Experiencing The Real Presence Of Jesus Religion Essay

It is necessary for theological direction to get down supplying autochthonal constructs and experiences as an chance to show religion so that it may go more comprehendible and relevant to Filipino Catholics. For inculturation ensures rootedness in the corporate mind of Filipinos, confirming every bit good as disputing it. Such procedure may enable the Gospel to enrich and to transform Filipino civilization from within. An avowal of such claim will be presented in the undermentioned literatures and surveies.

Equally early as 1949, the Dutch Protestant theologist, Gerardus new wave der Leeuw, in his book Sackramentstheologie, noted that the sacraments in the Christian tradition had become an “ epiphenomenon ”[ 1 ]to human life.[ 2 ]They were perceived to hold nil straight to make with human life, but come “ from supra ” as an excess dimension. He wanted to stress that sacraments should be anchored deep in the human constructions. It is in this relationship to the human constructions of life that he calls a phenomenological attack, since sacraments respond to the phenomenon of being human. The Catholic Church has already experienced this alteration in assorted text editions developed for the instruction of the sacraments in the multi-leveled school state of affairss and in parish catechetic. The replies in the catechism focused about entirely on the Godhead or revealed facet: What is a sacrament? How many are at that place? From whom do the sacraments receive their power to give grace? Do the sacraments give consecrating grace? Does each of the sacraments besides give particular grace? Do the sacraments ever give grace?[ 3 ]Even in covering with the single sacraments, there is small room for the human constructions and substrate. Baptism deals with original wickedness, the character, the curate, the signifier, the necessity of baptism for all, baptism of desire, the function of godparents, the demand to baptise babies after birth. Nowhere is at that place any reference that baptism is rooted in the homo every bit good as in the Godhead. Baptism is seen clearly as an “ epiphenomenon. ”

In making this, the single sacraments cease to talk to the really people for whom the sacraments might be spiritually helpful, as Juan Segundo has indicated.[ 4 ]

The phenomenological attack in understanding sacramentality has something to make with seeking to acquire back to the kernels of the sacraments in footings of rivers and woods, in footings of what happens in people ‘s lives, descriptively. It is concentrating on what people have perceived to be taking topographic point when H2O is used to baptise an grownup or when oil is used to anoint person who is sick, or a curate who places a manus on the caput of another at a minute of determination, or when person interruptions staff of life and gives it to others-actions, noises, colourss, tactile, esthesiss, words which combine to talk deeply to individuals about the significance and intent of life. As Merleau-Ponty says, that “ the existent has to be described, non constricted or formed. ”[ 5 ]

The sacraments can uncover profound significances common to people, but they besides point to enigmas which really exist in changing perceptual experiences and apprehensions. This does non intend that philosophies or grounds are non of import or needed. They are of import as one seeks to acquire an overview of the different facets of life and for doing determinations about one ‘s actions and waies. But phenomenology emphasizes the truth that enigma is ever present when a individual seeks to depict one ‘s experiences. Acknowledging the enigma which is ever present, one can still depict the kernel implied in the concrete studies of run intoing the Holy in peculiar experiences. Furthermore, it is important to raise these up and observe them because they point to and take part in the transcendent.

By taking a phenomenological attack to the survey of the power and restrictions of the sacraments one will be seeking to be descriptive, to happen the kernels holding been experienced in assorted ritual experiences within civilization in general, within the Christian community more peculiarly, within the life span of individuals in their religion pilgrim’s journeies throughout life, within their corporate, societal, and political life. Finally, this attack may propose that sacramental Acts of the Apostless may be productively celebrated in churches and construe the power of these experiences educationally and liturgically.

A common deformation or imitation of the sacraments by many Christian people is good described by Karl Rahner, another Roman Catholic mind who has developed a phenomenological theoretical account of sacramentality. The normally held position is that the sacraments are rites which the church uses to convey God ‘s grace to individuals who otherwise are populating a secular life without ongoing Communion with the ageless. Rahner decries this inclination. He sees God ‘s active presence in all life and the sacraments as indicative events lighting the sacredness of every facet of life.

Rahner starts by presuming that sacraments points non merely to things through which the Holy can be revealed. Rather, all of nature and history reveal the cosmic grace of God to which the person sacraments are informants and looks. God ‘s grace is conveying integrity and redemption at the roots of human being. Consecrating grace and godly life are present everyplace. Grace permeates the universe. The sacraments are symbolic manifestations of the Holy Eucharist of the universe. “ The universe is invariably and endlessly possessed by grace from its innermost roots, from the inmost personal centre of the religious topic. It is invariably and endlessly sustained and moved by God ‘s self-bestowal even prior to the inquiry of how creaturely freedom reacts to this ‘engracing. ‘ ”[ 6 ]

Rahner believes that the church is the seeable symbol of God ‘s active grace toward all people of whatever cultural or spiritual background. It is the sacrament of the universe, “ mark and instrument of integrity ” among people, as the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Vatican II stated. Furthermore, “ Even those who, through no mistake of their ain remain ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and the Church, but who are however candidly seeking God and under the influence of grace, are truly seeking to make his will, which they recognize in the voice of their scrupless, are able to accomplish ageless beatitude. ”[ 7 ]

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World is even more expressed. The new life in Christ is present “ non merely for Christians, but all work forces of good will in whose Black Marias grace plants in an unobserved manner. ”[ 8 ]

The church is the sacrament of redemption for all. The important apprehension is that the church recognizes that God ‘s grace, while to the full revealed in Christ and present in the life of the organic structure of Christ, the church, besides transcends the church.

Schillebeeckx clarifies this construct when he says, “ What God ‘s grace, his absolute, gratuitous and forgiving propinquity has already begun to make in the lives of all work forces becomes an epiphany in the Church, in other words, wholly seeable aˆ¦ . The Church is the ‘primordial sacrament of the redemption which is prepared for all work forces aˆ¦ the redemption which is, furthermore, non a monopoly of the Church, but which, on the footing of salvation by the Lord who died and rose once more ‘for the interest of the redemption of the whole universe ‘ is already in fact actively present in the whole universe. The Church is hence both the sacrament of herself, in other words, the seeable visual aspect of the Salvation that is present in her, and, at the same clip, the sacramentum mundi ; what is present ‘outside the Church ‘ everyplace whenever work forces of good will in fact give their consent personally to God ‘s offer of grace and do this endow their ain. ”[ 9 ]

The peculiar sacraments, nevertheless, are really greatly needed because they are clear symbols ( deep-running, indispensable, vitalizing and renewing, when received in religion ) of the grace of God in all of life-symbols which point to and take part in the cosmic grace revealed in life itself but to the full in Christ and in the church which communicates this love, grace, and justness through both words and sacrament.

Rahner believes that individuals in the human household profoundly necessitate the sacraments to assist them go witting of the sacredness of all spheres of life. Engagement in the sacraments should non take Christians out of the mundane universe of commercialism, authorities, political relations, etc. The sacraments typify that God “ erects a landmark, a mark of the fact that this full universe belongs to God, a mark exactly of the fact that God adored, experienced and accepted everyplace as he who, through his ‘grace, ‘ has himself set all things free to achieve to himself, and a mark that this worship of him takes topographic point non in Jerusalem entirely but everyplace in spirit and in truth. ”[ 10 ]

Edward J. Kilmartin, in his essay “ Theology of the Sacraments: Toward a New Understanding of the Chief Rites of the Church of Jesus Christ, ”[ 11 ]entitles a subdivision “ Sacramental Nature of the Cosmos. ” He notes that in the patristic and in the early Middle Ages, many theologists considered that redemption history began with creative activity itself. Therefore all creative activity bears the grade of God ‘s love for humanity. The Christian ritual sacraments, Kilmartin argues, “ were valued as peculiar concentrations of the sacramental nature of all creative activity. They were interpreted as the highest manifestations of God ‘s presence in the whole of the universe. ”[ 12 ]Kilmartin notes that the systematic theologists of the twelfth and 13th centuries have the same basic mentality, confirming that created worlds, when used in the sacraments, attain their full significance. In the sacraments, as in the universe, he writes, there is a sacrum commercium. Chauvet says: “ Creation is itself charged with sacramentality. ”[ 13 ]He goes on to explicate that sacramentality, including Christian sacramentality, arises “ merely at the intersection of these two dimensions, cosmic and historic. ”[ 14 ]

Foundational to the Judaeo-Christian Tradition is the experience of God or the relationship between the Godhead and the human. Albert Alejo, S.J. in Tao Po! Tuloy! : Isang Landas ng Pag-unawa SA Loob ng Tao explains that this relational presence, which originates from God ‘s perfectly free and gracious enterprise, arises from the really nucleus of the deity and touches the centre of one ‘s humanity.[ 15 ]In this sense, the presence of God to humanity is “ immediate. ” Although it is non dependent on anything or anyone except the Godself, God has freely and gracefully chosen to be in relationship, i.e. to be present with humanity. It is the really ego of God that comes, relates, and corsets with humanity. God can even be experienced when every created support crumbles or fails. Such is the immediateness of God.

In Edward Schillebeeckx ‘s secondA Christological undertaking, Jesus: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, he noted that as people and individuals, they are interconnected with one another, but besides with their universe as a whole. God ‘s relating and presence, regard and take earnestly every individual ‘s humanity and personhood, every bit good as touch all the dimensions of their humanity: their bodylines and connection with the Earth, their personal relationships, their belongingness and solidarity with the human community, their being cultured, unity of ego, their religion and their hope for life, and the synthesis of all such dimensions.[ 16 ]Therefore, redemption from God who is present should hold a bearing on all these facets of their humanity. No less than their religion in the Incarnation witnesses to this theological world.[ 17 ]The Word become flesh[ 18 ]is God ‘s personal disclosure of how He deals or relates with humanity. God ‘s presence is “ mediated immediateness. ”[ 19 ]Christian religion sees itself as the communicating of godly life within this universe. The universe, things, and human existences have come to be penetrated by the generous sap of God. The universe of things and the human universe are carriers of redemption and are a enigma. That is the ground why they are sacramental.

Richard McBrien in Catholicism,[ 20 ]explains that Catholicism has ne’er hesitated to confirm the “ cryptic ” dimension of all world: the universe, nature, history, events, individuals, objects, rites, words. Everything is, in rule, capable of incarnating and pass oning the Godhead. This presupposes that “ God touches all of world, and the human community as a whole responds to its experience of the Godhead through a sacramental manner, ” the word sacramental refers to “ any finite world through which the Godhead is perceived to be disclosed and communicated, and through which our human response to the Godhead assumes some step of form, signifier, and construction. ”[ 21 ]The sacramental rule fundamentally affirms that the relationship between God and people is mediated by finite instruments. As Langdon Gilkey has mentioned in Catholicism Confronts Modernity, that the Godhead enigma is communicated “ non simply through rational consciousness nor through ecstasy entirely, but through a broad scope of symbols related to all the aspects of ordinary life. ”[ 22 ]Any symbol that suggests or allows us to intuit something of the cryptic deepness of goodness, love, compassion, and presence that humanity call God can be sacramental. On the portion of God, “ everything is, in rule, capable of incarnating and pass oning the Godhead, ” and on the portion of humanity, they “ have nil else apart from finite instruments to show their ain response to God ‘s self-communication. ” “ Divine commercialism ” occurs sacramentally.[ 23 ]

In Rites of Justice: The Sacraments and Liturgy as Ethical Imperatives, Mckenna have noted that cognition of the sacraments and its significance is non plenty.[ 24 ]More than information and correct Holy Eucharist, they need answerability in their behaviour and their relationships with others. In the same visible radiation, Kenan B. Osborne indicates that Sacramental divinity constantly will stay to be an stray academic survey unless it is per se connected to liturgical practice. Sacramental and liturgical theology/practice is per se united. The lone clip that one can talk of baptism or Holy sacrament is in an existent baptismal rite or in an existent Eucharistic jubilation. These existent, localized, experiential events of Holy Eucharist are the lone minutes when baptism, Eucharist, verification, and so on exist. Sacraments merely exist in the making, in the celebrating. The mere fulfilment of assorted Torahs and rubrics about the sacraments in no manner allows Christians to state that a sacramental action genuinely takes topographic point. One must “ take out ” the liturgical experience to understand sacramental life.[ 25 ]

Any divinity of the sacrament will stay to be a divinity about the sacrament, when it functions to be descriptive, i.e. covering with generic sacraments, instead than prescriptive, that trades with the existent world of an experiential minute of the sacrament. It is this latter event that one experiences the world of the sacrament ; in books one learns merely some things about the sacrament.

Canonic and liturgical ordinances are no different. These ordinances speak about the sacrament generically, and therefore they excessively are more descriptive than prescriptive, since Torahs or canons are meant for general state of affairss, non for individualized, unquotable state of affairss. Frederick McManus writes:

The liturgical jubilations of sacraments and other services are public and communal actions implicating the whole individual of each member of the Christian assembly. They are affairs of the most intimate religion and piousness, which are articulated communally. The norms that govern them are every bit frequently aesthetic as they are juridic or canonical.[ 26 ]

McManus indicates that the flexibleness of current liturgical jurisprudence and openness to version reflect the pastoral state of affairs itself. He notes that sacraments are ultimately jubilations of the enigmas in the Spirit, and so non easy governed. He makes this as a reminder, that there is so a legitimate openness, a permitted acknowledgment of the spiritual value of diverseness, and even an invitation to greater cultural versions.

One can merely see a sacrament in the experiential, peculiar making of a alone sacramental action. It is this alone action entirely that the sacrament has significance. David Tracy explains in “ A Theological View of Philosophy: Disclosure and Reason, ” That Others May Know and Love: Essaies in Honor of Zachary Hayes, O.F.M. , that each sacrament is an experiential event, an experiential action.[ 27 ]Each sacrament is an individualised, historically distinct, temporally unquotable minute in life of an single, of a peculiar community of Christians, and of the temporal-historical presence of an active God. There is no such thing as generic baptism, merely as there is no such thing as generic Eucharist. Each sacrament is a alone event. The world of the sacrament can merely be found in the singularized occurrences of these experiential sacraments. Outside these actualized and singularized sacramental events, the really footings of the sacraments have at best some generic, non-realistic, linguistically conventional significance. Multiple alone factors in an experiential sacramental event, including its non-repeatability, do a ritualized action an event that can be called a sacramental baptism or a sacramental Holy sacrament. The individualism and the uniqueness of each distinct sacramental act are non peripheral or inadvertent to what the sacraments are. There is no baptism, for illustration, except in the really experiential action and event of a given baptism. There is no Eucharist except in the really experiential action and event of the Eucharist. There is, hence, no “ kernel ” of the sacraments that is replicated in the jubilation of a given sacrament and thereby constitutes it as a sacrament. Nor is at that place any kernel of a thing called sacrament that is replicated in the jubilation of a given rite at a given clip by a given people and, thereby constitutes this single action a sacrament.

If the “ sacrament ” is to be understood and appreciated, it must hence be rooted in the ordinary experience of people, in an experiential sacramental event and re-interpreted in culturally apprehensible footings to people populating a peculiar local context, by manner of using that really civilization itself, i.e. the “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality ” has to be interpreted in autochthonal classs and models,[ 28 ]apprehension and showing them by Filipinos. In Elementss of Filipino Theology, Leonardo Mercado explains that the production of a Filipino divinity demands to work with Filipino classs of idea and Filipino images and values.[ 29 ]This is chiefly characterized as one of re-appropriation of the familial Tradition by a local Christian community into the local civilization, instead than one of interlingual rendition of the Tradition. The primary inspiration for this theological attack comes from the Incarnation which “ unmistakably demonstrates God ‘s purpose to do Him known from within the human state of affairs. ”[ 30 ]

Theoretical Model

In the effort to show a contextualized apprehension of the “ sacrament ” that is relevant and apprehensible to Filipino Mindanaoan civilization, this survey will do an initial enquiry into the Filipino Mindanaoans ‘ present apprehension of the sacraments and sacramentality and their perceptual experience of the present apparatus and pattern of the local theological instruction on the sacraments to measure their relevancy and intelligibility. This in bend will let the research worker to place indexs in the appraisal for the demand to re-explain or reappropriate the apprehension of the sacrament and sacramentality that is apprehensible and relevant to Filipino Mindanaoan Catholics.

The usage of theological invariables ( repeating religion elements in the Mindanaoan cultural look ) will function as a usher in the reading and accordingly, the re-appropriation of the “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality ” within the Filipino Mindanaoan context.

By this procedure – the common interaction of the Judeo-christian Tradition and contemporary Mindanaoan experiences, an inculturated reading of the religion in Jesus as the Christ is made possible, a reading that is faithful non merely to the Tradition but to the civilization every bit good. Through the common interaction of the Judaeo-Christian Tradition and the Filipino Mindanaoan contemporary experiences or civilization, an reading of their relationship with God through the instrumentality of their civilization and their civilization in the visible radiation of this relationship is made possible. This will ensue in an autochthonal reading of the “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality: The “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality ” are interpreted with autochthonal classs. Conversely, the civilization is interpreted, in the visible radiation of the faith Tradition.

The autochthonal reading of the “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality ” will function as footing for an effort to supply an chance for Mindanaoan autochthonal constructs and experiences to show the religion of the Filipino Mindanaoan Christians so that the “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality ” may go more comprehendible and relevant to them. This procedure of re-articulating the “ sacrament ” and Sacramentality ” in autochthonal classs will hold its generation in the Proposed Teacher ‘s Manual on the Seven Primordial Sacred Symbols of the Church for the Vicariate Schools of Theology for Southern Mindanao.

Conceptual Model

THE PRESENT Understanding OF THE Sacraments:

MINDANAOAN EXPERIENCE AND NOTION OF

THE SACRAMENT AND SACRAMENTALITY

INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF THE CONCEPT OF

THE SACRAMENT AND SACRAMENTALITY

CULTURAL

Exegesis:

Mindanaoan

Autochthonal

Concept

THE POLE OF HUMAN THE POLE OF THE

EXPERIENCE JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN The Mindanaoan Cultural TRADITION

THEOLOGICAL Frame of Reference

Constants:

aˆ? Disclosure

aˆ? Faith

aˆ? Salvific Effect INCULTURATED SACRAMENT AND SACRAMENTALITY

aˆ? Ethical USING MINDANAOAN INDIGENOUS CATEGORIES Consequences AS INDIGENOUS MODEL

aˆ? Sacramental

Form

PROPOSED TEACHER ‘S MANUAL ON THE SEVEN PRIMORDIAL

SACRED SYMBOLS OF THE CHURCH FOR THE VICARIATE

SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY OF SOUTHERN MINDANAO

Figure 1

The Procedure of Re-Articulating the Sacrament and Sacramentality In Autochthonal Classs:

A Contextual Filipino Theology of the Sacrament for the Vicariate Schools

of Theology of Southern Mindanao

Definitions of Variables

In this survey the reading of the “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality ” utilizing the Mindanaoan autochthonal classs and the re-appropriation of the “ sacraments ” and “ sacramentality ” within the Mindanaoan context are the independent variables. This will necessitate the usage of theological invariables ( repeating religion elements ) that will function as a usher in the reading ( cultural exegesis ) and accordingly, the re-appropriation of the “ sacrament ” and “ sacramentality ” with the Filipino Mindanaoan context.

The proposed Teacher ‘s Manual on the Seven Primordial Sacred Symbols of the Church for the Vicariate Schools of Theology of Southern Mindanao is the dependent variable.

The moderate variables are the Filipino Mindanaoans ‘ present apprehension of the sacraments and sacramentality and their perceptual experience of the present apparatus and pattern of the local theological instruction on the sacraments.