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Sign, Symbol and Sacrament

 



This is a sign in the door of a café in Finisterre. Finisterre means "The End of the Earth", so it's a kind of joke: the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe - Douglas Adams! Geddit? ...Oh never mind. Anyway, when I got to this place the café was closed, and had a sign on the door to say precisely that, but unless you read a little Spanish you might still try the door. That's the thing about signs: they are one dimensional and depend, for their effectiveness in communicating information, on a commonality of understanding between signer and signee. All across Spain we blissfully entered museums by the wrong doors, parked in the wrong places and queued at the wrong ticket windows because our commonality of understanding was somewhat impaired. 

But there were other signs we encountered that didn't depend on language. 

Like this one for instance. 

Walking past this little chapel, on a mountainside at sunrise, I didn't have to ask what kind of building it was. But the cross was more than an advertisment. That morning I was alone in the Picos de Europa, as far from my home as it is possible to be, and the sky was vast. Beneath me the mist was rising from the lake around which I was going to walk in an hour's time. There was dew on the gentians and erica and the larks rose before me as I walked, trailing their convoluted songs across the early morning air. It was a joyous moment, and the cross summed up, and gave silent voice to my sense of freedom and gratitude. Crosses are symbols. That is, they are signs which don't depend on a common language or an agreed code of meaning to be understood. In my back yard the bees move towards my blue shirt because deep in their little brains there is some ancient coding predisposing them to like blue things. And in us, highly evolved primates that we are, there is a myriad of similar deep, pre-programmed responses. Symbols draw on the deep wells of our evolutionary and cultural and familial and personal history to speak to us in ways far deeper than mere logic and understanding. 

Symbols are deeper than signs. They give expression to things beyond words and like any other avenue of communication, they can be transformative. But there is a level which is deeper than symbol and that level is sacrament. Consider this composite photo:
There are 2 pictures of the same person, taken only a few years apart. They are, obviously, of the Queen, but in the intervening period between photographs, something has happened to her. On the left she is the Princess Elizabeth, or Mrs Mountbatten-Windsor, depending on your point of view. On the right she is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Between the two pictures she has undergone a profound change; namely the sacrament of coronation. A sacrament is a symbolic action which effects a change in our very being: we are not the same as we were before once we have willingly participated in the sacrament. I can't stress this strongly enough. You are a different thing after the sacrament than you were before, and this is why sacraments must be so carefully and wisely cherished.

In the Anglican church we recognise 2 sacraments : Baptism and Eucharist; and we argue the toss about another 5: anointing; confirmation; ordination; absolution; and marriage. I'm not going to get into that here, but I have participated in all of these 7 as a receiver and a a giver and know that each is an instrument for profound, and usually unexpected change. My friend Alden says sailing is a sacrament, and I think I agree with him. I know that pilgrimage is a sacrament, as is silence, because they are symbolic actions which effect real and lasting transformation.

Part of the hubris of our era is that we think that we can explain and therefore dismiss all manner of mysteries. So marriage is "just" a piece of paper, or the deep peace of meditation is "just" the action of serotonin or ordination is "just" an interesting career choice. How foolish we are. When Jesus entrusted his work to his disciples he told them to baptise: that is, to be instruments of change in people's lives using all manner of methods, some of which reach far deeper than thought and far deeper than culture. It's an extraordinary privilege and responsibility to be so trusted.   


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Father Ron said…
YES!, Kelvin. "Mysterium Tremendens". Enjoy Advent and Christmas in your Deep South
11 December 2020 at 11:15
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