ECONOMY OF SALVATION

participation in the Eucharist is sought without any awareness of the need for prior reconciliation with God and the ecclesial community, from which we have been separated by our sin and which we have damaged in its reality as the visible Body of Christ. There is dissociation between the Eucharistic life and the practise of reconciliation on the part of many faithful and even of some ordained ministers, ignoring in the practise of their Christian faith the harmonious unity of the whole sacramental organism of the Church, where it is not possible to choose subjectively which sacraments to “consume” and which to forego. The anointing of the sick is also often experienced surrounded by magical elements, as if it were a kind of spell invoking a miraculous intervention of God or of the divine Spirit, without a personal relationship with Christ, Saviour of the person, both of his body and of his soul. The limits of space force us to concentrate on those sacraments that make up Christian initiation and marriage, all of exceptional importance in building and strengthening the Body of Christ. The way in which these sacraments are approached, as well as the isolated allusions to the rest and the general theological framework that is offered will allow us to draw consequences for those sacraments that we cannot consider monographically.

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