Somehow, my first semester freshman year, I weaseled my way into two graduate-level theology electives, both on sacraments. I’m immensely grateful that my orientation advisor let that slide, because the worldview of those two classes has shaped my time at BC and hopefully my life beyond.
In one of those classes, we emphasized the idea that anything in the world can act as a sacrament. Sacraments with an uppercase “S”, as in the seven we formally celebrate, mediate God’s grace to us. A sacrament with a lowercase “s” can be anything that does the same in our lives. Michael Skelley, S.J. develops Karl Rahner’s thoughts on this into a concept he calls the “liturgy of the world.” A piece of art, a piece of music, or a beautiful mountain can all act as sacrament. They bring us God’s grace in the world, and what I love is that ordinary sacraments bring a sense of childlike wonder into an otherwise dark world.
Sacristies have always fascinated me, and I strongly believe that by looking at a sacristy, you can develop a great understanding of the faith community that worships there. It is a place of preparation, of waiting, of messiness. It is a place where those who serve the community set aside as much of their burdens as possible, in order to walk out into the sanctuary and focus solely on being Jesus to the people.
What I love about sacristies is that they don’t often get cleaned. Sure, someone dusts and vacuums occasionally, but there’s so much shuffling in and out of different people and depositing of important things, that objects––sacraments––accumulate. It acts as an archive of sorts. The missal in the corner from 30 years ago? Someone lovely prayed with that until it frayed. The rusty chalice in the cabinet? That was donated in memory of someone special. Those prayer cards that no one knows where they came from? Someone loved this place and its people enough to bring them and leave them here.
The sacristy is a place of in-between, and places of in-between––thin spaces, as many of us at BC like to call it––are sacred. I found this to be true in high school. My school, which is no longer open, put me in charge of the upkeep and organization of our small chapel’s sacristy. It was a treasure trove of our school’s faith history, one that fascinated me for hours during study periods.
There were chalices donated by graduating classes from decades ago, ciborium crafted from clay for the school’s nature camp, and promotional matchboxes from our bingo fundraisers in the ‘60s. Eventually, I dug deep enough to find reliquaries and their corresponding certifications of both the Tunic of Christ and the True Cross. Our school had possessed these relics, rather in plain sight, for decades––and no one was paying attention to the sacramentality of the sacristy enough to notice.
The Liturgy Arts Group, which provides the music for our campus ministries, just returned from our annual retreat this past weekend. And a question that came up as a point of reflection for my small group was the question, “How easily do you fall in love with life?” My life has shifted recently to find joy in the sentiment of this question.
After surviving a serious health crisis in the spring, I am in the process of rebuilding what I think about the world and about life. I am coming out of survival mode to start appreciating the sacramentality of life around me––the way the sun slants and flickers into the Plex pool mid-afternoon, the way a friend laughs, or the way our Torch office gets cozy with friends. I’m starting to appreciate strangers more too––and I think this gets at my fascination with sacristies––I look at Gasson, and I think about the talent of the person who designed it. I think about the quirks of my car, and wonder about the person who loved it before me. I think about the food we eat at LAG dinners and who made it.
Thus, when I walk into a sacristy––and I’ve been a sacristan at four different parishes in my life thus far––I think about the people who loved in this space before me. The ones who shoved those matchboxes away, or the last person to have cleaned that rusty chalice. Maybe there’s an old worship aid from 5 years ago; someone set that down and let it be swept into a drawer because they were engaged in a heartfelt conversation with a fellow human. The messiness is where our humanity lies. But messiness lends itself to beauty, to sacramentality. Who carved that crucifix above the altar with care? Who sewed that altar cloth with intention? Who lovingly laid those slabs of marble knowing that hundreds of people would worship on top of it?
So, I pose yet another question––how easily do you fall in love with life? Take that childlike wonder, the spirit of the liturgy of the world, and the messiness of the sacristy as your starting point. It’s time to fall in love with God’s grace around you.
Previously the Campus News Editor and Catholicism 101 Editor, Olivia dabbles in The Torch’s writing and photography. She is a senior studying theology and applied psychology and human development with a minor in journalism. She is unashamedly passionate about youth ministry, Haiti, all things charismatic, the Oxford comma, and CatholicTV––where she can often be found as an on-camera news reporter or host of the To the Heights podcast.
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