It’s still there. The Charcoal Pit on the Concord Pike has been a constant. As teenagers we made a ritual of going there after Saturday night movies for hamburgers (pre-MacDonalds) and milkshakes. I recall once we gathered there on a Friday after seeing some film. It was late. Karen Glenn, the responsible Catholic among us, reminded us that we had to wait until midnight to indulge our carnivorous appetites. This was before Vatican II and Friday abstinence, another ritual, was still practiced. Now, with post-Conciliar retrospection we reminisce about our once naïve innocence, and we reflect more fruitfully on the role of ritual. It seems that the relationship between ritual and sacrament is widely confused and merits clarification.
Rituals are practices initiated by us. They bring us together and remind us of the values we treasure and share. The word itself has Latin roots (ritualis) and can refer to both religious and non-religious practices. Religious rituals are obvious. Non-religious rituals would be things like sharing Sunday family dinners, singing the national anthem at football games, and sending birthday cards – practices that encourage family unity, national pride, and personal friendship. But, because they are created and performed by us rituals are at risk of fading away because we can neglect them. If we don’t practice them, they disappear.
While there are religious rituals (grace before meals, crossing oneself, etc.) sacraments are not rituals. Sacraments include ritual inasmuch as they follow prescribed visible rites. However, while their administration requires our receptivity, we are not the cause of their efficacy. As the Catechism states: “The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.” (CCC 1131)
The incomparably sublime sacrament is, of course, the Eucharist: ‘the source and summit of the Christian life’ (CCC 1324). The Eucharist is more than a memorial or an empty commemoration of what occurred on Calvary. It is the ‘once for all’ ongoing sacrifice of Christ which we do not repeat but rather enter into and make present. The consecrated bread and wine the apostles received at the Last Supper – that first Mass – is the same we receive when we partake of the Eucharist, when we bind ourselves to the Paschal Mystery, when the timeless enters time.
These words are esoteric and require faith to be believed. It’s worth remembering that the Latin word ‘sacramentum’ was the translation of the Greek word for mystery. Perhaps the reason so many no longer understand the Mass (the Sacred Mystery) is that they confuse ritual with sacrament.
NCCF’s donors do not suffer this confusion. In addition to their concerns about the eleemosynary needs of others around the world, they contribute their resources to efforts that promulgate awareness of and access to the sacramental life of the Church. They understand that while rituals may come and go, the sacraments – while described in time – are infused with the timeless.
After sixty years the Charcoal Pit is still around. However, as the Kingdom advances it is a temporary constant.