Sacramental Imagination

Although some Protestant denominations, especially Anglicans and Lutherans, have liturgies that resemble Catholic Mass, there is one aspect of Catholic liturgical and theological thought that Protestantism specifically rejected: sacramental imagination. Here the Church does not use imagination in its modern sense as "artificial dreams" created for personal amusement or fancy, but in its technical sense as mentally conceiving of and manipulating images. However, it also has a broader sense: due to the human capacity for abstract thought, material things can have special adjective qualities that are not physically evident.

God is written in the heart of every person, at their deepest core. We long for God and Heaven - the Kingdom where His will is made real, where our longings, doubts, fears and sins are cleansed and fulfilled. In human society outside God's personal Revelation to the Jews (and later, Christians), God did not abandon or ignore His beloved creatures but rather communicated to them through their heart's desires, using images familiar to them. This was the belief of J.R.R. Tolkien, prolific mythopoet and scholar of philology and mythology. While many, especially the Frankfurt school, adhere to the belief that ancient man created myth, and religion, due to scientific ignorance, using anthropomorphic representations of physical phenomena in a sort of banal oral narrative, Tolkien denied this for good reason, mostly deriving from his superior wisdom about human creativity (or sub-creativity, as he called it) and myth.

Whereas God used imaginative fantasy to communicate indirectly with ancient peoples, He revealed Himself directly to the Jews, communicating through His Creation, angels, and direct contact, eventually culminating in Christ, God Incarnate. However, God did not reject the longings and imagination He put into man, but rather fulfilled them. Taking our adjective experience of the world, our propensity to interpret our experiences of life through a lense of qualities - "gray", "vivid", "beautiful", "cleansing", "life-giving", etc. - He gave these senses real meaning and a foundation in the true myth of His Revelation and the deeper spiritual realm just underneath the surface of reality.

A sacrament is an object or event that is "set apart", made holy, by God Himself in order to communicate Himself in some way, whether literally or as wisdom. The Catholic Sacraments, instituted by Christ, are fulfillments of the most fundamental human senses of the world. Water, which people around the world recognize as life-giving, death-giving, cleansing and healing, acquired these senses truly, healing and cleansing us of sin through a drowning death, images of the Flood and Christ's burial, and leading to new life in His Body. Bread and wine, our sustenance and drink, not only given from Earth but cultivated by man, adjectively representing for humanity life, fulfillment, community through meal, human cultivation of the Earth, and many others things, become God's direct sustenance of man by His Son, the sacrificial lamb, whose body and blood were shed for our redemption and became omnipresent, yet still physical at His Resurrection. The sacraments do not simply represent these senses - they give them reality. God's presence in the sacraments, especially Christ's real, physical substance in the Eucharist, is real and literal, while still implying deep spiritual and philosophical meaning.


This view not only of the primary sacraments but of all the universe as a work of art made by God to communicate with us, His most beloved creation, is a specifically Catholic idea. As elucidated by the scholastics and Christian humanists, God's creations have intrinsic, inalienable goodness and dignity; sin only taints it on the surface, a smudge on an unblemished pearl. God loves His world and His human creatures, made in His image and given the beautiful capacity to see God everywhere - through the world, our heart, and His personal Revelation. Life is an art museum, and we have the chance of a lifetime (no pun intended) to not only adore its infinite beauty, but personally know its Artist.