EXCERPT:
Water, salt, oil, bread and wine… these are simple things from daily life. They are simple but of profound, even critical, importance. We cannot live without them. In the holy rites of the Catholic Church we would speak directly to the things to be consecrated as if they were living things, so intimately were they bound together with how God supports our very lives. Our Blessed Lord during His earthly life instituted the seven sacraments we enjoy today. Knowing that we are human creatures and not angelic creatures, he gave us outward signs with these sacraments so that we could understand when the invisible and interior reality was being conferred. He thus took simple, but vastly important created things from our ordinary lives and raised them to a new sacramental reality. Even the need to tell our troubles to a friend, so common but so important for our well-being, he raised to a sacrament. The longing of a man and woman to be together, instituted as a holy union from the beginning of our race, was elevated making of the very bodies of the spouse something new and holy. The struggle at the end of life or when we are in mortal peril was taken by Christ and given back to us as a sacrament and the daily and common yet life-supporting substance oil was his vehicle for giving us grace. Continue reading →