sacrament

“…Ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact was purely terrestrial – was part and parcel of that unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the Fall. Even on earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation had been the beginning of its disappearance.” – C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, chapter 11

What is a sacrament? It is a meeting of supernatural truth and physical fact – a symbol or a sign that also accomplishes that which it symbolizes, a moment of living myth.

In baptism we symbolize our union with Christ in His death and resurrection by plunging into the water and rising out of it again – but it is more than just a picture, as the Scripture says: “Baptism, which corresponds to this [Noah’s ark], now saves you” (I Pt 3:21).

We eat the bread and drink the wine, and remember Jesus’s body broken and His blood shed on the cross – but it is more than a memorial, as Jesus told us: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life.” (Jn 6:53-54).

Into the physical water comes the saving grace of God; into the tangible wafer and wine comes the true Presence of the Bread of Life.

For in taking on humanity – one Person holding in Himself both natures, being at one time both supernatural and natural, both human and Divine – Jesus began the knitting together of those things which sin had torn apart. No longer is the material world completely separate and distinct from the spiritual; now they begin to work together as one, water and spirit in our baptism, bread and body in the mystery of the Eucharist, even as Jesus Himself is one.