Sacrament Story Questions (Distance Learning 3)

1.     What is Ludwig’s Problem?: Ludwig’s problem is that he does not understand what it means when people say grace is imparted through the sacraments. He thinks of Grace as just something that is literal and simple, not deep and complex.

2.     Explain what the Church is not thinking about when it comes to “sacramentality”: The Church does not propose sacraments to deny God’s universal love and will to save. It does not hold that un-baptized people of good will are necessarily denied salvation simply because they missed out on the “magic spell” of baptism.

3.     Explain what the Church is thinking about when it comes to “sacramentality”: The Church has repeatedly spoken with great force to stemly condemn any doctrine which would limit the scope of God’s redemption to anything less than every last soul God has created.

4.     “How does God reveal and give each individual human being his universally offered grace?” God reveals and gives each individual human being his grace through the Church’s sacraments, which are extensions of his power and work in the world.

5.     Which Christian doctrine is the foundation for the Sacraments?: The foundation for the Christian doctrine is the Incarnate Son of God.

6.     Explain what the gobs of modern spirituality tell us: For such spirituality often speaks as though God is a sort of extended, to be spiritual is to be more or less disembodied, to dwell in the realm of intuitions and concepts and secret mindset, it is a sign of regression to barbarism that the Christian God should employ physical means like blood sacrifice to communicate his life and power to us.

7.     Explain the Christian repudiation of “such spiritual snobbery”: God likes matter—a lot. He declared it “good” at the beginning of creation, but he continued to manifest himself through it right up until the times that he took upon himself a real, live physical body of matter and united himself.

8.     “But that was so that he could put this gross body of flesh to death on the Cross and revert back to pure spirituality, wasn’t it? Explain and answer: No, it was for him to rise from the dead boldly. And thus boldly resurrection has vast implications. It means not only that we shall live again, but that we will do so as human beings not as disembodied spooks floating.

9.     Explain: “That is why the sacramental worldview sees more than just a symbol in a sacrament.”: It means that Christ causes creation, by his grace not merely to display, but to participate In his work of redemption as a kiss incarnates love.

10.  Explain what G.K. Chesterton said: The difference between the sacramental Real Presence in the Eucharist and the universal grace of God is the difference between saying “The spirit of Jehovah pervades the universe” and saying “Jesus Christ just walked into the room” Sacramentality derives, not from the odd nature of Christianity itself with its stubborn insistence that the world was saved when God, who had always been omnipotent and universal, became small and “local” so that he could touch us and call us by name.

11.  What does Grace do?: Grace allows us to come face to face with God so that we can experience him and all he has to offer.