Sacramentalizing the World, by Regis Martin

By Regis Martin, Crisis Magazine, May 24, 2025

Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Martin is the author of a number of books, including Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (2012) and The Beggar’s Banquet (Emmaus Road). His most recent book, published by Sophia Institute Press, is March to Martyrdom: Seven Letters on Sanctity from St. Ignatius of Antioch.

We are called to be as Christ, scouring the streets and byways in search of the lost sheep.

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series on Catholic culture.

Let us try to imagine a Church filled with Christ, overflowing with His presence and power. Not too difficult, is it? Is that not the customary, immemorial even, way of referring to the Bride and Body of Christ? And does she not accordingly see herself situated along a continuum stretching from time into eternity, a sheer uninterrupted line of horizon betwixt Earth and Heaven? And from within the one, she beckons us to enter the other, plunging headlong into an abyss of sheerest mystery, whose depths defy our best efforts to plumb. Such has been her self-understanding from the beginning. “A vast transport company carrying passengers to Paradise,” is how Georges Bernanos put it in an essay written near the end of his life.

That said, how then does she go about doing this? How, exactly, does the Church propose to bring Christ to the world, demonstrating His presence among men in order that she might then transport them home to Heaven? Assume we have all been confirmed in faith, our hearts annealed in the hope and the love of Jesus Christ. In what way are we expected to give witness to this treasure that we possess? How, exactly, are our energies to be enlisted in the effort to convert a world to Christ? ….

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