Villa La Paz Newsletter March 2024
Sacrament: something regarded as having a sacred character or mysterious meaning
Webster’s New World Dictionary Third College Edition
One of the classical definitions of a sacrament is something that is an outward visible sign of an inward invisible grace. In the Christian church there are different rituals that are considered to be sacraments. The Catholic Church has seven sacraments while other denominations count fewer among their number. However, this idea of sacramentality extends beyond the formal sacraments such as Baptism, Matrimony, Communion and the Anointing of the Sick. This sense of sacramentality, rooted in the Incarnation, extends our vision out to the world so that everything can be a sacrament, meaning every person, creature, plant, and object can be an opportunity to encounter something of the Divine Presence in the world. Sacramentality is a quality present in creation that opens us up to the Sacred Presence in all things.
Christine Valters Painter
When we discern the sacramental principle in the world—the presence of God in every person and every place—then we can rejoice and celebrate the fullness of life and the joy of creation.
John Chryssavgis
Creation as Sacrament
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.
Julian of Norwich
The sarcramentality of the created order is seldom perceived by us. The awareness that everything created has its purpose in leading us to God’s divine love, to our sanctification, to lifting us up to the life of the Trinity is a gift which too few of us posses. To see the divine in the mundane, to feel oneself surrounded by the aura of divinity is an incomparable grace that is given gratuitously to those who seek it. What would be the consequences of such a grace? It would put an end to the ills that beset our world today: poverty, hunger, ethnic hatred, war and the other human-inflicted tragedies that besiege us. In short peace would reign, compassion would flourish and the Kingdom of God would be among us. How are we to seek this truth, this encounter with the divine which will lead us to God’s kingdom on earth?
Listen to Him, my children. He speaks to you, He teaches you in a thousand ways every day. Through the love of those who love you and live to help you, He touches you and He speaks to you. In the sunrise and the sunset, and in the moonlight, through the loveliness of the things He has made, through the thousand joys that He plans for every one of you, through the sorrows that come too—in all these things, through all these things, He who loved you unto death is speaking to you. Listen; do not be deaf and blind to Him; as you keep quiet and listen, you will know deep down in your heart that you are loved. As the air is round about you, so is His love round about you now. It is enough. Trust that love to guide your lives. It will never, never fail.
Amy Carmichael
An Irish missionary who spent her
adult life ministering to the poor in India.
Only by seeking the divine in all things and embracing it once it is found will we know the full extent of God’s love for us and His creation and be able to reflect that love to others. Only by embracing the divine in the created order will we come to the fullness of love for the least of those among us, as Our Lord has enjoined us to do.
The sacramentality of the created order is epitomized in our children and the children of the world. They come to us as helpless infants, as God once did. They are totally dependent on us for their care, as God once was. Their love is unconditional, as is God’s love for us. Let us nurture them, love them and teach them of the divine love that surrounds them in the created order so that they too may be beacons of God’s love to the world.
We thank you for supporting our children and the children of the world. There is no greater tragedy than children dying in wars, dying of starvation, dying of preventable diseases, dying of neglect. It is up to each one of us to prevent these tragedies.
We love you and wish you God’s peace. Please remember us in your prayers.
