EDITORIAL
OUR HEARTS FIND LOVE IN THE GRACE OF GOD THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS ARE INVITATIONS TO US AVERAGE CATHOLIC PEOPLE TO STEP INTO THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF GOD’S GRACE, WHICH IS SIMPLY, AS PHILOSOPHER PETER KREEFT PUTS IT, “ANOTHER NAME FOR LOVE, UNDESERVED LOVE”. In the concrete realities of the sacrament rituals, the words, actions and physical elements which we experience in real and direct ways, we can trust that here, right now, God is acting in our lives. This is a great comfort to those of us - many of us - who tend to live either in the past in regrets or hurt, or in the future in fear or dreaminess, 09
EDITORIAL
because the sacraments remind us gently (but firmly) to live in the present. Right here, right now, in scented oil, bread and wine, candles, music and ancient gestures and words, Christ “communicates his Spirit and the grace of God” - undeserved love - to us in our need and in our joy, and we then “bear the fruits of the new life of the Spirit” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 146). Sacraments require faith, and their potential fruits do depend on our own disposition, on where exactly our heart and our head are, and they ask for a bit of imagination and a willingness to be humble, but more than that they simply ask us to turn up. This is one of the great comforts of our faith: the Mass is the Mass, confession is confession, and they do what they do and are what they are even if we aren’t quite 100% into it. Even in those times when we turn up to Sunday Mass tired and frazzled, perhaps dragging reluctant kids, maybe weighed down by the fight we had with our spouse in the car on the way, or by financial or employment worries, or by a nagging doubt about this or that aspect of faith, but still wanting - or at least wanting to want - to be there to worship; even if we turn up to the confessional with a frown, unsure if we’re there simply out of a resentful fear that we must go “or else” rather than with a heartfelt and articulate repentance, but wanting to be there to be forgiven, to make things right; even if we feel like the worst Catholic ever, Christ meets us there in the sacraments - as he meets us in many different ways in our daily lives, but there in a distinct way. He sees us, he knows us, he loves us and he wants to draw us deeper into life.
