A sacrament of lessons about life
The Catholic Church is a sacramental church. While rooted firmly on the bedrock of Sacred Scripture, the Church’s life is given meaning through the sacraments.
Oct 30, 2014

By Daniel S. Mulhall
The Catholic Church is a sacramental church. While rooted firmly on the bedrock of Sacred Scripture, the Church’s life is given meaning through the sacraments. Sacraments, according to the Baltimore Catechism, are “outward signs, instituted by Christ, to give grace.”
Joseph Martos, a retired professor of religion and philosophy from Louisville, Kentucky, says that sacraments are “doors to the sacred.”
Because marriage between Christians is understood as a sacrament, the Christian family therefore also shares in the sacramental nature. Through the family, we experience the loving grace of God and, as Martos suggests, have a doorway to experience God in a special way.
Father Richard Fragomeni, associate professor of liturgy and preaching at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, recognizes the rich sacramental nature of the family: “One metaphor that the Church uses is that the family is the domestic or little church, the miniature version of the larger parish community.”
It is in these “little churches” of the home where children learn what it means to be Catholic Christians. Father Fragomeni says that the family is where the religious imagination is first formed through the rituals of daily living.
In simple actions, such as saying grace before meals, blessing children before they leave for school, saying evening prayers and participating in holy days such as Easter and Christmas, “the chain of memories is forged,” Father Fragomeni says. It is where family members learn to recognize “the wonder and bedazzlement of life.”
These little family rituals prepare children and family to take part more fully in the Church’s liturgical life. Father Fragomeni points out documents suggesting that in order for children and families to participate fully in the Sunday Eucharist, they have to first participate in rituals at home.
For example, the idea behind saying grace before meals and sharing food at the family table (a smaller ritual), prepares us to celebrate a bigger ritual, namely the Eucharist at the altar table. In the same way, by teaching children Bible stories or about the lives of the saints or about important moments in the Church, we help prepare children to share more fully in the Liturgy of the Word.
It is in families, Father Fragomeni suggests, that children first learn to recognize life as a gift, where they have their first conversion to a life lived in Christ Jesus. “Family rituals help to provide small, incremental ways to help children learn to recognize the importance of the other, of gift, of things bigger than ourselves,” he says.
In families, we learn what it means to feel empathy and compassion, to recognize that the world does not revolve around one person or one person’s needs. We learn to live together with others in peaceful harmony.
Father Fragomeni points out that the Christian life is a reconciling life, a flourishing of communion between God and others. He says, “Throughout the Christian journey we have many opportunities to be reconciled with God, with others, and especially with ourselves. It is in the family where we first learn (or don’t learn) to be forgiven and reconciled.”
The family teaches us that others can suffer because of our words or actions, and that we have to take responsibility for what we do and say. In the family, we learn to say “I’m sorry” and learn to accept forgiveness. In the family, we learn to share and to do for others, to put the needs of others in front of our own.
All of these things that we learn at home help to prepare us to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation within the parish community. As Father Fragomeni says, “We learn to engage the communion of love that God gives us.”
He notes that reconciliation is more than just learning to forgive. Reconciliation means that we must take the steps necessary, to bring healing and forgiveness to a broken relationship, that allows it to recover and to grow. He suggests that parents can help children learn about reconciliation by demonstrating for them how to prayerfully resolve problems and tensions within the marriage.
Throwing out the quote, “We are no closer to God than we are to the person we love least,” Father Fragomeni says that “receiving the love of God is opening ourselves to the love of the other. Unless there is reconciliation, we don’t get it right in our own lives.”
Although parents, in the sacrament of baptism, accept the responsibility of being the first teachers of the faith, in many families today, parents don’t feel prepared to give children this sacramental preparation that they so desperately need.
Father Fragomeni says that “many parents are bringing their children for baptism but aren’t doing those little things to forge their children’s memories.” He thinks it is important that, as “first teachers,” parents lay the foundation on which faith can grow and flourish.
The answer, he suggests, is presence. He encourages parents to be as present to their children as possible and to show them what it means to live a sacramental life.
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