Holiness and the Sacramental Life

CLIFTON  When Catholics receive the Eucharist, pray before the Blessed Sacrament in church, sing hymns at Mass or receive the Oil of the Infirmed on their foreheads in the Anointing of the Sick, they may understand some of the basic theology behind the actions, objects and symbols of the rites of those sacraments. Yet Father Philip-Michael Tangorra, a diocesan priest, invites Catholics to delve deeper in our understanding of the theology of the Sacraments and also into something that we cannot see: the mystical reality of God’s saving grace. That grace, he says, breaks through these sacred rites in the Church and into the whole of Creation to spark “real change in our lives.”

In his book, “Holiness and Living the Sacramental Life,” Father Tangorra, who is studying canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, asserts that the sacraments lie just outside the realm of visibility. They are imbued with mystical powers that are ready to change lives and help “lead us to living ever more in tune with God” — and we need only to let them in. Emmaus Road Publishing in Steubenville, Ohio, will publish the 242-page book — the priest’s first — next month as part of its 10-volume “The Living Faith” series designed to help Catholics live holy lives and bring others to the fullness of life in Jesus.

“The book goes through the rites of each sacrament and explains the hidden mystical reality that’s going on to awaken our sensibilities to the sacraments of the Church,” said Father Tangorra, who wrote the book as “mystagogical catechesis” — religious teaching meant to lead people into the heart of the Church’s sacred mysteries with the goal of bringing them into intimate communion with God and transforming their lives from the inside out for a total conversion. “God breaks through the cosmos in the sacraments, which are expressions of the whole reality of the Church as a Sacrament of Salvation — how together heaven and earth — angels and humans — are engaged in a symphony of God that offers salvation to all of humanity. We have unique roles to play in that symphony, which creates beauty to attract all people to God’s free gift of salvation,” he said.

Father Tangorra explores the theology of the Church as the Bride of Christ and her ecclesial hierarchy — from the congregants and up through the deacons, priests and bishops — all overseen by the Holy Trinity with the Blessed Mother and the saints. The book also explores the Christian mystical experience of the sacred mysteries — the real experience of the sacraments that gives us a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy to come. He also writes about love and grace, Scripture and tradition in the Church, where “we receive God’s freely given grace … and come to realize that he loves us” — the realization of his gift “that calls us to make a just response, to offer ourselves to God completely as a gift.”

He gives a mystagogical catechesis of the Church with a basic overview of Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, the Eucharist and Holy Orders. He states that the sacraments are “not mere empty signs, but effect the communication of the salvation of Christ to those who receive them with the proper dispensation of heart, mind, and soul.” Lastly, he explores the mystical nature of the sacred art, architecture and music of the Mass, which illuminates “the beauty of God to humanity.”

In the book’s first chapter, he writes that through the “source and summit of our faith,” the Eucharist, “we are privileged to journey through the purifying, illuminating and perfecting experience of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, as it is the place where the sacraments occur.”

“The receiving of Communion is the focal point of the liturgy, because it is in receiving the Eucharist that we are made one with God. As Jesus says, ‘The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one’ (Jn 17:22-23a),” Father Tangorra writes.

Father Tangorra — who quotes Scripture, Church documents, popes, saints and notable theologians, including Bishop Serratelli — examines the Mass, including prayer. He called prayer “active relationship with God and this reaches its height in the sacred liturgy.” He also stated that prayer “expresses our faith, hope, and love in and for God.” Through prayer, we might hear the Lord’s call to a vocation of a contemplative life or external service, he writes.

The book looks at the images and objects that are used during Mass, including the crucifix, which “reminds us that prayer must always include offering ourselves in an ever-greater union with the Cross of Christ,” Father Tangorra writes. “The more we unite ourselves with this great act of the love of God, the more the love of God will lead us to overcome doubt, despair, anxiety, and loneliness, because love initiates faith and hope, which are likewise consummated in love,” writes the priest, former chaplain of Catholic Campus Ministry of William Paterson University, Wayne, and former diocesan assistant coordinator for evangelization.

Father Tangorra was invited to contribute to the series “The Living Faith” by Jesuit Father David Meconi, editor of Homiletic and Pastoral Review magazine, which has published his articles in the past. Father Tangorra said that he was “floored” about being asked to write for the series since it features books by noted Catholic authors such as Scott Hahn and Father Mitch Pacwa.

Among those who have endorsed the book were Msgr. John Hart, pastor of Assumption Parish, Morristown, where Father Tangorra once served as a parochial vicar. He said that the book “helps Catholics, who are eager to be edified and encouraged as they strive to grow in holiness and follow Jesus Christ along the way of discipleship in the 21st century.”

[Emmaus Road Publishers has made “Holiness and Living the Sacramental Life” available for pre-order at https://stpaulcenter.com. The cost is $29.95.]