Gateways to God: Celebrating the Sacraments by Robert J. Hater

Abstract

Book Reviews Robert J. Hater Gateways to God: Celebrating the Sacraments Huntington IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2011 174 pages. Paperback. $14.95. Few books provide a cohesive account of the sacraments in a way that is accessible to a broad audience of scholars and non-scholars alike. Robert J. Hater offers a remedy for such an impoverishment in Gateways to God. This work, dedicated on the fifty-second anniversary of Hater’s ordination to priesthood, is clearly the fruit of many years of pastoral ministry. The book is divided into eight chapters, along with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter is devoted to defining “sacrament” as “gateway to God,” and subsequent chapters are dedicated to each of the seven sacraments. The chapters on the sacraments are structured according to a six-part pattern, including 1) personal story, 2) the sacrament-at-hand as a gateway, 3) the history of the sacrament, 4) basic Church teachings on the sacrament, 5) the sacrament and basic human needs, and finally 6) questions for reflection under a section entitled “Communal and Personal Implications.” This structure allows one to find answers to particular questions with ease. Furthermore, Hater interweaves Scripture, the Catechism, Church history, and personal experience seamlessly, and the concluding “implications” for each chapter makes this work ideal for group study in parish settings such as RCIA or adult faith formation. Hater begins on an Augustinian note by asking whether the world can ever bring “true happiness.” Not surprisingly, the answer is “no,” for our happiness rests in God, the source of love. God’s love is revealed through the “sacramentality of life,” and more precisely, through Jesus, the Church, and the seven sacraments. Jesus is the “prime gateway to happiness,” and each sacrament is a sign of “God’s abiding love.” The theme of beatitude falls away from this point forward, and the author would do well to return to it. Instead, he seizes upon the image of “gateway” as the defining feature of a sacrament, such that sacraments are gateways that open us to “new life in Christ.“ Antiphon 17.1 (2013): 103-114 104 ANTIPHON 17.1 (2013) According to Hater, a gateway is “something we pass through to get somewhere else.” He tailors the traditional definition of sacrament as an “efficacious sign of grace” to fit into a “gateway framework .” This framework seems to work well for some sacraments, and not as well for others. For instance, the author rightly points out that the sacraments of initiation, such as baptism, are gateways through which one must pass on the way to “life in the Spirit.” Yet it is not as clear how sacraments such as reconciliation or matrimony fit into this scheme, particularly since the latter is a state of life and a continuous journey, rather than a gate through which one passes. Furthermore, one might wonder how a “gateway,” precisely as the author defines it, functions in an “efficacious manner,” an essential aspect of sacrament that the author seems to neglect. Hater appears to be aware of the limits of “gateway” imagery, yet he continues to employ it as a unifying theme. For instance, he posits matrimony as a gateway that opens up “God’s intimate love,” and affirms the “sacramentality of the body.” This brings us back to the first chapter, in which he declares that the body is itself a “sacred sign, or sacrament, revealing God.” While this is a profound insight, Hater stops short of distinguishing how the precisely the body, and all of creation for that matter, has a kind of “sacramentality” that is distinct from the seven sacraments. As Josef Pieper once observed, if everything is sacred, then nothing is; so too one wonders, if all things are sacraments, what makes the seven sacraments unique? Perhaps the author is not concerned with such fine distinctions , given the scope and audience of this work. Yet it is precisely due to the diverse audience, with varying degrees of expertise in sacramental theology, that one must offer careful distinctions so as to provide clarity rather than confusion. Hater often uses broad strokes when painting the picture of the history of the sacraments. This proves to be...