August 6, 2010

The Tennessee Register is publishing Faith Sharing, a series of articles exploring various elements of our faith. The article, many of them written by faculty and staff at Aquinas College, will follow the general curriculum of the Why Catholic? small faith community and adult formation program. This year, the second of the Why Catholic? program, the articles will examine the Sacraments.

Christ is present to us through the sacraments

Sister Catherine Joseph Droste, O.P.

Why does the Catholic Church have seven sacraments? Don’t other Christian churches have only one or two – or none at all?

Wouldn’t it be better for an older child to freely choose his religion, rather than for parents to force their own faith by baptizing infants?

Why should I confess my sins to a priest who is a sinner himself? Why can’t I go directly to God?

What does Confirmation mean anyway? Isn’t baptism enough?

Why have a marriage celebrated within the Mass?

Why would someone be anointed prior to having surgery?

Isn’t my personal acceptance of Christ as Savior the real issue?

Sound familiar? Most likely, we have been asked one of these questions, or have even asked them ourselves. As this year’s sacramental series of “FaithSharing” articles draws to a close, many of these questions have been addressed in previous issues, but I would like to propose that we cannot fully understand the sacraments if we don’t first answer the BIG question surrounding this mystery.

The question – “What is the Church?” If we wish to understand the sacraments, we must first understand Christ and his Church.

Since the first centuries, the Church has turned to St. John’s account of Christ’s Passion and death on the Cross to illustrate the intricate relation between Christ, the Church, and the sacraments. John tells us that after Christ had breathed his last, a soldier “thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out” (John 19:34). St. Augustine teaches that at this moment “the door of life was thrown open from which the sacraments of the Church flowed, without which one does not enter into the life which is true life.”

The Second Vatican Council stresses this point, saying that “it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the ‘wondrous sacrament of the whole Church.’” (SC 5). And the Catechism of the Catholic Church adds that “the blood and water that flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Jesus are types of Baptism and the Eucharist, the sacraments of new life” (CCC 1225). This connection between Christ’s death, His Church, and the sacraments is pivotal to our faith – it is key to the mystery of salvation.

This mystery begins with Christ, whom St. Augustine called the sole “mystery of God,” because by becoming man, the invisible Second Person of the Trinity became visible. The Church even teaches that Christ’s human body is “the sacrament of salvation” (CCC 774), or the “universal cause of salvation” (LG 48), that is, the sole means by which man can be saved.

But Christ didn’t abandon man after his resurrection and ascension. Rather, while he was on earth, he gathered around him a group of men. Then he singled out Simon Peter and told him, “You are rock, and on this rock I will build my Church,” and added, “whatever you declare bound on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you declare loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew16:18). At Pentecost, He poured out his Spirit upon the apostles, bestowing upon them the power to preach His Kingdom. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to you. Go therefore and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:18).

This Church which Christ founded is defined in the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (“Lumen Gentium”) as “being in Christ like a sacrament, a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race.” It is this Church which has “but one sole purpose – that the kingdom of God may come and the salvation of the human race may be accomplished.” (GS 45).

But if Christ is a “sacrament,” and the Church is “like a sacrament,” are there nine sacraments? To answer this question we need to return to the meaning of the term “sacrament.” 

In the original Greek New Testament, the word for “mystery” was “musterion.” When translated into Latin, musterion was expressed in two ways: either as mysterion – a term primarily referring to a mystery – that which is hidden (this explains why the Eastern Churches often refer to the sacraments as “the holy mysteries”); or as sacramentum, a term which stressed the visible aspect or visible sign of the hidden mystery of salvation. Sacramentum became more prevalent and so when translated to English, the word “sacrament” was used.

The Church’s definition of “sacrament”: an outward visible sign instituted by Christ which gives grace, contains traces of both Latin terms: 1) the “visible sign” and 2) the “grace” which remains hidden, through truly present. With this understanding we can see the Christ’s human body is not only a sacrament, but the greatest sacrament. His flesh is a visible sign of God present in human form on earth. We see Christ as man and know that He is God, yet this divinity remains hidden.

In similar manner, the Church, the Kingdom of God, is visible here on earth. We see the Pope, the priests, religious, lay men and women. We see the Vatican, the physical churches present throughout the world. At each Mass we see Christ physically present, under the visible form of bread and wine.

But the Church is much more than what we visibly see. The host we receive at Mass is not merely bread, but Christ’s true body, blood, soul and divinity. The Church is not merely buildings, nor just priests, sacristans and those who attend Mass. What of her invisible members: Christ, her Head, Mary, His Mother, the angels, all the saints in heaven, and the souls in purgatory. And what of the invisible graces we receive through a fervent reception of these seven sacraments?

Why did Christ endow his Church with these visible means of bestowing grace? St. Thomas Aquinas gives three reasons. He teaches that it was fitting that Christ chose to institute these seven sacraments, these visible signs of grace because:

• Man is a physical creature who learns about spiritual things through his senses, (e.g. a child who sees water wash away the mud from his hands and feet can understand that baptismal water can clean away the invisible stains of sin on his soul;

• Christ, who causes or is the source of the grace, took on a visible body, so it is appropriate that he use visible signs when he gives his grace;

• Man sins by undue attachment to visible objects: money, power, people, things, etc., therefore it is fitting that visible objects also serve to bestow grace and remove sin.

So though we can receive God’s grace in any number of ways, the Scriptures and Tradition assure us that Christ’s saving work “is revealed and active in the Church’s sacraments” (CCC 774). Pope Pius XII wrote in “Mystici Corporis” – on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ – of the “ineffable bond” which exists between Christ and his Church, and thereby also to his sacraments. As the Son of God, sent by the Father, it is Jesus Christ “who through the Church baptizes, teaches, rules, looses, binds, offers, sacrifices.”

And so, at each stage of our earthly life it is Christ who is present when the priest pours water over the child’s head and says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”: Christ who says, “I absolve you from your sins ...”; Christ who witnesses the young man saying, “I take you to be my wife …” and “Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity …”; and Christ who comes at the moment of anointing and says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)

Sister Catherine Joseph Droste, O.P., has a doctorate of sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum, in Rome.