Adoration of the Trinity, Vicente López y Portaña, ca. 1791-92.
Those of us whose lives have been formed by the seven Sacraments are predisposed to view the world through a sacramental lens. If the remission of our sins really occurs through the words of absolution, if a child becomes a new creation through the waters of Baptism, if Christ Himself comes to us through bread and wine, it seems very plausible that God would plant more commonplace hints of Himself in the physical things that surround us.
The power to perceive these commonplace hints is core to the sacramental imagination. Through the sacramental imagination, we don’t see a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly as a mere biological process, but as an anticipation of our fleshly body’s transformation into a resurrected body. We see the world as an enchanted place where anything and everything can potentially reveal and affirm truths about who God is and who we are meant to be. In such a world, some divine revelation could be lurking around every corner if only we have the eyes to see it. We realize that we live in a world “charged with the grandeur of God.”
Undoubtedly, students nurtured within the Sacramental heart of the Church will pick up elements of a sacramental imagination from the environment that surrounds them. Imperceptibly, the incensed air they breathe will form them interiorly. But schools can’t rely on environment alone to do all the work. As teachers, we must think systematically about how to instill and cultivate a sacramental imagination in the children we teach if a Catholic way of thinking is going to take firm root in them.
From the vast array of practices a teacher could use, I am going to focus on one: a series of four questions intended to lead students from close observation of some element of creation to contemplation of the spiritual truths God may be trying to communicate to them through the physical object they gaze upon.
- What do you see? Or what do you notice? As a general practice, it is often good to start any lesson with these simple questions, but they take on particular importance when we’re trying to cultivate a sacramental imagination in our students. Students will have a hard time perceiving spiritual truths in anything if they don’t slow down long enough to gaze attentively at the thing in front of them. We can’t let them rest in a quick, superficial description either. We must continually push them with a gentle, what else?, not letting them stop until we are satisfied that they have thoroughly examined whatever they are gazing upon.
- Did anything surprise or startle you? What do you wonder about? When something is made strange, we are open to all the possibilities that thing may contain. For example, a shoe is rather dull until the day I perceive its possible use as a missile I can launch at my brothers. Seen in this strange new light, as something pregnant with possibility, I become aware that there is something more to this object than immediately meets the eye.
- Why do you think it works that way? This question introduces the idea that there is a purpose behind what we see. The physical reality we see before us is not random but serves some end. If I can begin to perceive that end, then maybe I can glimpse something of the spiritual world that directs and orders all things toward their given ends.
- What do you think God is trying to communicate to us? While it is natural to seek what God may be trying to communicate to us in prayer or through Scripture, we don’t always think of asking God what He is trying to say through some element of creation. If Christ truly “plays in ten thousand places” as the priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins maintains, then we would profit by listening for God’s communications in a wider range of places.
What follows is an imaginary dialogue that attempts to trace how a teacher might use these four questions to cultivate a sacramental imagination in his/her students. After giving students 30 seconds to gaze upon the picture of a stargazer lily, for example, a teacher could ask a series of questions.
Teacher: What do you see?
Student: I see colorful petals.
What colors do you see on the petals?
I see pink and red and white. I see specks on the petals, and it looks like they’re curved back.
What else do you notice about the petals?
They seem to have supports under them, little white tubes down the middle to support the petals.
Do you notice anything else?
What are those thin things coming out of the center of the lily?
Would you describe them for me?
They are white and green and have orange on top. The orange stuff kind of looks like a powder.
Do all the things in the middle have orange on top?
No, one has a white round thing, like a ball, on top. That’s the tallest one.
The long white things with orange on top are called stamens and the one with the white ball on top is called a pistil. When the orange powder, or pollen, from the stamens gets brushed onto the top of the pistil, the flower can make seeds that produce more lilies. Does anything surprise you about this process?
Well, how does the orange powder get to the top of the pistil? The stamens are all shorter than the pistil.
Very good question. What do you all think? How does the pollen get to the top of the pistil?
Maybe the wind blows it there.
Great idea. Any other ideas?
I’ve seen bees in my flowers at home. Maybe the bees help move the pollen.
How would the bees do that?
When bees are getting nectar from the flower so that they can make honey, they could get some pollen on their legs and then move it up to the pistil.
Fascinating. Why do you think it works that way?
What do you mean?
Well, couldn’t God have made the lily so that the pistil was right next to the stamens or maybe so that the pistil and the stamens were on the very same filament, which is what the long white things with the orange pollen on top are called? Or couldn’t He have made the flower so that the pollen was automatically on the top of the pistil, which is called the stigma?
He could have.
Why didn’t He? What would be different about how this lily makes seeds if the pollen were right next to the stigma or if the pollen were already on the stigma to begin with?
The lily wouldn’t need the bees, and it wouldn’t need the wind. It could make more seeds on its own and wouldn’t need anything else.
What do you think God could be trying to communicate to us through the way He made this lily?
I don’t know.
Think of the lily. Is there something that’s true for the lily that could also be true for us? What could God be telling us?
That we’re not meant to be alone. That we need others to help us.
What are some ways that you need others to help you?…
Depending upon the age and abilities of your class, you could even take this conversation one step further and ask, what does this lily tell us about who God is? Possible answer: That He is not alone. He Himself is eternally in relationship to the other members of the Trinity. He inscribes His relational essence in us humans who are made in His image and likeness and even in the simplest flower, which is fundamentally in relationship with other parts of creation, the bees and the wind.
What began as an attentive gaze at some aspect of creation hurls us toward contemplating the spiritual truths and realities that structure all of existence.
If you decide to incorporate these four questions into one of your lessons, I have two bits of advice. First, be judicious about what lessons you choose and don’t force a spiritual revelation. If your students can’t comprehend what God might be trying to communicate through some element of creation, be it a stargazer lily or a quadratic equation, either share whatever divine communication you perceive as a stepping stone for them to share what they perceive or temporarily let it go and wait for a better time. Perhaps take a step back and walk through the four questions with a work of literature, a speech, a work of art, or a piece of music. Ask your students what they think the artist is trying to communicate to them. Responding to this question while examining human works of art makes it easier for them to discern what the Divine Artist may be trying to communicate to them in the world that surrounds them.
Second, keep in mind that we have a part to play, but it’s not entirely up to us. We can’t fabricate a sacramental imagination by studiously working through the steps of any given process. At some point, God’s enlightening grace has to drop. The scales have to fall from our eyes, and we have to see, not just with the eyes of the ratiocinative mind, but also with the eyes of the heart, why God structured existence in such a way or what He is trying to communicate to us through His creation. We can discipline the habits and thoughts of our students, though, so that they know how to gaze attentively, ask the right questions, and wait patiently for the gift to drop. We can form in them a disposition keen to behold the divine light shining through created things.
In his poem, “Hurrahing in Harvest,” Gerard Manley Hopkins describes the exhilaration that comes when the gift drops and we can clearly see glimmers of God’s own life and truth through the commonplace, physical things around us: “These things, these things were here and but the beholder/ Wanting; which two when they once meet,/The heart rears wings bold and bolder/ And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.”
Hopkins gives us the image of a powerful stallion, whose hooves are making such close contact with the earth that they’re hurling sod out from under the horse’s feet. Yet, even as the sod flies, the stallion picks up speed, until assisted by “bold” wings, he mounts up to heaven. When we embolden the sacramental imaginations of our students, when we foster the habit of looking deeply and regularly into the things of this earth in order to perceive there God’s divine communication, we help them to form wings that will bear them aloft to the place where God dwells. We teach them to see the world with the sacramental vision of saints.