
released 1/15/2025
In this November 2024 lecture, Daniel Gibbons compares several ways of understanding the relationship between literature and the sacraments, proposed by Augustine, Aquinas, and Sydney. At issue is the question how do words convey deeper truths? Gibbons argues that the best Catholic and Christian writers seem ambivalent about the relationship between sacramental language (signs) and the teaching of truths about life; they intuit that while sacramental language can point to truth, it works most powerfully by forming one’s affections and dispositions at a deeper level than that of cognitive comprehension. Gibbons ends with the example of the Eucharist, which he calls “a difficult sign,” because we struggle to perceive God’s most essential communication of himself as more or other than bread and wine. The best sacramental writing, Gibbons argues, contains an element of this “recalcitrant quality” that forms us slowly and reveals our need for the ongoing sustenance of grace.
This lecture is provided courtesy of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute.
36 minutes
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