As Christians, when we think at all of how the sacraments "work", we tend to have more or less vague notions that they somehow connect us to Jesus.  However, Jesus is part of a Trinitarian God, and the efficacy of sacraments means that they connect us to the Father, through the risen Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  

For today's celebration of Trinity Sunday, we look at some insights into how the liturgy expresses Trinitarian theology.  They are contained in an essay by Roman Catholic theologian Susan K Wood.  It is found in the excellent reference The Cambridge Guide to the Trinity, Peter C Phan, ed, Cambridge University Press, 2011.  The excerpt below is found on pp 383-384. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The movement of God's saving action and our response are related to two essential liturgical elements, anamnesis and epiclesis.  Anamnesis, translated as "memorial", "commemoration," or "remembrance", actually has the much stronger meaning of making present an event or person from the past.  Anamnesis asks God to remember his saving work in Jesus Christ in order that the benefits of Christ's sacrifice may be made present to the faithful here and now.   These deeds are actually made present in the liturgy in the anamnesis, not as a repetition of his saving deeds or as a mere recollection of them, but as an actualization of them within the modality of sacramental sign.   The anamnesis is accomplished through the work of the Spirit, who "awakens the memory of the Church then inspires thanksgiving and praise." 

The epiclesis is a calling on the Spirit to transform the material of creation and make it salvific in its sacramental use.  Sacraments are effective because they are Christ's action, made present through the power of the Spirit.  Although we may think of the epiclesis primarily in terms of the Eucharist, most of the sacraments, as we shall see, have an epicletic moment.  The Holy Spirit brings us into communion with Christ, effects our spiritual transformation into the image of Christ, both individually and corporately, and constitutes Christ's eccesial body, the corpus mysticum.  Thus the Spirit is the bond of unity in the church and the source of empowerment for service and mission. 

The Father as the source and end of all blessings of creation and salvation is the source and goal of the liturgy, which reveals and communicates the divine blessing.  We receive these blessings through the incarnate Word of the Father, who, in turn, pours out the gift of the Spirit.  The liturgy offers adoration, praise, and thanksgiving to the Father by offering to the Father his own gifts, especially the gift of his Son.  The Spirit "recalls and makes Christ manifest to the faith of the assembly", "makes Christ present here and now", and "unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ". 

The end or purpose of all the sacraments is reconciliation with the Father and the Father's glorification (Eph 1:12; 2 Cor 3: 18, Jn 17).  The Latin word for sacrament, sacramentum, is a translation of the Greek word mysterion, which refers to God's plan for salvation (Col 1: 26-27).  This plan is the Father's plan "to reconcile to himself all things through Christ, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, who made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col 1: 19-20).  The paschal mystery is the keystone of the Christian mystery.  All the liturgical feasts and sacraments are referenced to the event of Christ's dying and rising and to this great pattern of reconciliation with the Father through Christ in the power of the Spirit.  Thus the liturgical year is not simply a memesis or imitation of Christ's life.  Christmas is primarily about God's Word becoming flesh and dwelling among human beings in order to bring salvation.  Sacraments are not just seven anthropological markers of lifetime passages such as birth, puberty, sickness, and marriage, but relate to the two fundamental sacraments, baptism and Eucharist, in their functions of reconciliation and building up the church as a messianic saving community.  Sacraments give access to participation in this plan of salvation, anamnesis (memorial) and epiclesis being essential to each of them.  Anamnesis recalls the saving event of Jesus' death and resurrection so that it is actually present today, and epiclesis makes it effective through the power of the Spirit.  As Louis-Marie Chauvet has noted, "the sacraments appear not as the somehow static prolongations of the incarnation as such but as the major expression, in our own history, of the embodiment (historical/eschatological) of the risen One in the world through the Spirit, embodiment whose 'fundamental sacrament' is the church visibly born at Pentecost." 

Aside from Pentecostals, many Christians tend to ignore the Holy Spirit.  And this is not a new phenomenon, since an orthodox doctrine of the Spirit was not fully developed until the late 4th century, clearing the way for a firm articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.  English Anglican theologian Alister McGrath has, in fact, referred to the Holy Spirit as "the Cinderella of the Trinity". 

A prayerful solution to this oversight, offered in advance of the upcoming Pentecost Sunday, is the following Litany of the Holy Spirit, the effort of Episcopal priest Michael Marsh.   It appears on his estimable site Interrupting the Silence.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth,
Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the faithful,
Have mercy upon us.

O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God,
Have mercy upon us.

Spirit, intercede for us with sighs too deep for words,
Pray for us.

Spirit, intercede for the saints according to the will of God,
Pray for us.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us.

Blessed N. patron of our parish,
Pray for us.

Holy Spirit, who is equal to the Father and the Son,
Keep us in eternal life.

Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father,
Enter our hearts.

Holy Spirit, who has spoken through the Prophets,
Open our ears.

Holy Spirit, who enlightens and strengthens for your service,
Dwell in us.

Holy Spirit, who in the beginning moved and brooded over the face of the waters,
Move and brood over our lives.

Holy Spirit, who is God's life-giving breath,
Breathe in us.

Holy Spirit, who blew through the Valley of Dry Bones giving life,
Enliven us.

Holy Spirit, who overshadowed Mary that she might give birth to the Son of God,
Grace us to give birth to the divine in our time and place.

Holy Spirit, who rested on Jesus at his baptism,
Rest upon us and renew our baptismal life.

Holy Spirit, who as a tongue of fire rested on and filled the apostles,
Burn in us with the power of your love.

Holy Spirit, who descended on the day of Pentecost,
Unite us in the confession of one faith.

Holy Spirit, who descended on the day of Pentecost,
Empower us to serve you as a royal priesthood.

Holy Spirit, who descended on the day of Pentecost,
Encourage us to preach the gospel to all nations.

Come Holy Spirit,
Our souls inspire.

Spirit of understanding,
Come.

Spirit of counsel,
Come.

Spirit of fortitude,
Come.

Spirit of knowledge,
Come.

Spirit of piety,
Come.

Spirit of Godly fear,
Come.

With the fruit of love,
Fill us.

With the fruit of joy,
Fill us.

With the fruit of peace,
Fill us.

With the fruit of patience,
Fill us.

With the fruit of generosity,
Fill us.

With the fruit of gentleness,
Fill us.

With the fruit of self-control,
Fill us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
Send us the Advocate.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
Send us the Spirit of Truth.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
Send us the Holy Spirit.

V:  Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,
R:  And kindle in them the fire of your love.

V:  Send forth your Spirit, Lord, and they shall be created,
R:  And you shall renew the face of the earth.

O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth who are present everywhere, filling all things, Treasury of Good and Giver of Life,
Come and dwell in us, cleanse us of every stain, and save our souls, O Good One.

Holy Spirit, you came as Christ own first gift for those who believe, that we might no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us:  Complete his work in the world and bring to fulfillment the sanctification of all.  Amen.

Almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless and keep us, Amen.

In The Wisdom of the Desert Thomas Merton addresses the stereotype of the monk as spiritual superman, a kind of angel in a habit.  Merton's own life was human, at times all too human.  The desert fathers are relevant to us because, paradoxically, they sought solitude so that they could become themselves.  The excerpt is on pp 479-480 of  A Thomas Merton Reader, ed Thomas P McDonnell, Doubleday 1989.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The desert fathers insisted on remaining human and "ordinary".  This may seem to be a paradox, but it is very important.  If we reflect a moment, we will see that to fly into the desert in order to be extraordinary is only to carry the world with you as an explicit standard of comparison.  The result would be nothing but self-contemplation, and self-comparison with the negative standard of the world one had abandoned.  Some of the monks of the Desert did this, as a matter of fact:  and the only fruit of their trouble was that they went out of their heads.  The simple men who lived their lives out to a good old age among the rocks and sands only did so because they had come into the desert to be themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that divided them from themselves.  There can be no other valid reason for seeking solitude or for leaving the world.  And thus to leave the world, is, in fact, to help save it in saving oneself.  This is the final point, and it is an important one.  The Coptic hermits who left the world as though escaping from a wreck, did not merely intend to save themselves.  They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage.  But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different.  Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.

This is their paradoxical lesson for our time.  It would perhaps be too much to say that the world needs another movement such as that which drew these men into the deserts of Egypt and Palestine.  Ours is certainly a time for solitaries and for hermits.  But merely to reproduce the simplicity, austerity, and prayer of these primitive souls is not a complete or satisfactory answer.  We must transcend them, and transcend all those who, since their time, have gone beyond the limits which they set.  We must liberate ourselves, in our own way, from involvement in a world that is plunging to disaster.  But our world is different from theirs.  Our involvement in it is more complete.  Our danger is far more desperate.  Our time, perhaps, is shorter than we think.

We cannot do exactly what they did.  But we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the domination of alien compulsions, to find our true selves, to discover and develop our inalienable spiritual liberty and use it to build, on earth, the Kingdom of God.  This is not the place in which to speculate what our great and mysterious vocation might involve.  That is still unknown.  Let it suffice for me to say that we need to learn from these men of the fourth century how to ignore prejudice, defy compulsion, and strike out fearlessly into the unknown.

The resurgence in popularity of  Gnostic writings over the past several decades is somewhat puzzling, given the Gnostic disparagement of matter and the rampant materialism of Western popular culture.  I suspect Gnosticism's interest  for contemporary people lies mainly in its  appeal to self-absorption and its thumbing of the nose at institutional religion.  The extreme contempt for the body, for sexuality, and for matter in general is conveniently overlooked by 21st-century enthusiasts, who may more accurately be described as practicing pop-Gnosticism or Gnostic-lite. Needless to say, there is no place for bodily resurrection in either ancient or modern Gnosticism.

A good explication of the contrasting Gnostic and orthodox Christian views of embodiment is found in Resurrection:  the power of God for Christians and Jews, by Kevin J Madigan and Jon D Levenson (Yale 2008), a study of how the notion of resurrection originated in Judaism and became a central tenet of both it and Christianity.  The excerpt below is found on pp 231-233.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tertullian makes the important observation that most doubts about the resurrection begin with complaints about the flesh itself.  Of the Gnostics, he writes:  "Their great burden is...everywhere an invective against the flesh:  against its origins, its substance, against the casualties   and the invariable enf which await it; unclean from its first formation from the dregs of the ground, uncleaner afterwards from the mire of its own seminal transmission; worthless, weak, covered with guilt, laden with misery, full of trouble, and after all this record of its degradation dropping into its original earth and the appellation of a corpse and destined to dwindle away even from this loathsome name." 

Tertullian's response arises from the intuition that the flesh derives its dignity not from its intrinsic properties but from being the work of God.  It is God's molding and selection of the flesh that makes it worthy.  Thus it is both the dignity and the skill of the maker that give the flesh nobility and splendor.  So artistically is humankind created that it becomes impossible to distinguish flesh and spirit.  Drawing on Christological language about the relation of the divine and human in the incarnate Christ, Tertullian observes of humanity:  "so intimate is the union, that it may be deemed to be uncertain whether the flesh bears about the soul, or the soul the flesh; whether the flesh acts as servant to the soul or the soul to the flesh."  Besides, had not both testaments of the scriptures magnified the flesh?  Had not Isaiah declared, "all flesh, as one, shall behold [the Presence of the Lord]" (Isa 40:5).  Had not Paul called our bodies temples of the Lord, members of Christ? (1 Cor 6:19).  In their argument that the material creation cannot be redeemed, the Gnostics typically use Paul's point that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 15:50), as Irenaeus points out.  But Tertullian argues, it is not the substance of the flesh that Paul railed against, but its actions.  What is more, if flesh were not raised, would not death have preserved victory over that which God had created and hallowed?  Soul and body had acted coordinately in sinning and in doing good, and for justice to prevail, they must be judged together at the end of time, as both Jews (excepting the Sadducees, Tertullian  notes) and Christians believe.  At the end of time, the body will be changed; it will be incorruptible.  But it will be a fleshly body that will rise.  For Irenaeus the proof of this is in the raising of Jesus with the body that preserved the nail wounds, proof that we, too, would be raised in our bodies.

For orthodox writers like Tertullian and Irenaeus, it is the Gnostics and not the gospel of Jesus Christ that is negative regarding the body.  The Gnostic dismissal of the fleshly resurrection of the dead is but one symptom, though perhaps the most important one, of their inability to appreciate God's handiwork.

These second-century Christian writers are well aware that some of the scriptures, such as Colossians and parts of the letters of John, speak of the resurrection as a present reality, rather than an event of the end time.  These were particularly popular texts among the Gnostics.  But both Tertullian and Irenaeus use the same texts against the Gnostics in order to emphasize that there is a future, and bodily, dimension to resurrection.  Thus Tertullian quotes 1 John 3:2:  "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed."  He quotes other texts to the same effect.  John and Paul also speak of a future bodily resurrection.  Does not Paul say, "He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself" (Phil 3:21).  Although our flesh will undergo change, in other words, its substance will be preserved.  The notion that resurrection would be purely spiritual was wrongheaded and based on a misunderstanding of the scriptures, particularly Paul.  When Paul spoke of the human as a temple of the spirit, he was not referring to soul only but simply to the notion that it was an integral human being, body and soul, who became such a dwelling place for God.

Both Tertullian and Irenaeus go to some pains to argue against a view of salvation that is understood strictly in terms of the survival or salvation of the soul.  Again, the Gnostic message is in the background.  Both the Gnostics and the orthodox agreed that the soul would be "safe" after death, that is, that by virtue of its intrinsic immortality, it would survive and be saved.  What was at issue was whether that which was subject to decay and destruction--the flesh--would similarly be saved.  The Gnostics denied it would.  But the orthodox Christian view of God's creation, of human nature, and of justice could not allow for this partial understanding of salvation.  As the orthodox saw it, the texture of humanity was a seamless, invisible work of art, composed of flesh and soul--very much like the view of the rabbis we examined in the previous chapter.  God will reward the blessed, body and soul.  "How could we be blessed", Tertullian asks, "if any part of us were to perish?"  Only if the whole person, both elements of which were created by God, were raised could humanity be redeemed and justice achieved.  Also crucial, again, is the presumption of God's stupendous power.  As Irenaeus sums up the case, "For if He does not vivify what is mortal, and does not bring back the corruptible to incorruption, He is not a God of power."  Had the Gnostics not read Paul?  God would, in the end, clothe our perishable bodies in imperishability, our mortal bodies in immortality, and death would be swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:54).

For Good Friday I offer two examples from Caroline divines representing the best of classical Anglicanism:  Lancelot Andrewes and Jeremy Taylor.  From a post on Catholicity and Covenant.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Lancelot Andrewes, Good Friday Sermon 1597

Inasmuch as His heart is pierced, and His side opened; the opening of the one, and the piercing of the other, is to the end somewhat may flow forth.  To which end, saith St Augustine, 'the Apostle was well advised when he used the word opening, for there issued out water and blood.  Mark it running out, and suffer it not to waste, but receive it.  Of the former, the water, the Prophet speaketh, that out of His pierced side God 'opened a fountain of water to the House of Israel for sin and for uncleanness of the fullness whereof we all have received in the Sacrament of Baptism.  Of the latter, the blood, which the Prophet calleth 'the blood of the New Testament', we may receive this day; for it will run in the high and holy mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ.  There may we be partakers of flesh of the Morning Hart, as upon this day killed.  There may we be partakers of 'the cup of salvation', the precious blood, which was shed for the remission of sins.  And shall we always receive grace, even streams of grace issuing from Him that is pierced.

Jeremy Taylor, The Great Exemplar

And now behold the priest and sacrifice of all the world laid upon the altar of the cross, bleeding and tortured, and dying to reconcile His Father to us:  and was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron.  The crown of thorns was his mitre, the cross his pastoral staff, the nails piercing his hands were instead of rings, the ancient ornaments of priests and his flesh rased and chequered with blue and blood, instead of the parti-coloured robes.  This object calls for our devotion, our love and our eucharist to our dearest Lord. 
.

Given the trendiness of "Celtic spirituality", one does not expect to hear the word "penitence" mentioned in conjunction with it.  On this St Patrick's day, which falls, as always,  during Lent, we can stand to delve into how the actual Celtic church dealt with sin and repentance.  There exist a number of "penitentials", manuscripts listing sins and recommended penances, which were written to advise priests and other spiritual masters in dealing with those needing to morally unburden themselves.  If one is only familiar with the sort of Celtic spirituality found in New Age bookstores, these penitentials are likely to come as a rude shock.  One such penance, for example, consisted in standing up to one's neck in the sea in the middle of the night while reciting Psalm 119 (the longest) in its entirety. 

But the Christian Celts were not merely obsessed with sin as a bad deed earning demerits.  Irish Roman Catholic priest Liam Tracey, OSM, deals with broader issues in an article appearing in Thinking Faith, the online journal of the British Jesuits. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of the Irish Church to the Christian tradition is one that is usually ignored by most popular treatments of 'Celtic Spirituality'.  That is the contribution made to the Sacrament of Penance and its codification in the genre of literature called the Penitentials, sometimes seen just as lists of sins and their appropriate penances, but perhaps more to be understood as part of the pastoral care of the Church...In the fifth and sixth centuries, right across Western Christianity, the normal modes of celebrating the Sacrament of Penance had broken down.  The system of public penance that was normative for serious sinners, which was modelled on the system of the catechumenate and seen as a second baptism, was rarely practiced.  As this system was a once off, a singular second chance, many people delayed approaching the sacrament until the end of their lives.  The realm of God's forgiving love and mercy was lost in practice.  The Irish had their own particular way of dealing with this pastoral issue that brought them into conflict with other mainland Churches.  The Irish, drawing from their background in monasticism and the great monastic teacher John Cassian, saw sin not so much as a crime but rather as something that impedes the development of a full Christian life.  One's soul friend would enable one to root out such imperfection, very often by replacing a 'vice' with a 'virtue'.  A soul friend is not just a relationship of friendship, it is much more one of mentor and disciple.  Not unique to the Irish, it became one of the most distinguishing features of their practice of monasticism.  The goal of the Christian life is conversion, and to ever deepen one's conversion to Christ.  The role of the soul friend is to help the Christian to remove what may be a block on that road.  The penitentials began in this atmosphere and are an attempt to codify the teachings and insights of these spiritual guides.  Yes, it does lead to an increasing individualistic sense of sin that has little contact with a concrete community.  It moves penance into a more private setting but it does also see sin as less than a crime and more as a sickness that needs treatment and the intervention of a skilled person, the soul friend.  also important for the Irish practice is what seems to be an Irish tradition--that of reparation.  This is where the offense to a person or group is offset by the payment of a fine by the guilty party.  Each offense has a particular price and it is easy to see how this notion could make its way into an already existing monastic practice.  The clash between the Irish system of penance and the Continental ones may also be read as a clash between and older Roman world and a newer emerging North European one.

For the last Sunday in Epiphany season, the gospel reading for the Eucharist is always one of the synoptic accounts of the Transfiguration.  This is in part because the Transfiguration has traditionally been considered a prefiguring of the Resurrection of Jesus, which in turn is a prefiguring of the resurrection of us all at the eschaton, the end of time.  Common to all of these is the manifestation of uncreated light, which is divinity made visible. 

An excellent resource for this topic is The Uncreated Light by Solrunn Nes (Eerdmans 2007).  Nes, a Norwegian Roman Catholic iconographer, examines icons of the Transfiguration from both artistic and theological perspectives.  The oldest known representation of the event is found in the church of St Catherine's monastery at the foot of Mt Sinai.  It was made under the sponsorship of the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the 6th century.  On pp 69-71, Nes discusses the Transfiguration as eschatological sign.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When we turn our attention from the representation of Moses on the triumphal arch to the scene of the Transfiguration in the apse, we again are met by Moses.  The same Moses, who, on Sinai, sought to see the transcendent God face to face, is shown on Tabor conversing face to face with he who "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature" (Heb 1:3).  Moses has reached his goal.  Together with Elijah he refers to the Old Covenant, confirms the New Covenant and points toward the contemplation of God in the age to come.

John Chrysostom (344-407) dwells on the idea of a gradual revelation of the mystery when he interprets the theophany at Sinai as a prefiguration of the theophany at Tabor which again is a prefiguration of the second coming of Christ.   In a homily on the Transfiguration this eschatological aspect is described in the following way:
But if we will, we shall also behold Christ, not as they then on the mount, but in far greater brightness.  For not thus shall he come hereafter.  For whereas then, to spare his disciples, he disclosed only so much of his brightness as they were able to bear; hereafter he shall come in the glory of the Father, not with Moses and Elias only, but with the infinite hosts of the angels, with the archangels, with the cherubim, with those infinite tribes, not having a cloud over his head, but even heaven itself being folded up.

What the disciples glimpsed at Tabor will be thoroughly unfolded when the uncreated light breaks through into the created world.  The uncreated light affects everything it touches and transforms the saints into the likeness of that which they see.  The apostle John, who was eyewitness to the transfiguration, emphasizes this future perspective when he writes:  "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).  Dionysius the Areopagite's vision of the glory of the world to come can be understood as a paraphrase in the following text:
when we have arisen incorruptible, immortal, and have attained the blessed Christ-like state, we shall be, as the Scripture says, "for ever with the Lord", filled, through the all-pure and holy contemplation, with the visible manifestation of God himself, shining through us with most radiant splendour, as it shone about the disciples in the Transfiguration.

Here we arrive at the fulfillment of the Christian promise of glory.  The eschatological vision in the coming life is a completion of the mystical vision in this life.