On Sacramentality, the Sacred, and the Profane

Last summer, a couple seminarian friends and I had an in-depth conversation with one of  my cousins and a friend of hers, both of whom come from a non-denominational, fundamentalist background. In the course of this discussion, it became more and more clear to me that what was truly missing from their understanding was the sense of sacramentality which suffuses the Catholic mind. It was fascinating and deeply instructive to realize that we are not separated by simply ideological disagreement, but a different way in which our minds approach the world. For whatever reason (and they many), my cousin and her friend could not see material reality as being related to the divine on a deeply fundamental level. From what I understood of their position, they conceived of their relationship with God on a strictly personal, interior level, without any mediation necessary or even possible. This is probably a gross over-simplification, but it struck me what an impoverished worldview this was.
For instance, how would a person under this mindset understand encounters with the divine in human history? How could they appreciate that swelling of the heart that comes with a sunset? Or the works of Michelangelo? How could they hold onto the idea of a loving God and the reality of suffering in the same breath? How could they offer their own bodies in imitation of Christ, who bled his blood for us, and by whose stripes we are healed?

After all, God did not save us by simply inspiring us to live better lives and thereby to be justified, but by becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ. That is, God became physical and justifies us by the act of the Son's entire life, all of which was the living of self-gift, even in his body.
Being Catholic, no doubt I'm missing part of their argument. Perhaps they would point to Hebrews, which states that Jesus is our High Priest and sole mediator, which I would not argue with. But we too participate in this by being conformed to Christ. How can a husband and wife love each other if not through their bodies? How does a father or mother show love to the infant, the toddler, if not by holding them, carrying them, kissing them?

Looking at a picture like this, we have a very real inclination to do exactly that: to hold the infant and look her in the eyes. Why? Because she truly is beautiful, and the beautiful draws us, touches our hearts, and directs us, even forms our actions. Without an appreciation for the divine inbreaking, how can we acknowledge beauty as anything other than being "in the eye of the beholder"? A matter of opinion? But don't we reject that instinctively? Wouldn't we immediately think that something was wrong with the person who could find nothing to appreciate in an image like this?

But all of that I may return to in a later blog. For now, my point is that we face a grave temptation to separate, to compartmentalize. In other words, we may say, "this part of my life is sacred, allows me to connect with God, and this part does not." That is, in the general conception, we might say, my heart and my mind relate to God, but my body does not. This leads to fascinating consequences, wherein we separate what is "holy" and what is "not."
Church, for instance, is holy. Work, however, is not. Work is simply what we do during the day in order to make money, pay bills, etc. Unfortunately, this lends itself rather quickly to the idea that we are merely cogs in a machine. Religion, too, even if we claim it is of utmost importance, is simply relegated to the weekend, "that day we don't work." The problem with this conception is that 90% of our lives soon seem to be not related to God at all. This gives rise to a false notion of the separation of the sacred from the profane. But it's no mistake that some of the greatest works of art our race has produced are religious works. Consider this:

or even this:

And it's certainly no mistake that Gaudi, the visionary Spanish architect, brought so much of the world into his still-unfinished masterwork, the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona:

These are trees, supporting the roof

In the sculptures throughout that basilica, all of salvation history is played out among the trees and plants. Why? Because salvation history occurs precisely in history - in general history, yes, but also in each individual's history, in the course of a life lived down on the ground, among the trees and the plants, the animals, and most of all, each other.
The real point here is that there is nothing, nothing in this life which is beyond the touch, the caress of God. There is no separation between the sacred and the profane. Certainly there is a separation between the sinful and the grace-filled, between love and fear, but there is no part of our lives or our world which does not relate to God. There is no part of our hearts that God does not long to inhabit, no part of our minds that He does not burn with desire for, the desire of a lover who waits. This false separation between the sacred and the profane came in with the loss of the sacramental mind, which is able to look at bread and wine and see Christ, to look at the marriage union and see Christ, to look at a simple pouring of water and see Christ. This is what allows us to look into the eyes of the poor and see not a nuisance or worthlessness, but Christ longing to be loved:

When the Church teaches that we are saved by the grace imparted through sacraments, she doesn't just mean that in a quantifiable sense (i.e., we need to receive so much grace through receiving the sacraments so many times in order to fill up our grace-bank). She also means that our hearts and our minds are formed by this very practice, formed in such a way as to allow us to participate in Christ's own life of self-gift, through our very bodies. Even when that body is sat down at a desk for 8 hours a day. Or spends dawn til dusk caring for children. Or lies in a hospital bed, dying. Nothing is beyond God's touch, and there is no part of the day when we cannot, with Paul, pray unceasingly.