Outward Sign

Q. What is a sacrament?

A. A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.

My mind sometimes wanders at church. Does yours? Today, after the readings, a small baby was baptized. I was looking at the adults holding the little one, all bedecked in a white satin gown and cap, and was struck by how very young the grownups themselves looked. I didn’t know any of them. My mind wandered. Which ones were the parents of the baby? Well, that was fairly obvious. Who were the others? Sitting far in the back of the church, my mind worked away, trying to fit these young adults into my mental matrix of local connections. Father anointed the baby on the chest and the moment had arrived for the water to be poured on the baby's forehead. I expected the baby to cry.

Just about then there was a stir in the front row on the opposite side of the church. Teresa, a woman I know, was attending to somebody I couldn't see. Ed, who should have been up in the choir loft with my husband at that moment, came walking along the side wall and spoke to Linda, a retired nurse, and she went up to the front. Her husband Mike, a volunteer firefighter, followed her. I could see both Teresa and Ed moving around. Mike walked back up the side aisle and out the back door of the church a moment later. I thought of following him and offering him my cell phone, but decided that he looked as if he had things well in hand. I leaned over and told my elderly mother what was going on.

The baptism had evidently concluded while I was distracted and the next time I saw Father, he had walked across the front of the sanctuary. His mike was still live and I heard him say the words of the Sacrament of the Sick as he anointed whoever had gone down. My hand went to my mouth.

The choir began singing that beautiful hymn, "Be Not Afraid, I Go Before You Always," and it brought tears to my eyes, considering the circumstances. I thought about being stricken, perhaps seriously, and the comfort of the anointing, the materials for which just happened to be out and available from the Baptism, and the encouragement of the congregation, just happening to sing that particular song.

By the time the hymn had concluded, the EMT's had arrived. Father cracked a joke about how it was time for the most important part of the Mass, the collection. I whispered to Mom that if you had to get sick, Mass was a pretty good place to do it. Evidently the patient, whom I'd decided was likely Mrs. Smith, a frail elderly woman whom Teresa is very good about bringing to church, had not needed or had declined transport. I had been expecting the EMT's to bring a gurney down the main aisle and was mentally planning to use an alternate route to go to Communion, but it wasn't necessary. Father walked over and gave Communion to Teresa and the invisible patient.

As Mom and I walked up the aisle to Communion, I saw that the patient was indeed Mrs. Smith, who lost her husband a few years ago and who had lost a grandson recently in a terrible accident. Her color was awful. She must have fainted. Teresa, who never strikes me as the most tender of people, had her arm around Mrs. Smith, who rested her head on Teresa's shoulder. Teresa in turn rested her head atop Mrs. Smith’s. I remembered that Teresa had lost her own mother a few years ago.

As I said at the beginning, sometimes my mind wanders during Mass. Today at least I was struck by the sacramental nature of everything that had happened: the tiny baby being received into the church, the older person comforted by the sacraments, the singing of that particular hymn by the church community, the sharing of the Eucharist together.

Sometimes all that stuff we talk about in the abstract becomes perfectly visible. That, I suppose, is exactly how an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace fills our hearts, fills the church, and fills the world.