181. Signs and Symbols in the Church

Signs and Symbols in the Church

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 181

Ave Maria series

181  Why are there so many signs and symbols in the liturgies?

God knows that we men are not only spiritual but also bodily creatures; we need signs and symbols in order to perceive and describe spiritual or interior realities.  [1145-1152]

Symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. …..181

Whether it is red roses, a wedding ring, black clothing, graffiti, or AIDS armbands—we always express our interior realities through signs and are understood immediately.  The incarnate Son of God gives us human signs in which he is loving and active among us: bread and wine, the water of Baptism, the anointing with the Holy Spirit.  Our response to God’s sacred signs instituted by Christ consists in signs of reverence: genuflecting, standing while listening to the Gospel, bowing, folding our hands.  And as though for a wedding we decorate the place of God’s presence with the most beautiful things we have: flowers, candles, and music.  In any case, signs also require words to interpret them.

And one (of the angels) called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”  Isaiah 6:3

“Symbols are the language of something invisible spoken in the visible world:  Gertrude von le Fort (1876-1971)

“I consider the language of symbols to be the only foreign language that every one of us ought to learn.”  Erich Fromm (1900-1980, psychoanalyst)

[1145-1152]

HOW IS THE LITURGY CELEBRATED?

Signs and symbols

1145  A sacramental celebration is woven from signs and symbols. In keeping with the divine pedagogy of salvation, their meaning is rooted in the work of creation and in human culture, specified by the events of the Old Covenant and fully revealed in the person and work of Christ. –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

1146  Signs of the human world.   In human life, signs and symbols occupy an important place. As a being at once body and spirit, man expresses and perceives spiritual realities through physical signs and symbols. As a social being, man needs signs and symbols to communicate with others, through language, gestures, and actions. The same holds true for his relationship with God. –CCC

1147 God speaks to man through the visible creation. The material cosmos is so presented to man's intelligence that he can read there traces of its Creator.( compare Wisdom 13:1; Romans 1:19 f.; Acts of the Apostles 14:17)¹⁶ Light and darkness, wind and fire, water and earth, the tree and its fruit speak of God and symbolize both his greatness and his nearness. –CCC

1148 Inasmuch as they are creatures, these perceptible realities can become means of expressing the action of God who sanctifies men, and the action of men who offer worship to God. The same is true of signs and symbols taken from the social life of man: washing and anointing, breaking bread and sharing the cup can express the sanctifying presence of God and man's gratitude toward his Creator. –CCC

1149 The great religions of mankind witness, often impressively, to this cosmic and symbolic meaning of religious rites. The liturgy of the Church presupposes, integrates and sanctifies elements from creation and human culture, conferring on them the dignity of signs of grace, of the new creation in Jesus Christ. –CCC

1150 Signs of the covenant. The Chosen People received from God distinctive signs and symbols that marked its liturgical life. These are no longer solely celebrations of cosmic cycles and social gestures, but signs of the covenant, symbols of God's mighty deeds for his people. Among these liturgical signs from the Old Covenant are circumcision, anointing and consecration of kings and priests, laying on of hands, sacrifices, and above all the Passover. The Church sees in these signs a prefiguring of the sacraments of the New Covenant. –CCC

1151 Signs taken up by Christ. In his preaching the Lord Jesus often makes use of the signs of creation to make known the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. ( compare Luke 8:10)¹⁷ He performs healings and illustrates his preaching with physical signs or symbolic gestures. (compare John 9:6; Mark 7:33 ff.; Mk 8:22 ff)¹⁸ He gives new meaning to the deeds and signs of the Old Covenant, above all to the Exodus and the Passover, (compare Luke 9:31; Lk 22:7-20)¹⁹ for he himself is the meaning of all these signs. –CCC

1152  Sacramental signs. Since Pentecost, it is through the sacramental signs of his Church that the Holy Spirit carries on the work of sanctification. The sacraments of the Church do not abolish but purify and integrate all the richness of the signs and symbols of the cosmos and of social life. Further, they fulfill the types and figures of the Old Covenant, signify and make actively present the salvation wrought by Christ, and prefigure and anticipate the glory of heaven. –CCC

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