July 26, 2005
Confirmation - have you ridden the jet ski yet? - and other analogies for the sacraments
The Church is like a boat. The boat is the body of Christ. The ramp to board the can be taken when we have two things: 1) Faith that only by Jesus Christ can we enter the boat (He is also the ramp itself) 2) Baptism.
On the boat there are many baptized Christians. Still in the deep wave filled waters are many who have not had the ramp extended to them. A special gift is given to those on the boat. It is a grace and power to reach out to those in the water. This grace and power is the sacrament of Confirmation. This sacrament is a Jet Ski, which allows for easy and powerful access to all those in the deep waters. It makes "ministry" more effective, for it relies on the power of the jet ski (the Holy Spirit) and not on the swimming efforts of the minister. Although any baptized member of the boat can "evangelize" or go out into the waters for ministry, the gift of the jet ski was intended by Christ to give added grace and benefit to all the ministries of the Spirit which St. Paul describes.
Contrarty to popular belief, confirmation is not so much a sacrament of "initiation into adulthood" in the Church as much as it is an addition to baptismal grace and the conferring of ministerial power to do the works of the Lord.
The Boat also boasts other neat gifts. The Sacrament of Holy Orders empowers those who receive it to carry on three very powerful tasks on the boat:
1) Eucharist - the grace of changing bread and wine into some bark on the boat? Remember, the boat is the very body of Christ, both the people on the boat and the very substance of the person of Jesus Christ. The changed bread (and wine) becomes nourishment to those on the boat and serves a very practical role: if you eat part of the boat, you become attached to the boat, making you nearly inseperable from it, which serves you quite well during hurricanes and other external efforts to dismount you from the boat.
2) Sacrament of Reconciliation - Those who have received Holy Orders receive the ability to throw life preservers out into the water to rescue anyone who intentionally jumped off the boat (mortal sin).
3)For those who are sick and/ or dying on the boat, there is a sacrament of "anointing". This sacrament can bring physically healing and always brings forgiveness of sins.
We also find Marriage on the boat. Have you ever rafted with other people down a river? You may be familiar with the "all down" or "tuck" position. In this position, you lock arms with the person next to you in the boat and you both squeeze into the bottom of the boat. Such a position makes nearly any rapid inable to toss you off the raft. Such a tuck and hold is the sacrament of marriage, which binds us so closely to another person on the boat that is quite hard at all for anyone to bump us off.
The Boat is heading to paradise (heaven). However, because the boat is the person of Jesus Christ it is already, in a sense, heaven itself, for Jesus Christ is God. Yet, those on the boat do not see the island of paradise and participate in it as fully as those who have gone before them. For those who die while on the journey, a helicopter escorts them from the boat to the paradise island, assuming of course they still desire this escort service of salvation.
Michael Tigue
http://www.deoomnisgloria.com
www.michaeltigue.com
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