Module No.

1 – 5
Introduction to Liturgy and Sacraments
Course Sacraments and Liturgy Course Code: THEO4
Title:

Instructor: Salvador N. Castillo Term & AY: 2nd Sem, 2020-2021

I. Overview
This prelim course will enable and encourage participants to understand Roman Catholic
Liturgy as the official public prayer of the Church and sacraments as ritual practices (rites)
which are efficacious sources and signs of God’s grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to
the Church.
The Catholic imagination sees the goodness of God reflected in the unfolding of human life
and love, in the grandeur and fragility of nature, the simplicities of bread, oil, wine and water,
in word and gesture and most extraordinarily in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made
flesh. It is him we hear, see with our own eyes, watch and touch with our hands in the
sacramental life of the Church. It is his life we share when we participate in the sacraments of
the Church.

II. Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

Upon completion of this module, the students should be able to:
a. present the Church’s understanding of the Paschal Mystery as the heart of liturgical and
sacramental theology.
b. familiarize students with the theology and liturgical principles contained in Sacrosanctum
Concilium.
c. introduce current theology and practice related to the celebration of the Eucharist.
d. explore the value and function of popular piety within the Roman Catholic Church.

III. Learning Resource and References

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Part Two: The Celebration of the Christian Mystery
DeGidio, O.S.M., Sandra. The Liturgical Year: How Christians Celebrate Time. (El ano liturgico:
Cómo los Cristianos Celebran el tiempo). Catholic Update. Cincinnati, OH. St. Anthony
Messenger Press, 1995.

IV. Lecture Content/Summary of Lesson

Introduction to Liturgy & Sacraments

Communicating Christ’s Grace

Heeding the Call Divine

Liturgy makes the work of our redeemer a present
actuality…[it] is the outstanding means whereby the faithful
may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the
mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church.
Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy

Leito (‘public’) + Ergos (‘that works’) =LITURGY

Liturgy

Makes Redemption Present Shows the Nature of the

Church

The Real Nature of the True Church

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 It is of the essence of the Church to be both human & divine Jesus Christ is both human &
divine.

THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST,

Visible yet endowed with invisible resources.
The Mystical Body of Christ daily builds up its individual members by enabling
subordination of the human to the divine, the visible to the invisible, action to contemplation,
and the world to the Kingdom of God. It was Christ in His divinity & humanity who became the
instrument of our salvation. Likewise the Church is now situated. A Church-Member is a Christ-
Member, and Body that joins to the Saving Work of Christ.

The Saving Work of Christ: The Paschal Mystery:

The Passion, Death, & Resurrection of Christ.

The Divine Junction

This ability of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy to join the Faithful with Christ is what gives the
Church power, making it the source of our spiritual lives. Because in this Sacred Time Christ is
made fully present to us and we are fully joined to Him.

Conformity to Christ
Christ’s Life is ever-pleasing to God the Father. Christ, His best thought, His Word, is the
very recipient of all His Love, the Holy Spirit. By our conforming to Christ through the Sacred
Liturgy we are perfectly glorifying God and becoming holy.

Perfect Glorification
The Church, the Bride of Christ, cleaves and unites to Him in the Liturgy becoming one
Mystical Body of Christ– Christ who always acts and offers perfect worship to the Eternal Father.

The Father’s Will is done:

“Liturgy belongs in the order of doing, not of knowing. Logical thought cannot get far with
it; liturgical actions yield their intelligibility in their performance and this performance takes
place at the level of sensible realities, not as exclusively material, but as vehicles of overtones
capable awakening the mind and heart to acceptance of realities belonging to a different order.”

Liturgical Action = Christ’s Action

“In the liturgy by means of signs perceptible to the senses, human sanctification is
signified and brought about in ways proper to each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public
worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Christ, this is by the Head and His members.”
Const. on Sacred Liturgy

Our Unity with Christ

“Let us congratulate ourselves and give thanks, that we have not only become Christians,
but Christ…be astonished, rejoice, we become Christ; for when He is the Head, we the members,
then the whole Man is He and we.”
“The Body and the Head compose the whole Christ.” “Christ preaches Christ, the Body preaches
its Head and the Head protects His Body.”

The Four-fold Presence of Christ

The PRIEST: who sacramentally conforms himself to Christ.
The EUCHARIST: makes present His Body & Blood, Soul & Divinity.
The WORD: it is He Himself who speaks.
The ASSEMBLY: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of
them.” (Matt. 18:20)

Christ the Priest

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 “Every liturgical celebration because it is the action of Christ the Priest and of his Body
which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can
equal its effectiveness by the same title and to the same degree.”

The Summit & Source:

Christ as an End & a Means “The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the
Church is directed; at the same time it is the fount from which all the Church’s power flows.”
“The liturgy is the source for achieving the most effective way possible both human
sanctification and God’s glorification…”

Liturgy:
The ritual of illumination Constrictive or Expansive? Liturgy is a precise model meant to
effectuate a precise result: unite the Church and make present Christ.
Liturgy is not the be-all, end-all of the Christian Life: we still pray in private, we still must
undergo conversion, we still must go into the world and bear Witness.
But this ritual must be preserved, as there are necessary elements whereby the the
Christ’s presence can be manifested. Liturgy is not primarily a social construction– it is a divine
action.
Sacred Liturgy catches us up in a mysterious conjecture of time and eternity, material and
spiritual, immanence and transcendence. The elements of the Sacred Liturgy are meant to
challenge us, confound us, and call us out of ourselves and our comfort zones.

The Physics of Unity

The Superabundance of Christ’s Merit: 0 < 1
“In the Church’s liturgy the divine blessing is fully revealed and communicated. The Father
is acknowledged and adored as the source and the end of all the blessings of creation and
salvation. In his Word who became incarnate, died and rose for us, he fills us with his blessings.
Through his Word, he pours into our hearts the gift that contains all gifts, the Holy Spirit.” CCC
1082

The Unifier
“When the Spirit encounters in us the response of faith which he has aroused in us, he
brings about the genuine cooperation. Through it, the liturgy becomes the common work of the
Holy Spirit and the Church.” CCC 1091
The Spirit prepares the Assembly to encounter Christ, recall Christ, make Him present, and
unite us to Him.

The Lord and Giver of Life

The work of Christ’s Liturgy is an action of the Church with engages new life in the Faithful
through the workings of the Holy Spirit.
“The whole liturgical life of the Church revolves around the Eucharistic sacrifice and the
sacraments.” CCC 1113

The Bonding Agents:

Sacraments

“A sacrament is a sign that: commemorates what precedes it– Christ’s Passion; demonstrates
what is accomplished in us through Christ’s Passion– grace; & prefigures what the Passion
pledges to us—future glory.” III.60.3

Timelessness

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Theology 4 ; Sacraments and Liturgy: Prelim
 Liturgical and Sacramental Action break us into Eternity, they catapult us out of time and
unite us to the forever-on-going moment of Christ’s sacrifice, which is God’s Love for us. It is an
event that occurs at a time in our life which carries us backward and forward simultaneously.

“In the liturgy, it is principally his own Paschal Mystery that Christ makes present…it is
unique: all other historical events happen once, and they pass away swallowed up in the past.
The Paschal Mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death
he destroyed death, and all that Christ is– all that he did and suffered for all men– participating in
the divine eternity, and so transcends all times being made present in them all. The event of the
Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward life.” CCC 1085

“Sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the
Church, by which divine life is dispensed.” CCC 1131
Effect-producing. The sacrament is the cause of something in the recipient.

Sense-perceptible. “The Word added to the element and it becomes a sacrament.”

Weds material to the spiritual, hence finds its roots in the Incarnation. Not mere symbols,
because they actually deliver…they are efficacious…of what they symbolize. Stuff used by Christ,
and our rationality is prone to empiricism; too, our nature appreciates ceremony for assurance.

Convey the merits of Christ to us in order to draw us into union with God. Grace builds us
up and gradually sanctifies us. Grace is entirely a gratuitous gift of God.

“The mysteries of Christ’s life are the foundations of what he would dispense in the
sacraments…for what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries.”

Baptism (John 3:5, Mk 16:16, Mt 28:18);

Confirmation (Acts 8:14-17, 19:5-6);
Eucharist (John 6, 1 Cor. 10-11);
Reconciliation (James 5:16, John 20:21-23);
Anointing of the Sick (Mk 6:13, James 5:14-15);
Marriage (Mt 19:6);
Holy Orders (John 19-23).

The Church is guided by the Spirit in all truth, and is therefore, the faithful steward of
God’s mysteries and determines the number and dispensation of the sacraments.
Through the Sacraments we are born into a community– the Church. We are made
children of God and nurtured for the rest of our life that we may achieve our ultimate end–
entrance into the Communion of the Most Holy Trinity through membership in the Mystical Body
of Christ, the Son.

V. Learning Activities
Students are to take care to answer all parts of the question/topic chosen.
Reflect on the sacramental life of your parish and address each of the following points:
1. Briefly explain how the parish celebrates one particular sacrament;
2. Based on your readings and module discussion, identify the strengths of your parish’s
celebration of the sacrament chosen;
3. In addition, discuss one or two ways in which the parish can improve the celebration.
Support your discussion with the theological learnings from the course.

VI. Supplemental Content

VII. Assessment:
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
The intention of the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy was not to create a new liturgy but
to reform Roman rituals in a way that would simplify the Rites and encourage full, conscious
and active participation in the liturgy.

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Theology 4 ; Sacraments and Liturgy: Prelim
 1. From your reading and experience, has the Church come to worship in a style envisioned
by the Council?
2. Give supporting references (do not quote whole paragraphs from the actual text; just use
the references) from the readings and examples from your experience and/or ministry.

VIII. Assignment
Have an advance reading on the Seven Sacraments!

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Theology 4 ; Sacraments and Liturgy: Prelim