The Sacramental Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch and Joseph Ratzinger

In a 1978 lecture entitled, “On the Meaning of Sacrament,” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger describes modern man’s inability to understand symbolism and sacraments. Ratzinger was addressing an age greatly influenced by the historical-critical method of Scripture interpretation, so that it sought to understand everything from a literal perspective, which negatively impacted the modern’s ability to understand the meaning of sacrament. He writes, “It [the idea of sacrament] is very far removed from the mental disposition and consciousness of the modern man. Sacrament seems somewhat strange to him—something he is inclined to downgrade to a magical or mythical age of man. It does not seem to fit well into a rational and technical world. ¹ Because man believes he has transcended the need for symbolism through his reliance on pure rationalism, the idea of “sacrament” and its Christian application were obscured from a lack of approaching the Scriptures with a typological-sacramental perspective.

Such was the case for modern man, and circumstances have not become much better for postmodern man. However, instead of approaching the world from a literalistic and historical perspective, postmodern man is inundated with communication by imagery, mostly in advertising and pornography. Because of these intense imagery experiences, postmodern man does not truly know how to search for meaning, because he is accustomed to the superficial message given by media images, which means that an idea of “sacramental meaning”—a meaning that transcends sensory experience—is far from his consciousness and realm of understanding. He experiences sensory overload, and for that reason, is less capable of searching for meaning in the world surrounding him. Postmodern man is hungering for meaning and direction, but he has little means to discover it. What postmodern man needs, therefore, is a means by which he can discover symbolism and meaning in his life that transcends the material world surrounding him, for he was ultimately created for eternity and beatitude in Heaven. Catholic sacramental ecclesiology can fill this hunger for meaning and symbolism, and not simply for its own sake, but for uniting man with his Creator and Savior.

In this essay, I propose to present a study of the sacramental ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch and Joseph Ratzinger, an early Church Father and a contemporary theologian. This study will by no means be exhaustive, and it will only serve as a beginning for understanding the nature of sacramental ecclesiology. First, it will be necessary to define “sacrament” such that it fits with both perspectives, and we will find this definition in the aforementioned essay by Ratzinger. Second, I will look at St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letters to the early Churches: his understanding of the Bishop in relation to the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist indicates that the Church is fundamentally sacramental. Third, I will look at Joseph Ratzinger’s liturgical and sacramental ecclesiology, and finally offer some conclusions based on our study for the Church in the postmodern world.

Definition of “Sacrament”
In his essay, Ratzinger writes that there are two common natural suppositions about sacraments and symbolism, which act as a springboard for understanding Christian sacraments. The first is that human communication and understanding occurs through symbols—and one must know what a symbol is in order to grasp “how it can be the foundation for communion among individuals and communion in the common understanding of reality.”² To understand Christian sacraments, we must understand the nature of symbolism. Secondly, symbols are connected with natural surroundings, and according to Ratzinger, “They take place and they are effective only in an event supported by the authority of the community, which the individual cannot simply bring about by himself. This common event is the feast.”³ In other words, the festival allows for symbolism to take shape and have meaning—an individual cannot invent meaning behind symbolism by his own power. Ratzinger thus continues, “Both together [feast and symbol] form the human horizon in which the sacrament is to be understood. Essentially the Christian sacrament is a symbol-event.”⁴ Thus, the Christian sacrament is celebrated within the festal setting, in which we are able to encounter the fullness of symbolism and meaning.

Ratzinger cites Eberhard Jüngel and Odo Casel, who make the argument that the Church Fathers’ use of the word sacramentum has no basis in use of the word mysterion in the New Testament. He then responds to these claims against the Catholic understanding of sacrament by looking more closely at the use of the word mysterion in the Old and New Testaments. He finds that it is not used in the early writings of the Old Testament, but appears in Daniel’s apocalyptic writing, the wisdom literature (Wisdom and Sirach), and the religious-edifying literature (including Tobias, Judith, and Second Maccabees). Furthermore, the word has no cultic, and thereby sacramental and liturgical, connection; rather, it simply means “something hidden.”⁵ As Ratzinger writes, “According to the Rabbis, therefore, the many words of the Law have a hidden center, a hidden meaning which is not obvious but is, rather, truly an unveiling of reality.”⁶ In other words, the words themselves in the Law and in the prophets have a hidden meaning, a mysterion. This mystery is not fulfilled in the Old Covenant. Rather, the “mystery” of the Old Law finds its fulfillment in the coming of Christ, the Word Incarnate.

To understand how that is the case, Ratzinger then discusses Mark 4:11, which is a difficult verse to understand. It is Christ’s response to his disciples, who are unable to comprehend the meaning of his parables: “To you have been give the secret (mysterion) of the kingdom of God but for those outside everything is in parables.”⁷ As Ratzinger explains, “Behind the striking parables which Jesus proclaims to the people there lies a hidden truth that leads down to the heart of reality.”⁸ This means that the disciples must enter into the speech as reality. “It means entering into the reality itself; it has to do with the person of the one addressed and of the speaker, namely, Jesus Christ.”⁹ How this is true becomes clear when looking at St. Paul’s use of mysterion in the letters of 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians. “The mysterion of the Torah and of all the parables has become visible for him in the crucified Christ. He is the hitherto hidden content that stands behind the manifold works and events recorded in the Scriptures, the mystery of God which is the source of everything that exists.”¹⁰ Thus, Christ can be called “the Mystery of God” (1 Cor 2:1; Col 2:2). Christ himself is the mystery behind the Torah; he is the “hermeneutical concept,”¹¹ in Ratzinger’s words, that completes and fulfills the meaning of the Old Testament. By the mysterion of the Cross, we now have a way of uniting ourselves to God, and of communicating with him. Thus, for St. Paul, not only is Christ the mystery of the Torah as a whole, but he also gives meaning to the individual words of Scripture, which are “interpreted as references beyond themselves and point to Christ.”¹² They are “typoi tou mellontos,” or “sacramentum futuri,” “sacrament (type) of the One who is coming.”¹³ Types, or sacraments, point forward to Christ, who has come into the world in his Incarnation but is yet to return in his Second Coming.

The concept of mysterion, therefore, is the basis for the early Church’s understanding of sacrament. For the early Church Fathers, “sacrament” comes from New Testament thought—it is based on the idea that Christ is the mystery behind all the words of the Scripture. Ratzinger further indicates: “Of course, this also means that the Catholic concept of sacrament is based on the ‘typological’ interpretation of Scripture, on an interpretation with correspondences to Christ.”¹⁴ Thus, the modern tendency to look at Scripture purely from a historical-critical method both diminishes our ability to understand Scripture itself, and prevents us from fully seeing Scriptural basis for the early Church’s conception of “sacrament.” As Ratzinger summarizes, “The understanding of the sacraments, therefore, presupposes the historical continuity of God’s activity and, as its concrete locus, the living community of the Church, which is the sacrament of sacraments.”¹⁵ The historical nature of God’s activity, as embodied in the Church community, will be key for us as we now turn to look at St. Ignatius of Antioch, who clearly demonstrates an understanding of sacramental ecclesiology that is founded in the Scriptures themselves.

St. Ignatius of Antioch

We know very little about St. Ignatius of Antioch except what he writes in his letters. He was a bishop from Antioch in Syria and was condemned to death, and met his fate by the mouths of ravaging lions. The letters of St. Ignatius give us profound insight into the theology and practices of the early Church. He emphasizes throughout his letters the centrality of Christ which is rooted in the Scriptures. Everything he writes and exhorts, everything he says and does, is inspired by his deep love and devotion to Christ. Ignatius’s emphasis on Christ is evident in his Letter to the Magnesians. He writes that the prophets were persecuted, for they recognized that “there is one God, who made himself manifest through Jesus Christ, his Son, who is his Word coming forth from silence, who is well-pleasing in everything to the one who sent him”¹⁶ (8, 2). In other words, the prophets were persecuted because they recognized that the one God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. Christ has entered creation, and he gives new meaning to everything we do. For this reason, St. Ignatius continues by discussing those who lived according to the ancient ways, that is, of the Old Covenant, who have received the “newness of hope” and now celebrate the Lord’s Day rather than Sunday (Magnesians, 9, 1). He asks, “How could we live without regard to him [Jesus Christ]?” (Magnesians, 9, 2). Christ has given man new meaning and new life. Before, he was living under the shadow of the Old Covenant, but now, he has been given the fullness of God’s plan for humanity through the Word Incarnate. Therefore, man should direct all his actions to Christ, and everything he does should be in his name, and for his glory. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

This emphasis on the centrality of Christ gives the foundation for Ignatius’s sacramental ecclesiology. There are two important aspects to Ignatius’s vision for sacramental ecclesiology: the Eucharist, and the bishop. If Jesus Christ is the reason for all our actions, then so too must be the Eucharist, which is Christ’s gift of himself to the people for the sake of their redemption and spiritual healing (Luke 22:14-23). Baptism initiates the people into the one Body of Christ, which is the Church (Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 10:16-17; 12:12-27; Eph 3:6; 4:12; 5:23; Col 1:18; 1:24). Unity in the Eucharist is expressed through unity with the bishop, who is the head and representative of the Church. Moreover, there is only unity in the bishop because the bishop is united to Christ, who is the head of the whole Body. This theme is repeated frequently throughout Ignatius’s letters, almost to an extreme. Nevertheless, Ignatius wanted to show the profound union with Christ, his bishops, and the people in the Eucharist. As St. Ignatius writes to the Ephesians, “For Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the mind of the Father, as the bishops, who are established to the ends of the earth, are in the mind of Christ. It is thus fitting that you should run together in accordance with the mind of your bishop” (3, 2 and 4, 1). Christ is one with the Father (John 10:30), which means that the people are also one in the Body of Christ. This unity is expressed through unity with the bishops, who are the visible heads of Christ on earth. The people, therefore, are only one when they are united with their bishop.

Again, in the Letter to the Trallians, St. Ignatius describes the true nature of the Church: “Likewise everyone should respect the deacons like Jesus Christ, and also the bishop, who is a representative of the Father, and the presbyters as a Sanhedrin of God and company of the apostles. Apart from these nothing can be called a church” (3, 1). Therefore, the church is comprised of the bishop, his deacons, and the presbyters, along with the whole people, who are united in the Holy Trinity. We are here reminded of the imagery used by St. Paul to describe the Church: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor 11:12-13). There are different members of the Church, but they must be united to the bishop in order to form the Church. Moreover, the origin of bishops and deacons is Scriptural, which means that the hierarchy of the Church is not simply invented. The bishops receive their authority from the Apostles themselves, who received their authority from Christ (Matt 16:18-19; Luke 24:46-49; Acts 1:23-26; Acts 2), and the deacons receive their authority from the bishops (Acts 6:1-7). The foundation for the bishops comes from the Old Covenant, for the twelve apostles are the fulfillment of the twelve tribes of Israel (1 Chron 24:31; Isa 56:6-7; 66:20-21; Ezek 43:19; 44; Mal 3:3). Thus, the image of the Church that is presented by St. Ignatius has its roots in the Sacred Scriptures.

What is the source of unity for this Church, established by Christ, and visibly represented on earth by the bishops? Here, we see the sacramental influence on Ignatius’s understanding of the Church. As he writes to the Philadelphians, “[B]e eager to celebrate one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup of unity in his blood, one altar, just as there is one bishop together with the presbytery and the deacons, my fellow-slaves. In this way, whatever you do, you will do in accordance with God” (4). The Church is united in the Eucharist, because the Lord God is one. One bishop unites the Church in the celebration of this Eucharist. We may be inclined to ask about the emphasis on “one.” Why is there one Eucharist, one altar, one bishop? Indeed, we can find the roots of this unity in the Old Testament, at the base of Mt. Sinai. After the Lord brings the Israelites out of bondage to the Egyptians, he makes a covenant with them at Sinai: “Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:5-6). The people, together with Moses and the elders, agree to do as the Lord has commanded, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (Exod 19:8). Under Moses as their visible head, the people of Israel submit themselves to the one invisible Lord. After the establishment of the covenant, God then gives them the Ten Commandments, which begin with the following, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:2-3). It is abundantly clear that the Israelites, while united together, belong to the one Lord, who demands their reverence and worship, and they can only be united together if they remain united to the Lord. This unity is not abandoned with the New Covenant, for now the people are not united by mere shadows of cultic practices in the Old Law, but they experience real unity in Christ, which is expressed by unity in the Church under the bishop with one Eucharist. As St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-5). These words resemble the words of St. Ignatius: God’s people are now sacramentally united in Christ, who is present in the Eucharist.

While the Eucharist is not explicitly called a “sacrament” in St. Ignatius’s writings, we can gather from Ratzinger’s above cited essay that it is, indeed, a sacrament according to the early Church. For, the Eucharist makes Christ present while at the same time pointing forward to his Second Coming, since the people are living in the “last days,” according to Ignatius. As M. J. Le Guillou, who greatly impressed Ratzinger, comments on Ignatius’s letters, “The action of the Word of God, accomplished through his humanity, thus establishes the Church, resplendent through the purifying power of the flesh of Christ, which renews us in baptism, and reunites us in the Eucharist.”¹⁷ In other words, the Church is established through the Word of God, which, as we have shown, is the mysterion behind the sacraments, for Christ is the mysterion. The Church is established through the power of Christ so that we might have access to his grace, particularly through the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Therefore, we can see that Ignatius’s understanding of the Church is truly sacramental, for it is deeply connected with the mystery of the Eucharist.

Joseph Ratzinger

Having looked carefully at St. Ignatius of Antioch’s sacramental ecclesiology, let us now turn to the thought of Joseph Ratzinger, who likewise has a similar understanding of the Church, even though he is writing almost two thousand years after St. Ignatius. Ratzinger belonged to the Communio school of thought, which also included theologians such as Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. This school of thought was founded by Henri de Lubac, who centered his ecclesiology on the “relationship between the Eucharist, and the understanding of the Church as the mystical body of Christ,”¹⁸ as scholar Tracey Rowland describes. The Communio school of thought can be described essentially as a “shorthand form of the concept communion hierarchica (hierarchical communion) or simply taken on its own to mean a special type of sacred relationship or, literally, communion.”¹⁹ Furthermore, “Communion as understood by the ancient Church as both juridically, and ontically, the fundamental structure of the Church for all time, and, therefore, in our day as well.”²⁰ Ratzinger’s ecclesiology was greatly influenced by this theological movement, and as we can already see, it resembles the thought of St. Ignatius. We can recognize, therefore, a great unity between the early Church Father, and the contemporary theologian: the Church must be understood sacramentally, that is, through an understanding of communion.

Naturally, this understanding of communion must be appropriately founded in Scripture, because there is a humanistic understanding of “communion” that can prevent one from truly understanding the Church. As Rowland explains, “Immediately after the [Second Vatican] Council, however, it was not the Communio ecclesiology of de Lubac which became fashionable, but the idea of the church as the People of God.”²¹ While Ratzinger acknowledges that there is a real Scriptural basis for understanding the Church as the “People of God”—indeed, we find that the Second Vatican Council’s document, Lumen Gentium, uses this phrase to describe the Church (nos. 9-17)—he also argues that it may lead to an imbalanced reliance on an Old Testament understanding of the “Church,” to the exclusion of St. Paul’s images of the Church as the Body of Christ. As Ratzinger explains in The Ratzinger Report, “In reality, there is no truly New Testament, Catholic concept of Church without a direct and vital relation not only with sociology but first of all with Christology. The Church does not exhaust herself in the ‘collective’ of the believers; being the ‘Body of Christ’ she is much more than the simple sum of her members.”²² In other words, membership in the Church is not merely a sociological reality, but rather, is a Christological reality. We are members of the Church because we are members of Christ’s Body in the Eucharist. If we understand the Church’s communion merely as sociological communion, then we are missing the deeper, sacramental reality of membership in the Church.

Therefore, to assist in maintaining a full and proper understanding of the Church as communion in the Eucharist, Ratzinger gives three essential principles in his work, Principles of Catholic Theology. First, he explains, “The designation of the Church as a sacrament is opposed to an individualistic understanding of the sacraments as a means of grace; it teaches us to understand the sacraments as the fulfillment of the life of the Church.”²³ This understanding is essential because it reminds us that the grace from the sacraments ultimately comes through the Church. We cannot receive the sacraments without the Church—this is similar to what St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote, that the Eucharist does not exist without the Bishop. Ratzinger continues, “As a liturgical event, a sacrament is always the work of a community; it is, as it were, the Christian way of celebrating, the warranty of a joy that issues from the community, and from the fullness of power that is vested in it.”²⁴ Here, we are reminded of Ratzinger’s understanding of the human dimension to sacrament: it occurs within the feast, which is a community affair. The sacraments, as signs and symbols, need a context in order to find meaning, which is why the individual seven sacraments require the “one sacrament that is the Church.”²⁵ For this reason, the sacraments are the work of the community of the Church—they are, in a sense, the Church’s festal way of celebrating her very life. Of course, this community celebration cannot be understood merely on a human level; the community is only able to celebrate the sacraments because Christ is the very life of the Church. As Ratzinger describes, summarizing the vision of Henri de Lubac, “The essence of redemption is the mending of the shattered image of God, the union of the human race through and in the One who stands for all and in whom, as Paul says (Gal 3:28), all are one: Jesus Christ.”²⁶ Therefore, the unity of the Church’s community comes from Christ himself; he is the one who gives the community the ability to celebrate the sacraments and thereby participate in his joy: “I came that they may have life, and have life to the full” (John 10:10).

The second principle described by Ratzinger is the following: “The Church is not merely an external society of believers; by her nature, she is a liturgical community; she is most truly Church when she celebrates the Eucharist, and makes present the redemptive love of Jesus Christ, which, as love, frees men from their loneliness and leads them to one another by leading them to God.” ²⁷ In the liturgical community, man finds his fulfillment in the Eucharist, because he is united to not only the other members in the Body of Christ, but also to Christ himself, the source of his true happiness. Furthermore, Ratzinger says that this principle “offers a response to contemporary man’s search for the unity of mankind.”²⁸ As we saw with St. Ignatius, the Church and the Eucharist are united. Ratzinger similarly uses very strong language to describe the union of the Church and Eucharist: the Church most fully reveals her nature when she celebrates the Eucharist. She lives in full and complete harmony with her sacramental-typological nature in celebrating the Eucharist, as the fulfillment of the Passover, the manna in the desert, and the bread of the presence (Exod 12; 16:4-8; 25:30). Christ gives us the Bread of Life (John 6), and the Church, thereby, most fully reveals and realizes her identity when celebrating the sacrament of the Eucharist. Therefore, the essence of the Church’s community is liturgical, and thereby sacramental. She cannot simply be a sociological or a human organization, because she is the living Body of Christ on earth. Christ’s blood was poured out for the life of the Church, and she continues to celebrate his sacrifice through celebrating the Eucharist. Indeed, the Church is alive because she celebrates the Eucharist, and lives in the supernatural life that is bestowed through the Eucharist.

Third and finally, Ratzinger says, “The positive element common to both of these statements is to be found in the concept of unio and unitas: union with God is the content of grace, but such a union has as its consequences the unity of men with one another.”²⁹ This is a complex idea. In essence, the Church is given sacramental unity through the grace of God. This grace given from God is, fundamentally, charity, such that it forms union between God and man, and between the members of the Church. This grace given gratuitously by God comes through the sacraments, which are, as we have seen, the very life of the Church. Thus, charity lives in the Church through the sacraments, as Charles Cardinal Journet also describes,

Along with the Body and Blood of Christ crucified, that which the Eucharist brings to Christians is the very fire of his charity, by which they become, body and soul, a likeness of Christ, a voluntary victim offered to God for the salvation of the world; by which is reproduced in them the states of Christ’s mortal life—his joyful and glorious mysteries and, above all, his sorrowful mysteries, his poverty, humiliations, the torture of his body, the agony of his soul.³⁰

With these beautiful and profound words, we can understand the unio and unitas in the Church that Ratzinger describes. Because the Church is unified in the Eucharist, she is able to give the grace of Christ to all men through her actions. The Church becomes so unified with Christ that she takes on his sufferings and his joys, and these mysteries are, thereby, revealed to the world.

In conclusion, Ratzinger, much like St. Ignatius of Antioch, identifies the Church with the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Church is the Church because she celebrates the Eucharist, which is given to her by the grace of God. This gift of the Eucharist not only nourishes the Church, but binds her members in communion with God and one another through the virtue of charity.

Conclusion: The Church in the Postmodern World
We began this essay by describing our postmodern world. If Ratzinger wrote that the modern world could not understand the meaning of sacraments, then that statement applies even more to the postmodern world, which is starved for meaning, and is disconnected from the way to discover meaning. How can our reflections on St. Ignatius of Antioch and Joseph Ratzinger’s sacramental ecclesiology help our postmodern world, and in particular, the Church living in the postmodern world? Lest postmodernity find its way into the Church, members of the Body of Christ must hold steadfastly to the sacraments given to her by Christ. The Body of Christ must ask for the grace to celebrate these sacraments worthily, and the members must strive to remain in communion with one another through the grace of Christ. A divided Church cannot point to the unity that is realized in the Holy Trinity through the Eucharist. If the bishops are divided from the Church, then she cannot truly manifest the unity that is proper to her through Christ’s divine plan. If the Church does not fully understand the sacrament of the Eucharist, then she cannot truly manifest her charity. The unity of the Church under the Bishops, and the Eucharist, are part of the fullness of God’s plan. In other words, she will not fully be living in the typological-sacramental understanding of salvation history. Instead, she will be like the Israelites, who chose to go their own way, rather than remaining faithful to the covenant of God. To remain strong in the postmodern world, the Church must find her meaning and identity in the sacraments, which bring full communion with Christ, and find their roots in the story of salvation, as ordained by God from the very beginning. She must be a witness for, and of, Christ in the world. Her sacramental ecclesiology will inspire those who are searching for answers to their deepest longings, but have nowhere to turn. If the Church is faithful to a sacramental understanding of herself, she will draw others into the mystery of salvation, and unite them with one other on the journey toward the Heavenly Jerusalem.