One light shines behind a rainbow of sacraments

By Patricia Kasten
Compass Associate Editor

It all starts with plain, white light.

Add a little water and, before you know it, you have a rainbow.

The basic science of light says that a beam of white light - usually sunlight, but rainbows can also happen in moonlight - contains all the colors of that rainbow. However, we can't see those colors until a water droplet catches the light and bends it. Then, since different waves of light - the different colors - travel at different rates of speed, they move around the droplet at different rates and our human eyes can perceive them individually.

But they are still part of that same, single beam of white light.

In a similar way, the sacraments reveal the grace of God shining forth in Christ through the actions of the Holy Spirit. The sacraments are the work of Christ, giving us the life of God - grace - in the unity of the Spirit.

Rainbow's center revealed

Christ is the center of the sacraments, just as the white light is the center of a rainbow. The church is entrusted with keeping the sacraments and administering them, similar in a way to how the water droplet holds, shapes and sends out the individual light beams.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "the sacraments make the church, since they manifest and communicate to men, above all in the Eucharist, the mystery of communion with the God who is love..." (n. 1118).

"God is love" the author of the First Letter of John taught us; that is the essence of the sacraments. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus revealed this mystery to us.

As Pope Leo the Great said in the fifth century, what Jesus revealed in his life on earth was - with his ascension - "changed into a sacramental presence" (Sermon 74,2). That sacramental presence of Jesus makes the power of his Paschal Mystery - the full revelation of God's unending love - available to us in the community of his Body, the church.

Each of the sacraments does that in a different way - just as the colors of a rainbow reveal the presence of sunlight in different ways. All the sacraments "give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christian's life of faith" (CCC, no 1210) and yet this is done differently in each sacrament.

The science of light has three primary colors: red, green and blue. From various blends of these three, all other colors can be formed. (This is how TV and computer screens work.)

Initiate

With the sacraments, three are foundational. They are the sacraments of initiation: baptism, Eucharist and confirmation.

Fr. Thomas Richstatter , OFM, a professor at St. Meinrad School of Theology says, "The Sacraments of Christian Initiation celebrate and effect a plunge into the life, passion, death and resurrection of Christ; a plunge that is so deep and transforming that we 'put on the Lord Jesus Christ' (Rm 13:14). We receive the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit that directed, inspired and empowered Jesus himself ..."

The waters of baptism, the fire of the Spirit at confirmation and the health, growth and life that come from the food of the Eucharist are the primary foundations of life in Christ.

Sustain and renew

The other four sacraments sustain, strengthen and renew the Christian life that begins in the sacraments of initiation. Eucharist is the only one of the three initiation sacraments that is repeatable - since it is the overflowing font, "the source and summit" of all grace and the presence of the Paschal Mystery.

Two other repeatable sacraments are those of healing: reconciliation (penance) and anointing of the sick. Like the deeper shades of the rainbow - indigo and violet - these sacraments are available to bring the light and life of Christ to places that are broken, shadowed and weak. These sacraments allow the Spirit to work in our lives to heal both our souls and our bodies. They renew us in the life of Christ and reunite us with the Body of Christ from which sin and sickness may have separated us.

Committed service

The two remaining sacraments - marriage (also repeatable) and holy orders - may not seem connected. Yet, just as the two remaining colors of our rainbow - orange and yellow - blend together, so do the sacraments of commitment and service stand side-by-side in purpose. The Catechism says marriage and holy orders are both "directed towards the salvation of others" and "confer a particular mission in the Church and serve to build up the People of God" (n. 1533). Just as the colors of orange and yellow surround us with a warming glow, so do the service and commitment to others that flow from these two sacraments.

The sacraments - each like a different color - heal us and build up the Spirit in each of us and in others. They ground us in Christ, drawing us deeper into his life, the life of the Trinity - the one source of light and love.