Words as sacramental

David Brown and Ann Loades have argued that words are sacramental in the sense that they enable participating in something beyond themselves[1]. They offer this brief working definition of the term “sacramental”: “By the sacramental is commonly understood the physical or material mediating that which is beyond itself, the spiritual; in the familiar definition, ‘the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’.”[2]

John Keble spoke of poetry’s “wealth of symbols and similies” under the influence of religion partaking “(I might almost say) of the nature of sacraments”[3].

Brown and Loades cite the example George Steiner, who, in Real Presences, contra Derrida and Deconstructionism “maintains that literature gains its power precisely through the sense of presence within it of something beyond itself, or, putting matters the other way around, through its ability to disclose a transcendence beyond itself.”[4] They quote V. Cunningham: says: “The question of presence, of what is made really present or not, in writing and reading, is, as Eliot knew and George Steiner keeps insisting, of course theological and biblical… The issue is, in the end, sacramental; the table at which the literary parasite sits looks oddly akin to a eucharistic one.”[5]

 

Brown and Loades want to to engage the readers’ interest in the way in which words (including Christ as the Word) function sacramentally, and thus break down what we see as the false contrast between material symbol and verbal image.”[6]

Brown and Loades conclude:

Whether within the biblical text or beyond, words can and do thus function sacramentally, despite all their apparent clash and dissonance. For it is precisely through meditation upon such  images that our participation in the Word made flesh is most effectively deepened. Chewing the eucharistic elements and chewing the words should thus not be seen as opposed activities. Words, no less than the Word himself, can be fully sacramental. The divine Poet whose Word shaped the language of creation also thereby made possible the words – the human poetry – that describe that creation, and it is these words that enable us to participate in the Word as their source and ours. If Dorothy Sayers is right, Dante combined the incarnate Christ with the books of the Bible in a single eucharistic procession: Word, words and sacrament all as one. Whether a correct account or not, it was a wise intuition.[7]

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[1] David Brown and Ann Loades (ed.s), Christ: The Sacramental Word: Incarnation, Sacrament and Poetry (London, SPCK, 1996), p4.

[2] Brown and Loades, Christ, p4

[3] John Keble, Lectures on Poetry (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912) vol II, 480, quoted in Brown and Loades, Christ, p14

[4] Brown and Loades, Christ, p16

[5] V. Cunningham, Reading Gaol (Oxford, Blackwell, 1994) p393 quoted in Brown and Loades, p17

[6] Brown and Loades, Christ, pix

[7] Brown and Loades, Christ, pp19-20