Consider the definition offered by Cardinal Ratzinger in an essay about the priesthood:  “Sacrament means: I give what I myself cannot give; I do something that is not my work; I am on a mission and have become the bearer of that which another has committed to my charge”  (cf., Called to Communion, Ignatius Press, 1996). It is the experience of this fact that generates what can be called a “sacramental way of life.”

The experience of vocation or mission, of being chosen and sent, is therefore at the heart of a sacramental experience. “This service, “writes Ratzinger, “in which we are made the entire property of another, this giving of what does not come from us, is called sacrament in the language of the Church” (Ibid.). From this perspective, it is clear that the foundational, perfect embodiment of a sacrament is Jesus Christ Himself. In Him, mission and identity coincide perfectly. He is entirely “the One sent.” That is why Jesus says, “The Son can do nothing of Himself” (cf. Jn 5:19). This is the key to the “sacramental nature” of the Incarnation, of the inseparable presence of the divine in the human and the human in the divine.

This conviction of faith reveals that human existence also has, in its own way, a sacramental structure. Think of it this way: creation itself was a “creation in Christ.”
The human being is the “self-consciousness of creation” (Fr. Giussani), a creation “in Christ.” (Indeed, Pope John Paul II did not hesitate to speak of the “sacramentality of creation.”) Therefore, the experience of our humanity is the experience of the sacramental structure of our existence.

The sacramental structure of human existence is what overcomes the opposition between reason and faith. We do not believe that we have to choose between rationalism and fideism in order to pursue human fulfillment. In Ratzinger’s words: “This very self-expropriation for the other, this leave-taking from oneself, this self-dispossession and selflessness” is the path to “authentic human maturity and fulfillment. For in this movement away from self we are conformed to the Mystery of the Trinity, hence the ‘imago Dei’ is consummated, and the fundamental pattern according to which we were created is brought to new life”  (Ibid.). This is why Christ can say to us, “Without Me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).