Are the Sacraments Magic?: Thoughts on Corpus Christi
Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi; indeed, not only is today given over to the celebration of the most holy Body and Blood of Our Lord, but the next seven days as well, after which we shall be presented with the holy mystery of Our Lord's Sacred Heart (to which my family is consecrated.) To receive a Sacrament is to be initiated into the power and energeia, the activity, of God. I know that I too often think of the Sacraments, even the Blessed Sacrament, occasionalistically--that is, I think of my reception of the Sacrament just as an occasion for God to act upon me, rather than thinking of the Sacrmanet as really having the causal power to bring about God's power and activity in me. But God's action upon us is nearly always mediated by creaturely causality. And in the Sacraments God does not just act upon us in the way He does in all natural events, moving creaturely causes to their natural activities as the primary cause of all creaturely events ...