This is the third and final article in a series about how Catholic doctrine and the liturgy enable us to meet the crisis in self-esteem currently found in our society. The first article described how self-esteem should be primarily founded on the doctrine that every human being is made in the image of God and the second article showed how self-esteem thus understood leads us to do good works rather than neglect them. But we still need to discuss how this self-esteem does not lead to becoming trapped in oneself but instead to communion with God and others. Even though certain forms of self-esteem may lead to spiritual or psychological navel-gazing or, in Paul Vitz’s phrase, to a cult of self-worship, this Catholic version instead leads to worshiping the true God and thus to communion with God and his people. The priestly act of offering sacrifice, especially understood within the context of covenant, enables us to see how this is so.
Perfect Covenant
Modern research into the Ancient Near East helps us to understand the dynamics at work in the concept of covenant. Scott Hahn summarizes this research in his book, Letter and Spirit, where he notes that a covenant is an extension of kinship.1 One party extends to another party membership in the family. The party brought into the family now has the benefits and obligations of that membership. Therefore, when a covenant was made, a new family-like communion between persons came about. It is remarkable that God made such covenants with human beings, such as with Adam and Eve upon creating them and with Abraham and his descendants after calling him from his native land. He thus led them into communion with himself as his family. But of course, the perfect covenant that God makes with the human race is through his Son. Through his Son Jesus Christ, he has brought us into the fullest communion with himself. We become his children (e.g., John 1:12) or, to use the patristic expression, we are made “sons in the Son.”
Three elements typically characterized the ratification of a covenant as well as subsequent covenant renewal ceremonies, whether the covenant in question was with God or between human beings. First, the terms of the covenant were solemnly read or recited. The terms described what being a member of the family entailed and what were the blessings of keeping those terms as well as the curses of breaking them. The second element was ritual sacrifice, such as the offering of animal sacrifice. And third, there was often a communal meal that partook of what was sacrificed—thus, if a bull was sacrificed, the meal would consist of the bull. We see these elements par excellence in the Mass, with the Scriptures providing the terms of being God’s people, the offering of Christ’s Body and Blood being the sacrifice, and Holy Communion being the sacred meal that partakes of the sacrificial victim. Moreover, if we recall the principle that there should be a continuity between the liturgy and life, then we may expect to find parallels to these elements in the Christian life. I believe that is the case and, by showing how, we can see how the kind of self-esteem being described leads us to communion with God and his people.
Elemental Esteem
The first element—the terms of the covenant—corresponds to self-esteem. In the first article we noted that the primary reason to think well of oneself is that one is made in the image of God and therefore has the amazing potential to share in God’s life. Another way of speaking about being made in God’s image and having this potential is to say that the law of God is written in our hearts. That is, we can read in our hearts the precepts that, if followed, bring about communion with God. Thus, saying that one sees the law of God in one’s heart amounts to saying that one sees that we are made in the image of God and have the capacity for communion with God. The self-esteem described here is based on seeing the dignity of all this—the image of God, the capacity for God, and now we may add, the law of God within ourselves. Yet, the law of God in our hearts corresponds to the terms of the covenant. It too gives the conditions for living in communion with God. So, if self-esteem arises from seeing the dignity of having this law within us, it corresponds to reciting the terms of the covenant.
The next element is offering sacrifice. Here we turn to St. Augustine’s teaching that the sacrifices of old were signs of the true sacrifices that God wants, namely, works of mercy.2 In speaking of “works of mercy,” Augustine is drawing on Christ’s teaching per Hosea that it is mercy that God wants, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13, Hosea 6:6). Augustine interprets this to mean that the sacrifice God desires is that one act mercifully toward others, which is fulfilled by loving one’s neighbor, and act mercifully toward oneself, which is fulfilled by avoiding evil and loving God. These acts of mercy are, in short, good deeds. We are speaking here of good actions in the broad sense. Thus, they can be positive deeds (e.g., giving to the poor) or negative ones (e.g., refraining from gossip), external acts (e.g., visiting the sick) or internal ones (e.g., making a quiet act of trust in God). When we do such acts for God’s sake, we are offering true sacrifices. Notice, moreover, how this follows upon the self-esteem that comes from reading the law of God in our hearts. Doing these good works and offering them to God is fulfilling the law of God, which is summarized by love of God and love of neighbor.
Further, when offered to God, these good works express our gratitude for God’s gifts. God’s gifts may be understood in terms of the good works themselves. A good work is a gift from God because it relies on God’s grace. Without grace we would not have the strength to do a work that contributes to our salvation. Also, a good work is a gift of God’s providence, which provided the opportunity for doing it. As St. Paul says, “God prepared [good works] beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). But in the most fundamental way, a good work is a gift of how God made us. When he made us in his image, he gave us a rational nature by which we may do good works. Therefore, by doing good works, we show forth, or express, our rational nature and, in turn, that we are made in God’s image. In other words, our good works express that we have been wonderfully made by God, capable of doing good works and of sharing in his life. Being made in his image is the wonderful gift that we ultimately express and give thanks for when we do good deeds for love of him.
This leads us to the third element, the meal that partakes of the sacrificial offering. The parallel in the Christian life is when we enjoy with God the good work, i.e., the sacrifice, we have offered him. We know that God enjoys, or is pleased with, the good work offered to him (see Hebrews 13:16). But we too are pleased with it, not in the sense that we arrogantly enjoy it as if patting ourselves on the back in self-congratulation. Rather, we enjoy the good works we do in the manner just described, namely, as thankful expressions of being wonderfully made in God’s image. Therefore, when one does a good work for God, one brings before God with gratitude the wonder of being made in his image and, in turn, God and the person mutually enjoy this. This mutual enjoyment corresponds to the communal meal that partakes of what was sacrificed.
Complete Share of Perfect Joy
Notice the movement from seeing the dignity within us to wanting to enjoy that dignity with God. Seeing the dignity within us corresponds to self-esteem and, as mentioned above, it is like reading the terms of the covenant in our hearts, that is, seeing within us the law that promises its adherents familial communion with God. But it is not enough to see and enjoy by ourselves the wonder of the dignity within us. We want to bring it before God, in order to enjoy it with God. And the way we bring the wonder of our being before God is by doing good works, since these express the fact that we are wonderfully made. This movement follows a basic dynamic in human life, namely, that when we enjoy something, we want to make the joy complete by sharing it with others. We therefore tell others about the great movie or sports game we saw, or about a song we heard and enjoyed. The language of completing our joy comes from 1 John 1:4 which speaks of sharing the gospel in order “that our joy may be complete.” Likewise, when we see the great dignity within us of being made in God’s image, we do not want to enjoy this by ourselves. No, we want to share our joy with him who gave us the great gift. It is like a child who is given a toy airplane by his father, and who then wants to show the plane to his father, so that he may complete his joy by sharing the gift with his father. Each of us has been given the great gift of being made in the image of God and we want to bring the joy of this gift—the joy of being wonderfully made and loved by God—to God, so that we may enjoy it with him. Then our joy will be complete.
Offering good works to God as our sacrifices is the key to bringing the gift before God, so that we may enjoy it with him. The problem is that our sacrifices of good works are imperfect. They are marred by self-centeredness, narrowness, and other faults and, therefore, they do not fully bring before God the wonder of our being, so as to be fully enjoyed with him. But there is a good work that perfectly does this. It is the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. His self-offering was the perfect good deed, that is, the act that perfectly fulfills love of God in total self-gift to the Father, and love of neighbor in accomplishing our salvation. Jesus’ good work on the cross, therefore, perfectly fulfills the terms of the covenant, which are summarized in love of God and love of neighbor, and it perfectly leads to familial communion with God the Father.
By the wonderful and merciful design of God, we are able to make this perfect sacrifice our own through the Holy Mass, so that we may fulfill the covenant and have communion with God and his people. We can do so when the priest offers the Body and Blood of Christ in the Mass. Then he is offering Christ on behalf of Christ, so that we may join ourselves to Christ’s perfect offering; he is also offering us, on our behalf, within Christ’s perfect offering. In the priest’s offering we see both the sacrifice of Christ and our sacrifice in Christ. And we therefore have in the priest’s offering the way in which self-esteem, built on seeing how wonderfully God has made us, leads us beyond ourselves to communion with God and his holy ones.
This is the third installment in the series, Doctrine, Liturgy, and Self-Esteem. The previous posts in the series can be found here: Doctrine, Liturgy, and Self-Esteem: The Image of God (Part 1); and Doctrine, Liturgy, and Self-Esteem: The Wedding Dress (Part 2).
