"Coffee is not a vice; it is a sign that God loves us!"
A few years ago, I ended up in the emergency room with chest pains. In talking to the young intern, I told him that coffee was my greatest vice -- and he immediately replied with the words above. I have often looked back with laughter on his remark, but also with reflection on all the "signs" that God loves us.
Of course, Jesus Christ Himself is THE GREAT SIGN of God's love for the human race. He was so passionate about being "with us" (Emmanuel) that He took on human form to walk amongst us, to sit at table with us, to get in the boat with us, to heal, to teach, to console and comfort, to ensure that we would never be alone. He is the great Sacrament of God's love -- not just a sign, but a visible reality of invisible grace.
We live in a world of sacraments -- signs that God loves us and cares for us. The world itself is a sacrament in this sense: the breeze rippling across the waters; the sun coming up each day, the trees that clean our air and provide shade from the heat of the day..... As the children of Israel escaped from Egypt and moved across the desert, God provided for them a "pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day" -- both sacraments or signs of his love, as the fire overcame the chill of the desert at night and the cloud protected them from the blistering sun by day.
And we, too, if we are children of God, are sacraments to one another, providing shelter from the cruel winds of loneliness and isolation; food to the hungry; comfort to the sorrowing; friendship to the forgotten prisoner. God is extending His passionate love for mankind through the sacrament of our lives. St. Francis prayed, "Lord, make me a channel of your peace....." In order for us to be channels of peace, signs of God's love, we must first know His love for us. Only then can we escape the Egypt of our own slavery to sin and isolation and become signs of God's love to the world.
God said to Abraham: I will bless you and you will be a blessing -- not only to his own family (it always starts there), but to his nation and to all peoples of the world. Abraham's life is a blessing extended throughout the ages to all faiths and peoples. But following him is a whole host of those whose lives are blessings -- all the patriarchs of Israel, all the prophets and leaders of the nation, whose passion for peace and justice prepared the way for the Savior. And after Him, His Spirit fills the earth in all those whose lives have become sacraments, or "signs that God loves us."
The lives of the saints, the great mystics, philosophers, and theologians; the artists and musicians, the ones who feed the hungry and die as martyrs for righteousness, politicians and lawyers, teachers and parents --- all signs that "God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that those who believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
The Catholic church embodies a procession of Seven Sacraments -- formal signposts on our journey through life: Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Eucharist, Holy Orders, Matrimony, and Sacrament of the Sick. These formal Sacraments are designed to form us into living sacraments, or channels of God's grace to a hurting world. These are stops along the way, where we can pause and hear the very words of God to us: I will bless you and you will be a blessing!
Abraham heard these words once -- at the beginning of his journey to the Promised Land. But though the words were said only once, the blessings continued day by day along the way -- through sin and obedience -- until they were fulfilled. And we too, hear the words only once, twice, six or seven times throughout our lives -- but the blessings are continuous as we live out the nearness of Jesus Christ in our lives. If we are truly blessed by the continuous presence and aid of God on our journey, we too will eventually become signs/ sacraments of God's love poured out on a hurting world.
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