A Sacramental Worldview
We live within a material reality, enveloped by a spiritual reality, that is both visible and invisible. We experience the material world through our senses, as constructed through our minds, but enter into the depths of the spritual reality of God through eyes of faith. To assist us in doing this, Catholic tradition calls us to live with a sacramental worldview of life.
A sacramental worldview believes that God’s invisible grace is made visible through the physical world. This means that every part of our day can be a place of encounter with God. God isn't just present in holy places or at special times. Rather, God reveals the Godself throughout creation—through people, through present moments, and through the stuff of everyday life.
A sacramental worldview is rooted in God's act of creation, and especially through the Incarnation, when God humbly entered into humanity in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who the Church confesses is fully human and fully divine. In Jesus, God chose to reveal the Godself to us through human flesh — not apart from the world, but within it. Jesus is the human face of God for us who is present to us, teaches us, heals us, forgives us, restores us to communion with God and with one another, continually nourishes us with his Word and the Eucharist, and saves us. The Incarnation anchors the sacramental worldview—that the material world is not opposed to our spiritual reality, but is a continual vessel for experiencing God’s grace and presence.
In a sacramental worldview, creation is not merely material, it is spiritually meaningful and "charged with the grandeur of God," as the Jesuit Priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, proclaimed. Every moment, person, object, and place can become a doorway leading to an encounter with God. When you change a diaper, drive to work, cut the grass, fix something at home — God’s there. When you take time to listen to your spouse, forgive your child, encourage a friend, reach out to a stranger, or do an act of kindness, that’s God’s grace at work. These small gestures remind you that each moment matters. God is here right now. Over time, this way of seeing transforms you and becomes habitual.
You don’t have to escape the world to find God; you just have to learn to see God's loving grace in it. It is seeking to follow the practice of Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century Carmelite monk who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God, who emphasized cultivating a continuous awareness of God's presence in your everyday life.
To live sacramentally also means to engage each moment with reverence and love. St. Thérèse of Lisieux called this “the little way” — doing ordinary things with extraordinary love. — to see everything and everyone as a potential encounter with Christ. God is not somewhere else. God’s here—right in the middle of your real, ordinary life.
Let’s be honest—it’s not always easy to see God’s presence. We live in a world that teaches us to separate the sacred from the ordinary. We rush. We multitask. We live on cell phones and computer screens. The danger is that we start to live as if God’s absent from our lives, or that God is only present at church, or only when we pray or feel spiritual. But the truth is, God’s presence is constant. We’re the ones who ignore or forget this.
We invite you to begin your day, when you first wake up, with a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s presence in your life. Ask the Lord to be present with you and to guide you in your thoughts, words, actions and everything else you do throughout the day. At night, before going to sleep, again express your gratitude to God, reflecting on when, where, and how you experienced God's presence in your life that day.