"We are Traveling East"

To live sacramentally is to live at once in the worldly and in the other-worldly dimension of reality. The sacraments, especially Penance and the Eucharist, draw us into this mode of being.

I recently read a compelling example of this way of living.  Let me set it up by referencing the first canto of the Purgatorio (lines 19-21).  There the poet remarks:

The fair planet that emboldens love,
smiling, lit up the east,
veiling the Fishes in her train.

Hollander's commentary states:

The planet is Venus, whose astral influence "emboldens love."  The rest of the tercet makes clear what sort of love:  her brightness is veiling, as the dawn nears, the constellation Pisces (the fish was one of Christianity's most frequent symbols for Christ, who asked his disciples to become "fishers of men" [Matthew 4:19]).  Further, she is making the east seem to smile by her beauty, the east in which the sun is about to appear, a second reference to one of the constant images for Christ, the rising sun.

Facing the east, by reason of the dawning of the sun (son of God), is a long-standing image of Christian life.   Our churches have traditionally been designed so that the congregation faces east.

The example is from an article about Edith Stein in the current issue of Logos magazine. "Awaken, O Spirit: Vocation of Becoming in the Work of Edith Stein," by Donald L. Wallenfang.   He writes: "To awaken from vocational slumber is to heed the personal Divine summons to travel eastward toward the Son of glory."  (p. 58).  He then cites, in a footnote, the editorial comment made to Edith Stein's last letter in her Vol. 5 of her collected works (Self Portrait in Letters, 1916-1942), written just before she and her sister (a fellow nun) were placed on a transport that took them to their death at Auschwitz:

From the transport as it stopped in the Schifferstadt railway station, early on August 7 (1942), a women in "dark clothing" identified herself as Edith Stein (she acquaintances in that city) and left a message either orally or perhaps in writing: "We are travelling east."  This was one of the final recounted communications of stein before her execution in a gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp on August 9, 1942.

In her remark Stein shows a profound understanding of her journey in this life, this nun who took the name "St. Teresa of the Cross."  It was to travel to the East, into the Sun, carrying her cross, to meet Jesus.

This, of course, is the essence of the sacraments, which enable us to live "in Christ" and walk toward him on our journey, that is, to live life sacramentally.