Cosmos as Sacrifice

Blog 2 February 12, 2024

The Catechism defines sacraments as “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us” (CCC 1131).  Christ gave us the sacraments to help guide us on earthly journey to reach our heavenly destination. Many of you who are here today have been through religious education instruction and think you know everything about the sacraments. You may even think that they are just pleasant rites of passage that have no real significance in your life. After reading my blog, I hope you will come to understand how important sacraments are for your own salvation.

What if I told you that the entire world is a sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace, created by God. In Lewis Bouyer’s book, “Cosmos: The World and Glory of God”, Bouyer looks at the entire Cosmos as a gift from God and how man has historically responded to this awesome gift, sometimes with gratitude, sometimes with pride, and sometimes with benign neglect.

Bouyer defines the Cosmos as, “the essentially integrated whole, the infinitely complex system which we are aware of through the perception of our senses as interpreted by the intellect. God himself can be known to us only in or through our indivisible experience in the world. God is knowable to his creatures, and particularly to man, only in and through his creation” (Cosmos, p. xi). So how does this occur?

Since the beginning of time, man has tried to understand the world and his purpose in it. Knowledge of the world arises from our personal experiences, and an elaboration of that experience with the shared experience and thinking of others. This organically linked knowledge in its primordial state is known as mythos. From mythos comes logos, which is mythos sifted through discursive reasoning. Together mythos and logos eventually evolve into revealed knowledge (12). Mythos and logos are inevitably dependent. “The myth, or more precisely the mythopoetic function of the mind producing it, presupposes the existence of the logos” (19).

Myth is a,” synthetic elaboration of our experience of the world, re-established in unity thorough the integration of successive and discrete views of reality into one intuitive and all-inclusive vision, so that the world may be formally acknowledged in the primordial unity, rather than just being mysteriously sensed” (14). Through myths, man began to tell himself a story about how the world worked and, though not entirely accurate, was a preamble to rational thinking (13).

For example, early civilizations worshipped the elements of nature, believing that they controlled the fate man (24). The shaman was elevated to a god-like status as he was thought to have access to, and influence in, the world of good and evil spirits (25). In pre-biblical Egyptian culture, the king was ascribed divine powers as it was thought he controlled the bountiful harvests that were actually the result of periodic flooding of the Nile and the resultant fertile soil, ripe for vegetation (28).

As civilization evolved, so did the mythopoetic process, which eventually led to biblical revelation, and the belief in one God. This view was supported by Christian philosophers who reasoned that the belief in God is rational and can be supported by philosophical arguments. Importantly, too, was the belief that there is one God who exists outside our world and created our world ex nihilo, or out of nothing. Revelation contained in the Bible is based on mythopoetic stories. They are symbolic stories that help us understand ourselves and how we fit in salvation history.

Bouyer explains that the creation of the world was, “a first divine kenosis (self-emptying), since God, in producing created liberties, placed a limitation on himself, so to speak, by making his search for a response to his love dependent on those liberties” (214). Importantly, in the story of creation found in Genesis, God reinforces that everything he created was good (Genesis 1). However, God allowed man the choice of how to respond to the love he provided. Importantly, he instructs Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of life, knowing they can choose whether or not to obey God’s instruction. How then, did the Fall of Adam and Eve occur? They responded to the temptation of Lucifer, a fallen angel.

Bouyer goes on to describe a world that existed before the human world, a world of angelic spirits. This belief is illuminated in sacred scripture and tradition (195). Like man, angels possessed free will and were originally thought to be “blissful spirits” (196). However, a split occurred in the choir of angels, as Lucifer challenged God’s omnipotence (197). This is how sin entered our world, and why it still exists. Importantly, the devil continues to operate in our world, as he is the agent behind the evil that exists today.

The first fall and subsequent falls (the great flood and the tower of Babel) were not inevitable. They were the result of a desire to control God; to make God part of our creation (48). These biblical stories are myth-based. However, they also convey God’s action in the world, that result from man turning away from God, and wanting to be God.

Fast forward several hundred years and continued sinful actions by humans. How can God set us on the path towards salvation? John 3:16 says it most succinctly: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life”. Christ, begotten by God the Father, was part of God’s plan for salvation all along. Bouyer says that, “Since it is in eternity that God creates us, sends us the Son and the Spirit, decides our adoption in the Son, as well as his redeeming incarnation and the universal fulfillment in the gift of the spirit, it is also in eternity that he knows and loves us and, thus knowing and loving us, he changes us into everything we are called upon to become in time” (189).

So here we are today, more than 2000 years after Christ’s Pascal Mystery unfolded. Except this isn’t myth, it’s history. And Christ gave us the sacraments to help us stay on the right path to Salvation. Why are they so important, especially in today’s technocratic world?

Developments in technology and, most recently, the increased reliance on artificial intelligence, have resulted in humans confusing these technocratic advances with God. In many cases, God is forgotten. The sacraments help to keep man focused on Christ and the promises of eternal life he offers all who follow in his ways.

Importantly, too, the sacraments offer protection against the rise of what Bouyer calls the “bourgeois crisis”. He describes the crisis as, “due simply to a successive civilization so marked and apparently so secure that the humanization of the universe acted as a screen against the radiance of the divine glory, so that God became as though absent, if not in existence” (121). This civilization is present in today’s world when money and comfort become the most desired goals to attain. As a society, we have much to be grateful for. But as Luke 12:48 states, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked”. The sacraments can help remind us of the abundant blessings we have received and direct us to share our blessings with others.

On the topic of Christianity, I am reminded of a favorite answer evangelist Billy Graham gave to a person who asked why there is so much evil in the world: It goes like this: “If Christianity is valid, why is there so much evil in the world?” To this, the famous preacher replied, “With so much soap, why is there so many dirty people in the world? Christianity, like soap, must be personally applied if it is to make a difference in our lives”. I think a similar analogy can be applied to the sacraments as well. The graces afforded by the sacraments help keep us faithful Christians, who are on our way to our heavenly home. Like soap, they must be applied daily.