Christ Clothed

Segundo Galilea notes in The Way of Living Faith: A Spirituality of Liberation that sacramentality represents a problem for contemporary spirituality. But sacraments are not the problem. Sacraments, and “the Word of God that shapes every sacrament,” are the solution.

As Galilea says, “Jesus, his life and liberation, is found primarily in the Church as sacrament. The Church is the original and privileged sacrament of Christ offered to society as life and liberation. In a certain way, there is only one sacrament – involving Jesus and his kingdom – and it is the Church. Every life-giving presence of Jesus is a sacrament, and this presence is given globally to us in the Church. The Church – as sacrament of Jesus – is incarnated and made concrete within the human condition and daily life, made explicit in the various sacraments of the Church . . . . The individual sacraments are not isolated; they are the expression of the global sacramentality of the Church as the sacrament of Christ” (54).

Specific sacraments are encounters with the living Christ, “an experience of faith, of love, if imitation, and of sharing in his transforming life.” As we encounter Jesus in the sacraments, “they change and liberate the root of our life, where freedom, the choice between good and evil, selfishness, and love are played out, where the essential orientations of existence are decided” (58).

All that to say: To seek a Christ un-clothed by Word and Sacrament is to pursue a chimera. For there is no Christ but the clothed Christ.