Growth by Oath: Introduction to the Meaning of a Sacrament Program 20 Transcripts Scott Hahn

We’re going to do a six-part series on the sacraments of the Catholic religion. Why the sacraments? It’s clear when you understand Catholicism – that the sacraments are the most important idea, the most important reality in the Catholic faith. They constitute the very heart of Catholicism. They are what make Catholicism so unique and distinct.

Introduction

The sacraments are built upon this idea, this theological principle of the good creation: that God created the world and he saw that what he made was “very good,” as it says in Genesis. In other words, it isn’t just the spiritual side of human life that is good whereas the material, physical life is evil. That view was rejected by the early Church. No, the Christian vision is that all of creation is a good creation, as God made it.

“But what about the sin and the fall?” somebody could say. Well, that’s right. The sin has radically affected all of creation, both spiritually and materially, but what about redemption? How did Christ accomplish our redemption? It was precisely by taking upon himself human nature — not just spiritually but also physically. He took on our flesh in the Incarnation and he resurrected that flesh as well; and that flesh and blood, that human body is enthroned in glory in heaven. So, our Savior did not despise living in a virginal womb for nine months, as physical as that was, nursing at his mother’s breast, growing up as a young child, experiencing all the material and physical things that a child goes through. Why? Because Jesus Christ who is the redeemer of the world is also the Creator.

So the one who made matter and spirit redeems matter and spirit and he uses matter and spirit to redeem us as well. So we have to say with the Church that Jesus Christ, the Creator and Redeemer of the world, in the sacraments is using matter, physical reality, for our redemption.

I think that is going to go a long way in explaining how it is that the Catholic Church, the Church of Christ, is the Body of Christ, the physical, the visible expression of Christ. Theologians say that the Church is the extension of Christ’s incarnation and that extension takes place through the sacraments. In other words, God does extraordinary things through ordinary means. He takes the natural to do the supernatural. So the sacraments, in sum, constitute the very heart of the Catholic faith. But I have to say something else and that is that perhaps the sacraments are the least understood dimension of the Catholic faith.

That’s true for almost anybody alive in this century but, especially perhaps, it’s true for modern Americans. Why? Because America may well be the least sacramental society in history. Unlike ancient Greece, unlike ancient Rome, India and other ancient civilizations, America really finds no place for religious ritual in public life. In fact, religious ritual in public life makes most Americans very, very uncomfortable because our society stresses individualism, individual rights and freedoms as opposed to the family.

We also find that Americans think in a pragmatic, in a scientific, experiential mode. They want it here and now and they want it served up piping hot. They think in terms of that which entertains and amuses and excites. So, when it comes to the sacraments, you’re hard pressed to understand it; because, in American life religious ritual has almost no place.

Now you could point out a few isolated fragments, I suspect. You know, on the coin is, “In God We Trust.” When we say the Pledge of Allegiance we acknowledge that we are “one nation under God.” We require our politicians to take an oath of office, if they are going to become President. We even require witnesses in a courtroom to take an oath and ask for God’s help as they swear “to tell the whole truth.” But the fact is these are isolated fragments that don’t really find an integrated place in American society, and so it’s hard for Americans to understand what a sacrament really is.

Now at this point, a cradle Catholic who has been born and raised and catechized could protest and say, “Now, wait a second. Sacraments are really simple. You’re making complicated what is really easy to understand, because, after all, aren’t sacraments just simply “outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace?” That, of course, is the catechism definition and it’s a very good definition, as far as it goes. But I think we are going to discover that as essential as a catechism definition is, it doesn’t really go that far in explaining what sacraments are.

That definition explains where they come from — they are instituted by Christ. It explains what they do — they give grace, but not what they are, as sacraments, per se. Recent attempts by scholars to explain sacraments in a clearer way, I think are helpful; but they might fall short, because in the last ten, twenty, thirty years, many theologians have gone to psychology or anthropology to understand how it is humans use signs and symbols to structure social life — the handshake, the kiss, the common meal are all more than just actions. They are signs and symbols that convey a great deal of truth through the signs.

Now, if recent attempts to study signs and symbols through such things as kisses and handshakes and meals have been helpful, I have to say that they are also deficient when it comes to explaining what the sacraments of the new covenant are. Now before I show how, let me explain what’s going on here. If you take a look at something natural, like a kiss, you could say, “That’s a sign, that is in a sense almost sacramental?” Why? Because it causes what it signifies, doesn’t it? Somebody could say, “Well, a kiss is just a kiss. It doesn’t necessarily communicate love.” That’s true, not necessarily; but suppose I kiss my wife and she says, “Well, that’s just a kiss and a kiss is a kiss, is a kiss.”

Then suppose we proceed to kiss for five minutes or fifteen or thirty-five or forty-five minutes. What will happen? Is that kiss just simply a sign or does that kiss begin to do more than just signify? Does it also, in fact, intensify that love? Does it also magnify the love and lead to a deeper experience of that love? Well, yeah, it does. So at the natural level we do have some comparisons to make as we study the anthropological and psychological parallels to the Catholic sacraments.

Okay, well and good. But a non-Catholic could easily protest at this point and say, “Now wait a second. A kiss does signify and intensify and magnify love, but that’s not the same thing as what the Catholic Church claims for its sacraments.” Why? Because these signs that constitute the sacraments of the Catholic Church don’t just intensify love through lip smacking. The sacraments, according to the Catholic religion, actually bring about, for instance, the Body and the Blood of God, the wiping away of original sin and the mystical infusion of the soul into the Mystical Body of Christ?

You know, the non-Catholic, I think has a point. I mean, if we are going to make a comparison between our sacraments and the signs and symbols in human society, we have to admit that the sacraments do far more than our experience or human reason could explain. I think the problem is this. The Catholic might say, “Well the comparison is very helpful to me, but oftentimes, constant exposure dulls the senses and makes it hard to understand how unique and how distinctive the Catholic sacraments really are.” I mean, let’s face it, what we believe about the seven sacraments goes way beyond what human reason tells us and, in the case of the Eucharist, what we believe about the sacraments goes right against what our five senses and what human experience tells us.

In fact, what we really believe about the sacraments is a divine mystery revealed by God, supernaturally, depending upon a supernatural gift of faith in order to believe and live out and adhere to. In other words, the sacraments are really not reducible to any social convention that you could find in society, the signs and the symbols that constitute social relations. No, the sacraments constitute the mystery of faith. They are divinely revealed. They are believed by supernatural faith, through God’s grace. Simply on the basis of God’s word do we believe in them. It’s because we have Christ’s testimony that we accept the sacraments for what they do and for what they are. It’s the same as our belief in the Trinity, something that goes well beyond reason — our belief in the incarnation of God in a human body; that goes far beyond our sense experiences. Were Christ to walk into this room right now, we would never know from our five senses that this is the Eternal Logos, the Second Person of the Godhead, the Creator of the Cosmos. It’s only by faith that accepts supernatural revelation by grace, God’s assistance.

Now the sacraments go far beyond reason but they don’t go against reason. They go beyond logic but they are not illogical; they are not contradictory. So there is still room for reason to explore and study, to grasp the intelligibility and the meaning of the sacraments. So we are not suggesting that Catholics act like zombies in some mindless, unquestioning way just simply accepting and grasping that which is absurd. No. Catholics should not be zombies. They should be faithful children who accept the testimony of their father in heaven through the Spirit but, at the same time, they ought to grow up and allow their reason to explore the intelligible meaning of the sacraments. That’s what we are going to do with our time as we study the sacraments. How can we reason to better understand our faith and the mysteries of faith that are the sacraments.

Why Refer to the Divine Mysteries as Sacraments?

Now, one thing I think that we can ask ourselves that will be very, very helpful is, “Why is it that the Holy Spirit led the early Church to refer to these divine mysteries as sacraments?” The term sacramentum is a Latin term that goes back to pre-Christian usage. Now why is it that the early Church felt it so proper to adapt a term with certain non-Christian or pre-Christian meanings to explain these divine mysteries? In other words, what’s the original meaning of the term sacramentum?

Well, it’s actually hardly a matter for dispute. All scholars are in agreement. Sacramentum is the Latin term used in antiquity to designate an oath. For instance, we know that in antiquity Roman soldiers, as they came into the army, actually had to swear a sacramentum, an oath to the Emperor to serve in the army. We also know that in ancient Rome, for instance, when there was a legal dispute between two people, a pledge was left by both parties at the temple for the gods and this sacred pledge constituted a sacramentum.

So, sacramentum is the term in antiquity designating oath. Now at first glance we might be tempted to say, “So what? Big deal. Oaths of initiation, these rituals and the secret societies of antiquity, I mean, how does this really help us understand a sacrament or why the Church was led by the Spirit to accept the term sacrament to explain these divine mysteries?”

“Sacramentum” is the Latin Word for “Oath”

I think further study will give us greater insight, though. For instance we will find that one of the early Roman historians by the name of Pliny wrote to Trajan, a very important person in Rome, to explain who the Christians were and what they did. Pliny said to Trajan that (he was trying to summarize in a simple way so that Trajan could understand these Christians). He said, “On a certain designated day, they get together before sunrise and they sing an antiphonal hymn to Christ as God and then they bind themselves with an oath not to commit any sin.”

He saw these Christians binding themselves with an oath not to commit any sin or crime. Now the Latin term is sacramentum. What is it that the Christians are binding themselves to when swearing not to sin? The sacramentum is, of course, the Eucharist which they receive and celebrate there on a Sunday morning after they sing the Psalms and songs of praise to Christ as God. In other words, when we look a little closer at the ancient meaning of sacramentum as oath, I think what we see is that we may be holding the key to understanding the sacrament, but we might be holding it upside down.

So let’s take a look and understand what sacramentum really meant. I think we’re going to see that one big reason why sacraments are so little understood these days is because an oath is even less understood. Where do we find oaths in modern society? I mean, how in our own experience do we relate ourselves to oaths in a meaningful way? Well, the President takes an oath of office as soon as he assumes the presidency. We also hear physicians swearing the Hippocratic Oath. We also know that immigrants who want to be naturalized as citizens have to take an oath as well. When you enter the military you frequently have to take an oath or when you register to vote, you have to take an oath.

But what is the most familiar oath that we all know about from seeing things like Perry Mason on TV? Where are oaths most common in our mental association? In the courtroom. When the witness is to take the stand, what does the witness say? Well, he is sworn in and what is the oath that he swears? “I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” Even clarifying or emphasizing this particular oath in modern life might not shed much light. After all, all the oaths I have just mentioned — for the President, for the doctor, for the witness for the military man, for the immigrant — all of these things might seem awkward, obsolete, out of place in modern American society, almost, in fact, like a violation of Church and state. I mean, there, in a civil courtroom, asking for God’s help. How is religion accorded such a central role in such public, secular and civil activities? It certainly bothers some people.

Let’s take a closer look at this best known example in the courtroom. “I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” What is going on there? Well, before I say what is going on, I want to mention that in my studies I found a historian who looked at the use of oaths in modern society. From his studies he discovered that Americans simply do not understand the oath they swear. They swear them, but they don’t know why. They don’t really understand and they don’t really believe that they have any power to do what they seem to be doing.

So he refers to an oath, this Professor Mendenhaul does, as an ancient ruin still standing. So what difference does it really make if a witness swears an oath before taking the stand in the courtroom? In other words, they are going to lie anyway, aren’t they? They are going to swear the oath and they are going to sit there and lie through their teeth. So why bother swearing the oath; or why focus on this instance in order to clarify the meaning of oath as sacramentum? Well, I think if we return to the original purpose of the oath, we’re going to understand that the oath is given and the oath is sworn to strengthen the promise.

Think, for instance, of the old Perry Mason shows where as the witness is about to break, the judge leans forward from the bench and what does he say? “I remind you, you’re still under oath.” What does that mean? I mean is the witness supposed to look up and see some ax blade dangling over his neck and identify that with oath? What do you mean, I’m under oath? Well, one practical way to understand the difference that an oath is supposed to make is to look at the lie. If I were to stand here right now and proceed to tell you all about my ten kids who are all doctors, having received advance degrees from Harvard University, I would be telling you a few white lies, perhaps harmless. They wouldn’t get me in trouble. You might think I’m strange. But suppose I said those same exact things in a courtroom, on the witness stand under oath. What would those white lies be called? Perjury.

What is the Purpose of Swearing an Oath?

Now what might be just simple sins here become major crimes in a courtroom. Why? Because I’m under oath. The oath is supposed to make a difference. The oath is supposed to strengthen the promise and the individual’s resolve not to lie. And the oath is especially supposed to gain the help of God to assist the witness in telling the truth. In other words, to understand the purpose of the oath, we need to understand what’s happening with the witness, that a witness is called upon to give testimony that may hold in the balances the difference between life and death or a few million dollars or whatever kind of legal settlement might be reached.

In other words, guilt and innocence will be determined on the basis of the testimony. So you have to trust the witnesses. But what if it’s in the best interest of the witness to lie? What’s going to keep him from lying? Well, sometimes we simply have to trust other people beyond their own personal trustworthiness. How can you do that? Well, society better find a way because society frequently finds itself in a place where it has to trust people beyond their reasonable level of trustworthiness or reliability.

For instance, in the battlefield, why do military men have to take an oath? Because they know they might find themselves on a battlefield with bullets whizzing overhead. What happens there? Suppose one soldier looks up and sees an escape route where he could desert and he could leave? What happens if the other soldiers spot that man leaving under battle conditions. Are they allowed to do anything to stop him? They are obligated to do something. They are obligated to shoot him on sight for desertion in battle conditions! Why? Because what is desertion in battle? If you see one guy leaving to save his own neck, who doesn’t want to flee? Who doesn’t want to run away and live to fight another day? It’s just common sense. But as soon as the door is opened, who won’t want to run through it, and then what is left of the army? What is left in the battle? In other words, the battle requires a degree of trust from our fellowmen that by themselves we could not reasonably demand. Yet we need it. So what do we do? We put them under oath, like we put witnesses under oath.

If a politician elected into office, right before he takes office says to all of the voters, “Trust me,” what do you feel? All of a sudden you just kind of sit back and relax and say, “Oh, I’m so glad he asked me to trust him.” Of course not. I mean between politicians asking for trust and used car salesmen, we’re not going to be able to rely upon such words at all. So, what do we do? We put them under oath, the oath of office. Why? It’s the same thing. We need to engage a more reliable person, a more trustworthy party who is going to be able to make a difference. Because, as I say, society finds itself in a very awkward position. For instance in the courtroom, society needs the truth in order to establish and vindicate justice. But the calling for truth from witnesses where no absolute certainty is obtainable. Are we certain that he is telling the truth? No, he could be lying.

So what do we ask the witnesses to do before they testify? To make a kind of sacrifice, to pledge themselves before God and witnesses that they will tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And at the same time they make that pledge, they state a plea, “So help me God.” In other words, we all know that in moments of distress and temptation, where it might really pay to tell a lie, it might really pay to stretch the truth, we’re going to need God’s help to overcome that temptation. That’s what the oath is for. Why not lie? Because an oath has engaged the services of Almighty God who is truthful, who is truth itself; who is all-knowing and who is present, actively present, in our midst to judge us, to help us and to insure that the truth is out and that the truth is vindicated.

So we engage the services of God as judge and as provider — as judge to vindicate the truth and as provider to give that extra assistance to the person who is called upon to give the truth, even under tempting circumstances. So what do we do? We have him put his left hand on the Bible and raise his right hand and he says the oath. What is it signifying? That left hand on the Bible, that right hand to heaven represent or constitute an appeal to God. What we are saying is, “If I am false and the judge doesn’t know it, and the jury doesn’t know it and if all the people in the court don’t know that I’m lying through my teeth, God, you who know all, you who are truth, you know that I am lying.”

So may, the curses recorded in this book. “Come upon me from heaven if I lie or deceive. Conversely, we also signify by this act that if I tell the truth and the judge doesn’t believe me and the jury doesn’t accept my testimony and all the other people don’t as well, God, you know my heart, you know the truth, you vindicate me according to the blessings recorded in this book that you promised to give to those who live the truth and speak it as well.” So God is engaged as a guarantee, He supplies a kind of warranty. God is actively present in human affairs when his name is pledged in the oath, the sacramentum, as judge and as provider. It’s a pledge of self and it’s a plea for his help.

Now, I’ll give you an example. Suppose I were to take out my checkbook right now and I were to go ahead and write for you all in this room a $1 million check and give to each of you a $1 million check. How would you all feel about that? Would you take it and cash it tomorrow? I’m not sure you would. You’d look at me and say, “He’s a college professor. A million dollars per person. I mean, his school might pay well, but what school pays that well?” But suppose you took a second look at that check and you notice that underneath my signature was a co- signer. You saw the name Donald Trump. What would you do then with that check in hand? You’d guard it with your dear life. You would hold on to that. You would clutch it and make sure that tomorrow morning, if not earlier, you would go out and cash it. Why? Because when that name is invoked underneath your own, that word becomes trustworthy. It becomes reliable.

So when we swear an oath, God becomes the co-signer. He becomes the surety, the guarantor. His signature is even greater and more trustworthy than Donald Trump’s. So God’s name becomes attached to our performance whenever we swear an oath. His reputation is on the line. He has got to act to vindicate his holy name. No wonder out of Ten Commandments, he only gives us ten, right? Number two is what? “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, Thy God, in vain for he will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” I mean God only gives us ten, why waste one of them on false oath taking? Because that’s really the meaning of the second commandment. Notice, it’s the second commandment, second only to, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

So, once we choose the true God, we have to worship and live according to that God in a true way. That means when we swear oaths with God’s name and his reputation attached to our performance, we do not take that name in vain. We don’t take his name and drag it through the mud. We don’t lower his reputation to the same level as our own deception and fraudulent behavior. This, I believe explains why the oath is meant to strengthen the promise. It also explains the curious custom we find in the Bible. When people are called upon to take an oath in very dire circumstances at a very important time where the truth is absolutely essential, where fidelity is crucial, what do they do?

Well, there’s one word for oath, shabot, to swear an oath in the Hebrew. There’s another word that’s actually stronger. It’s to swear an oath, but literally, it’s to curse oneself. In other words, you directly curse yourself. It’s almost like — do you remember when you were kids? I remember when I was a kid, I went down to Florida and I came back and I had caught a red snapper out in the Gulf. The first week back, I told all my friends about the red snapper that I caught because we ate it for dinner. It was a beautiful red snapper about a foot long.

The second week though, I told some more friends about the red snapper and all of a sudden it had grown to be about two, two and a half, three feet long. All of a sudden those teeth began to expand and the ferocity of this beast became just enormous and the fight that I put up…and what did my friends say? “Sure, sure, you caught a red snapper.” So what do kids say whenever they start enlarging upon the truth? I don’t know about you, but I know what I used to say when I was a kid. I’d say something like this, “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

Now where do kids get that idea? Where did that statement come from? Well, if you study the statement you’ll discover it comes from the Middle Ages where oaths were quite common and a very common form of the oath was the self-curse; and a very common self-curse that people take upon themselves was what? “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” What does it mean? What does it convey by way of meaning. Simple: “Cross my heart” means cut my heart into four pieces. “Stick a needle in my eye,” means, “If I am lying, may God be my judge and may he take away my life and cut my heart into four pieces and gouge out my eyes with needles.” You’re calling a curse upon yourself. That’s the strongest form of oath possible, the self-curse.

Thus, God’s active presence is called down and engaged in the fullest possible way when that oath includes the curse. Now, does that guarantee the truth? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t guarantee the truth. Just because you swear an oath and you call down upon yourself a curse doesn’t mean that you will necessarily tell the truth any more than being a citizen in a nation necessarily means that you’re patriotic. It doesn’t necessarily follow.

What does necessarily follow is that God is actively engaged to bring judgment upon a person who has taken his name in vain. So, finally and ultimately, the person who is taking the oath determines whether or not we receive the desired outcome. In other words, the oath depends upon the reliability of the man who is swearing the oath or the curse. For instance, oath in the Old Testament — we see throughout the Old Testament that men continually prove themselves false and insincere by swearing an oath on the one hand and then by failing to live up to it on the other.

Continually we see this in the Old Testament. As a result of this behavior, the curses of the covenant are unleashed. So, when Israel swears an oath to God and accepts a curse upon itself in case of infidelity, what happens? In just a matter of years they are unfaithful. As a result, the curses are unleashed and the curses consist of such things as conquest, exile, slavery, pestilence. You can read all about it in Deuteronomy 28 or Leviticus 26. In both those passages you have a long list of frightening curses that come upon people in case they don’t live up to the oaths they have sworn, the sacraments that they have taken upon themselves.

What is the Significance of the “Sacramentum” for Christians?

Now, let’s ask ourselves what the significance of all this is for us as Christians. Well, tomorrow morning I am going to begin explaining how it is that an oath is the practical equivalent of a covenant. Throughout scripture, for instance, in Luke 1: verses 72 and 73, we discover that oaths and covenants are interchangeable terms. There we read about how God swore an oath to the fathers and so made a covenant. Also in Ezekiel 16 verse 9 and some other verses in Ezekiel 17, we’ll look tomorrow morning and see how when oaths are sworn, covenants are made. In other words, the sacramentum, the oath, constitutes a decisive force for establishing a covenant. The sacramentum oath is that which binds people together in a covenant relationship.

Thus, you want the strongest, the most reliable person to swear the sacramentum, the oath. Why? Because ultimately the covenant oath is only as strong as the person who swears it. The reliability of the covenant is ultimately going to rest entirely upon the dependability of the person who has sworn the oath. So, throughout the Old Testament what does God do? Well, he selects the strongest and the holiest men to swear the oaths to form the covenants – beginning with Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and Solomon and Ezra, the High Priest, and others as well. He picks the strongest and holiest men to swear the oaths.

But what do we discover in every case? No matter what the strength of these men might be, no matter how holy their character may seem, time and time again, human nature proves incapable by itself of fulfilling all the demands of God’s law to which we swear ourselves when we take upon ourselves the oath.

So what is so unique and distinctive about the New Covenant? What makes Christianity so great? We have something brand new in human history. In the New Covenant, Christianity is built upon one simple revolutionary fact: for the first time in history, God has sworn the oath and taken upon himself the curse. It’s almost as if God said, “I am going to save you, as I promised, but I am going to transform that promise into an oath by swearing an oath and taking upon myself the curse.” God says, in effect, “I give you my word.” And the word became flesh and dwelt among us! And that word was crucified because God took upon himself in the God-Man Jesus Christ, the curse for our sin.

In other words, the New Covenant is built upon the fact that for the first time in history, God swears the sacramentum. God became man and as man he swore an oath, Jesus did, to the Father. He takes the strongest oath upon himself in the form of a curse. By so doing, he institutes the New Covenant in this sacramentum which Christ himself is! Christianity is built upon a New Covenant all because God became man and swore the oath.

You could say that this is the purpose of the Incarnation. God in the Old Testament had promised to provide all that we needed and various humans swore oaths to be the ones to do so, to be the instruments, but they kept falling short. For instance, Noah, after delivering the family of man through the ark and the flood, ends up naked and ashamed in his tent. We also see Abraham who is righteous through thick and thin until he succumbed to the temptation to enter into a polygamous concubinage with an Egyptian woman. Even Moses who is the meekest man in all the earth, according to the Bible, sins so as not to be able to enter into the Promised Land. David, a man after God’s own heart, swears the oath and then commits adultery with another man’s wife and has that man killed and becomes a murderer. And Solomon, who establishes an oath covenant, as well, what does he do? He falls to so many temptations, he ends up with 700 wives and 300 concubines!

How do the Seven Sacraments all Participate in the One True Sacrament, Jesus?

The Old Testament reads like a dismal record of human failure because of our weakness, the weakness of fallen human nature. But Christ becomes man. God becomes human to take the oath, to form a New Covenant and to accept the curse. First of all, he assumed human nature with all of its debts and obligations and weaknesses. Second, he perfected that human nature in himself with his divine life and power as he lived it out — as an infant, as a child, as a pre-adolescent, as a teenager, as a young adult and as a mature adult. He perfects all of human life and all human relations as a son and as a man. Third, he establishes a New Covenant by becoming a co-signer to the Old Covenant. He accepts the burden of the Old Covenant curse upon himself.

In so doing, he institutes in his own body and blood, the sacrament by which the New Covenant is constituted. I’ll say it again: Christianity is the only religion in all the world and in all of history where we have God swearing the oath. Christ himself is the one, true, ultimately dependable sacrament, oath. His life, thereby, becomes the source of all of our sacraments.

For instance, let’s take a look at the seven sacraments and see how they all participate in the one true sacrament, which is Jesus Christ himself. When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, we hear a heavenly voice declaring him to be God’s son, with whom he is well pleased. So, Baptism in the Church is the sacrament of rebirth, the sacrament of our divine sonship.

Jesus Christ goes on later to the Mount of Transfiguration where before three apostles his appearance is transformed, so that the sonship, this divine sonship which he possesses, which was declared at Baptism becomes visible and powerful and manifest to Peter, James and John — so much so that they end up on their faces. In a sense, Confirmation is that. If Baptism instills divine sonship in the believer, Confirmation unleashes the power of sonship and the Holy Spirit’s glory as we receive that sacrament.

We also follow Jesus to the Upper Room in Jerusalem where on Maundy Thursday, he strips down and he washes the disciples’ feet. And so he shows them the way to authority in the New Covenant is by serving others in their needs. So the Church teaches that by so doing Christ established the priesthood of the New Covenant. The sacrament of Holy Orders corresponds to this action of Christ.

Then, of course, he proceeds on to institute the Eucharist. He transforms the Old Testament Passover Feast which he is celebrating at that moment into the New Covenant Passover by establishing the Eucharist and telling these newly ordained apostles that they must do this in remembrance of Me.

Then Jesus, who was anointed by Mary before his death, is then resurrected, giving to us in a sense the significance and meaning behind the sacrament of Anointing as our bodies and souls are prepared to be united with our family in heaven through resurrection.

Then as Christ is resurrected and as he returns to the disciples, what does he do? In John 20: verses 21 through 23, it describes how Jesus breathed on the eleven disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Then he says, “Whoever’s sins you forgive shall be forgiven, and whose sins you retain shall be retained.” In this action of Christ we see another sacrament instituted, namely the sacrament of Penance.

Then finally at Pentecost, Jesus having ascended into heaven, having been glorified and enthroned at the right hand of the Father sends the Holy Spirit down on the feast of Pentecost and so, in a sense, establishes his Church. He betroths the Church to himself as a bride to a bridegroom and he gives to this bride of his the Holy Spirit as a dowry. This is the understanding of Pentecost that the Church has always had. So Matrimony becomes a sacrament in the work of Christ.

Now in these and in many, many other ways Christ established himself as the New Covenant sacrament from which all of the other seven sacraments are derived. Now the sacraments are supposed to give grace. The reason they give grace is because they all share a common source which is Christ himself, the one true sacrament. In fact, grace can be understood properly as the life of Christ, as divine sonship. The Holy Spirit comes into us to give to us divine sonship, divine grace. So, in effect, God is saying, “I am going to give you my love and my love is going to give you myself, my own life, my own sonship. I’ll stake my life on it,” Christ says, and then he does on the cross. So the grace of the sacraments is not derived only from the holiness of the minister or primarily from the holiness of the recipient so much as from Christ himself, who is ultimately the final minister and the real recipient.

The sacraments are truly actions of Christ on our behalf. They are designed with us and our needs in mind. They are designed to meet the crises in our life that arise — infants, children, young adults, teenagers, full-grown adults, senior citizens — all encounter unique problems and they all have distinct needs that must be met.

Christ acted in such a way so as to institute his life as the sacrament par excellance from which the seven sacraments would come to accompany us through the journey of life, assisting us and providing us with the grace that we need as infants to overcome original sin, as young children who have sinned and stained themselves to be restored to the Father through Penance, our first confession. Then to be invited to the family supper table in the Eucharist and to be nourished, to grow that life. Confirmation is almost equivalent to spiritual adolescence when supernatural hormones are released in the children of God to cause them to grow and to become able to control and harness their own newly found powers and desires.

Then on it goes, because when you enter into Matrimony you have specific needs that are provided for by the sacraments. When you become sick, when you become infirm and elderly, the sacrament of Anointing provides you with the grace you need to prepare for resurrection and new life in heaven.

Conclusion

By the sacraments we are united to Christ in the deepest and greatest possible way. The sacraments, as I said, are designed to meet our many needs. They are designed with our needs in mind. The sacraments are the instruments that Christ uses to incorporate us into his own body, the Corpus Christi, so much so that we become identified with Christ. St. Paul says, “It is no longer I but Christ who lives in me.” So we are incorporated with Christ. We become identified with Christ through these sacraments. Thus, our sacramental worship in its essence really amounts to Christ’s perfect worship of the Father that he continues in our bodies, in our souls, and in the Church that is constituted and strengthened and expanded through the sacraments.

It’s this which makes us acceptable. These are the sacramental graces that make our worship, not only acceptable to God but delightful to the Father, as well. The major emphasis throughout this weekend is simple. The sacraments of the Church are not a substitute for holiness. The sacraments are not a substitute for hard work to attain sanctity. They are, rather, the divinely appointed means by which we struggle to overcome sin, and we receive divine aid and grace to help in time of need to grow up and mature as the sons and daughters of the most high God, our heavenly Father.

The sacraments are God’s tools for our sanctification. They are not magical and they are not mechanical. They are powerful because Christ is the one who has instituted them because Christ is the sacrament. Christ is the oath that God has sworn for our salvation. So we must accept the challenge to allow Christ to live his life in us and join with him in pledging to God that we will live the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Grace is For-Giving and For-Getting Program 21 Scott Hahn

This second talk is building upon the first talk and I would like to explain briefly how it is. The first talk was an introduction to the idea of sacrament. It was titled “Growth by Oath” because we tried to see the deeper meaning of sacrament is wrapped up with that term “oath” once it is properly understood. We are going to move on now. Our second installment, if you will, is going to be on an overview of the seven sacraments of the Catholic faith — an overview. The title I’ve given it — it’s kind of clever, I guess, — it’s “Grace is for Giving and for Getting.”

Introductory Review of Previous Talk

Just to review briefly from last night: four main points or maybe five. First of all, sacrament is the most important idea in the Catholic faith. It’s the most distinctive element in Catholicism. When you look at all the other non-Catholic variations of the Christian religion, it’s the one thing that stands out the most and when you understand the Catholic faith, it’s the one thing that stands clearly at the center.

Secondly, we also said that sacraments may well be the least understood part of the Catholic faith because of our society, perhaps because of lack of training, but also a lack of historical sense when it comes to understanding what sacramentum is all about.

The third idea that we tried to get across last night was that the oath concept on which sacrament is built is perhaps even less understood than sacraments themselves. So we have a kind of double duty for ourselves if we want to understand the sacraments. We are going to have to understand the Catholic distinctives. We are also going to have to understand why the Holy Spirit led the Catholic Church to use this term “sacramentum” to describe these sacred and holy actions that Christ gave us.

We saw, fourthly, that the oath, sacramentum, is constitutive of a covenant bond. That is, covenant and oath are practically interchangeable terms. Let me give you just a little bit of backup so that you can see what I mean there. In Ezekiel 17 we read in verse 8, “I gave you my solemn oath and entered into covenant with you,” declares the sovereign Lord, “and you became mine.” When he swears the oath, he forms the covenant and we become his possessions. Likewise going over to Ezekiel 16, verse 59, “I will deal with you as you deserve because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant.” The next chapter, Ezekiel 17, verse 13, “Then he took a member of the royal family and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath.” Likewise, it talks about verse 16, “As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, he shall die in Babylon and the land of the king who put him on the throne, whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke.” Verse 18, “He despised the oath by breaking the covenant,” and on and on we go.

You may say, “This is just simply an Old Testament idea, but we actually find that one of the first occurrences of the terms “oath” and “covenant” in the New Testament together is found in Luke, Chapter 1 where Zechariah is giving us his psalm. In Luke 1 beginning in verse 68 it says, “Praised be the Lord the God of Israel because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David to show his mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, yea, the oath he swore to our father Abraham.”

You see how oath and covenant are interchangeable terms. They are practically synonymous ideas in our religion. So to pledge oneself to God and to plea for God’s help, as we do in an oath, we say, “I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” That’s our pledge and then comes our plea, “so help me, God.” That is what constitutes a covenant bond. We are going to look into that a lot more this morning.

Finally, we concluded last night by saying that what is distinctive about the New Covenant, as opposed to all of the Old Testament covenants is that Christ swears the oath. Christianity is the only religion in the world, the only religion in human history where God is the one swearing the oath. God says, “I give you my word,” and the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. That word speaks love and truth to us and says, “I’ll stake my life on it,” and then he proceeds to stake his life on the cross so that from his body, as a result of his curse, we might derive our supernatural life.

Now this talk is going to explore more in depth how the sacraments relate to the central idea of the covenant, to discover what it really means. If you ever read through the Bible from beginning to end, and that’s something I would really encourage all Catholics to do; the Bible is not a Protestant book, it’s our most treasured family heirloom. Vatican II compares it to the Eucharist as the bread of life for our souls. So if you have read the Bible all the way through or if you will read the Bible all the way through, you will discover, I am sure, that the covenant idea is central to scripture. It’s central to understanding what the Bible means by salvation and what the Catholic Church teaches about salvation.

Meaning of Covenant

But what is the covenant? What is the meaning of the term “covenant”? We see its relationship to oath. They are practically interchangeable but how do we move on from identifying sacrament and oath, oath and covenant? What is the practical meaning of covenant? You might say, “Well, that’s simple.” It’s not! Just as we had many confusions and misunderstandings about oaths, I would say that we have at least as much misunderstanding about covenant.

Let’s remove some of the misconceptions. One of the most frequent confusions I run into is people identifying a covenant with a contract. A contract and a covenant are often used interchangeably in our society. That is one of the greatest blunders you could commit, if you really want to understand the nature of a covenant. The difference between a contract and a covenant is practically as great as the difference between prostitution and marriage, between your boss and your grandfather, between your employees and your children. They are practically antithetical at one level. The difference is profound and so the confusion is dangerous if we are going to see the covenant as the center of the Christian faith and then misunderstand it as a contract. A contract is a mutual relationship between two parties based merely upon promises exchange, to exchange goods and services. Contracts exchange property through mutual agreement between two individuals.

The oath is what transforms a contract into a covenant by bringing down God and interposing him between the two parties. God becomes judge and provider. He helps us if we open ourselves to it and he judges us by what we do and say according to our oath. The oath transforms the contract into a covenant. A covenant doesn’t exchange property; a covenant exchanges persons. That’s why God said in Ezekiel 16, “I swore an oath. I entered into a covenant with you and you became mine.” We become his treasured possessions, and he becomes our treasured inheritance. Persons exchange themselves in a covenant under God’s care and under his supervision and with his grace.

An oath is what makes the difference because it brings down God to be actively present as provider and judge, the father-figure in the family. In fact, one of the greatest scholars of this century, when it comes to studying oaths and covenants, is a man by the name of D.J. McCarthy, a great scripture scholar. McCarthy once said that covenants were the means by which the ancient world took to extend relations beyond the natural unity of blood. Let me say that again. McCarthy defines covenants: covenants were the means the ancient world took to extend relationships beyond the natural unity of blood. If we are related by blood, we are family. If we want to extend family bonds beyond natural flesh and blood, we use oaths and form covenants, and those covenants become family bonds.

McCarthy, in fact, defines covenant, in his important work, “Treaty and Covenant” as “a quasi-familial union based on oath.” A family-like union, a familial union based on oath. Now that is going to be one of the most important ideas to penetrate into the most glorious depths of the Catholic religion and the Christian life that we are trying to lead with God’s help. Because the sacraments are the bonding agents in the family of God.

If the covenant that Christ forms in the New Covenant is that sacred family bond, then the sacramental oaths that he swears and then offers to us to reenact within the Body of Christ, if all this in fact is true, then we need to see the sacraments as the bonding agents in the family of God. It’s interesting that even the Hebrew word for covenant, bereth — if we trace the origin of the term bereth back to its etymology, you come up with the idea of chain or binding or fetter, a chain or a fetter, binding. Now that might seem odd, at first. To bind, to chain, to fetter? Yeah, that’s right, because in a family you’re in a bind. You’re bound to each other. You’re chained together. This helps clarify what Michael Novak means when he kind of jokingly defines the family as “the only place on earth where when you go, they have to take you in.” When you go home, it’s the only place where they have to take you. Why? Because you are all bound together and it’s the oath covenants of the family that bind us together.

It reminds me of a very sad but enlightening experience I had teaching a course at an important Catholic university in the Midwest. I was teaching a course in the Theology of Marriage for four weeks and one of my top students — she was not only brilliant, she was very beautiful and also you could tell, very committed to practicing her religion by her comments and by her demeanor. She didn’t speak that much in class until the very last week. We were just sharing practical experiences about marriage at the close of the course and I asked around, I was asking various students what their plans were in light of what they were studying. I called on her. We’ll call her Maryann. I said, “Maryann, what are your plans? Are you going to get married?”

She said, “Oh, no.” A lot of guys looked down glum, you know. Doggone it, you know, it would have been nice. There goes one dream. I said, “Oh, okay,” I was fishing, “Are you thinking of the religious life.

“Who, me? No, I’m not cut out for that.”

And I said, “Oh, okay,” sort of like option C, what is it again?

It didn’t come to me. I said to her, “Okay, what are…”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“Well, okay, what do you think about marriage?”

“I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

Why?”

She looked down and she looked back up and she said, “Well, do you really want to know?”

I wasn’t sure I really wanted to say yes but I did. She said, “Well.” She proceeded to explain that her father is one of the top divorce lawyers in one of the most important Midwestern cities and he has been for decades, and ever since she was a little girl, she would sit at the dinner table as Daddy came home and he would tell one horror story after the other, week in and week out about all of these terrible divorces that he was deliberating over as a lawyer.

One the previous week involved a married couple who had been together for over forty years. The man invented something, patented it, got rich and decided it was a new life for himself. So he decided it was time for a new wife. So he proceeded to run off with his 23-year-old secretary, she said. Well, the divorce was very bloody. The proceedings were very hard. She described them briefly and she said that the day before her father explained how hard it was. He was trying to settle, resolve this whole thing, trying to figure out some cash settlement. Here’s a million dollar check, and he wrote it out and he proceeded to hand it to her attorney. He gave it to her. She ripped it up. She started crying.

“What do you want? That’s just the way you are!” He wrote a check for twice the amount. She ripped it up. Three times the amount. She ripped it up, and he said, “What do you want?”

In between these uncontrollable sobs, she just began to say, “I don’t want to grow old alone. I don’t want to grow old alone.”

She said, “Now, do you understand why I don’t want to get married?”

I said, “No, I think you might be able to understand, though, why marriage is a sacrament because we need all the help God can give us to stay together.”

But we fear growing old alone, don’t we? Marriage as a covenant is the chain that liberates us. That’s what an oath is. That’s what a covenant is. If a covenant comes from the term to bind, to chain, to fetter, it’s so that we can grow old in security, in freedom, not fearing our wrinkles, our potbellies, our varicose veins, our balding heads. You know, all of these things. We could have security because we belong to each other through covenants that chain us together. That’s the idea. That’s the idea in antiquity. That’s the idea in the New Testament. That’s the idea today, whether or not we understand it and God knows, we need to understand it better.

Old Testament as a Series of Covenants Whereby God Fathers His Family on Earth

All of the Old Testament reads this way: a series of divine covenants whereby God fathers the family that he has on earth by oaths with these very important people that we mentioned last night. He established an oath with Adam. He established an oath covenant with Noah. He establishes an oath covenant with Abraham and with Moses and with David and then ultimately, of course, with our Lord, Jesus Christ. But the Old Testament can only really be understood, this series of covenants needs to be seen, as a process by which God fathers his family.

Through these covenants he restructures and administers his love, his life, his grace, his justice and power to his people: that marital covenant with Adam, that domestic household covenant with Noah. A covenant with Abraham forms the family of God into a tribe, and you can just see God’s family expanding. With Moses instead of just a tribe, there are twelve tribes and the covenant that God makes with Moses reforms and restructures those twelve tribes into a national family.

Then, with David that nation becomes a kingdom that subjugates and controls other nations, hoping to lead them closer and closer to their Creator and Father through these covenants. A national kingdom family is the best we get in the Old Testament, but when Christ comes, what is it that he establishes? What is it that he extends out in this great extended kinship network? Simple. The climax of the Old Testament series of covenants is when Christ establishes an international family, a Catholic covenant.

Jesus’ New Covenant Establishes an International Family, A Catholic Covenant

The word for international, cataholiche, is where we get the word catholic. The distinctive genius and beauty of the New Covenant is precisely its Catholicity. We are part of a worldwide family. No longer do we divide and segregate between Jews and Gentiles. We are all God’s children in the household of faith through the flesh and the blood which bonds us together, that flesh and blood of Christ that we receive in the Holy Eucharist.

We also need to see, however, that the Old Testament reads almost like a tragedy, almost like a horror story. How is that? Well, if mankind is God’s family, the more you read the Old Testament carefully, the more you realize that outside of the covenants, outside of Israel, outside of God’s family arrangement in the Old Testament, you can see that mankind was one, big, unhappy family torn apart by sin, broken by violence and injustice, selfishness. So much so, that mankind forgot that it was really one family under God.

That’s truth. We all come from Adam. That isn’t just historically true, that’s biologically true and that’s theologically significant because it explains why Christ comes as a new Adam, the founding father of a new family, not a natural, earthly family, but a supernatural family in heaven and we who are members of it on earth are pilgrims and sojourners, wayfarers, waiting to get home — a colonial outpost, a kingdom established away from the royal capitol, here on earth. We’re on probation and we’re on pilgrimage, but we are in a new covenant that Christ has sworn the oath for so that we can have much greater assurance that we will make it home, back to the Father and back to the great family reunion in heaven.

If we keep this covenant connection in mind and we think about the covenant in light of the oath that Christ swears — God swears the oath by becoming man and dying for us and taking on himself the curse — if we see all of this, I think we are going to be able to understand grace in a radically new way. It’s going to be much more significant, much more attractive and our Lord will be much more adorable and desirable for our life and for our love and for all of our needs.

This explains why the covenant is so central to the Catholic faith and why the life we lead is a family life. If we keep this covenant family connection in mind, if we keep it at the front and the center of our thinking, it’s going to help explain three of the most important things that the sacraments do. Let me quote from Sacrosanctum Concilium, a document from Vatican II in 1963, paragraph 59 where it describes how the purpose of the sacraments, “is threefold. First, to sanctify man.” That’s the first thing, that is, God personally fathers us, his children, to maturity, to love, to wisdom, to holiness.

The second thing, Vatican II says, “The sacraments are purposed to build up the Body of Christ,” not just we, as children of God, as persons, but God fathers his entire covenant family in justice and love and mercy.

The third thing is to “give worship to God.” The sacraments are to give worship to God because the father wants to fill us with all that which we adore and praise in him. One of the most forgotten laws in modern society is we become like the one we worship. That’s not just true for Christians; that’s true for everybody. Everybody worships something. Everybody serves something and we always tend to become like the one we worship. So we don’t worship because God is some cosmic egomaniac who says, “Give me all the glory.” We worship because through worship God fills us up with all that which we praise and adore in him, and so we become more and more like him. We worship him, ultimately, for our sake. It doesn’t add anything to his glory, but it sure adds a lot to ours and that’s what a father takes great satisfaction in.

So God gives us these sacraments so that we can say, “So help me God,” and be assured that he will give us his help. That help isn’t just truth. It isn’t just justice. It isn’t just laws. It’s all of that embodied in Christ who lived and walked among us and who died for us to give us this New Covenant. That’s why we do practically everything as Catholics, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Every time we make the sign of the cross, what are we doing? We’re renewing our oath. It’s like the court was dismissed for a day and we came back and it’s in session again. And I remind you, you’re still under oath, and so take the oath sign, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” because that was the sign sworn over you when you were reborn into his family. That reminds us we are his children. We’re his possessions and he is our possession and our inheritance. We do practically everything under the sign of the cross because that is the oath that gives us certainty that we are truly his children and that isn’t just some quaint metaphor that stirs up our feelings.

That’s more true than everything you see around us in this room. That’s bedrock reality. So, when we do this, we continually remind ourselves that we are children of the Blessed Trinity. That gives to us a sense of identity. It gives to us a sense of dignity. It gives to us a sense of royalty, and it should also give us a drive for holiness because it isn’t just a reminder of who we are, it’s a renewal of the oath that we swore in our Baptism and that was sworn over us in Confirmation.

We miss the overarching centrality of the family for Christianity and the Catholic Church. It isn’t just a metaphor. It isn’t just an analogy. It’s the master idea to our faith. Somebody might say, “Well, wait a second. The family is a good illustration. It’s a good teaching device. It’s a helpful metaphor. It’s just too ordinary. It’s too mundane. You know it’s just so… it’s all around us, family, you know. We should look for something very unique and special and unusual to understand God.” Is that right? Not if we really understand the character of our Father, because God’s deepest desire is to give to all of his children the raw materials, that which it takes, whatever it takes, to understand his love. Not a Ph.D. in theology, though he might call some to that. Not necessarily graduate studies, though I hope we all commit ourselves to the apostolate of studying our faith.

Ultimately, God gives to every garage mechanic, every cleaning lady, every bag lady, every street person, everybody rich and poor, everybody famous and infamous — he gives to every human being the raw materials to understand his love by giving them a mother and a father, brothers and sisters. Well, you might say, “Family experiences are often raw and painful.” That’s right. He gives us family, so that we can understand his love, but he gives us a fallible family so that we will desire the only true infallible family, the Blessed Trinity whose life is lived in the Catholic Church, God’s international, universal family.

I’ll say it again: the family of God is the master idea to the Catholic faith. Boy, did that come as a shock to me! I was still anti- Catholic when I was working on oath and sacrament and covenant and family. My sharper students were saying, “This is going to lead you to ruin,” and I thought, “Ah, poppycock, it’s not going to lead me near the Catholics.” It did, and I’m glad to tell you why. Because there’s really no other way to get to the heart of what we mean when we describe the Blessed Trinity or when we describe the Blessed Virgin Mary as our supernatural mother, or when we pay respect and homage to the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, or we speak to the priests of the parish family as Father, or when we celebrate the feast days of the saints, because what family doesn’t celebrate birthdays and anniversaries?

The statues and the icons and the pictures and the relics and the medals — they’re all family trinkets! They are supernaturally charged with a supernatural love, but the family of God is the master idea to our faith. If we try to understand it and if we try harder to live it, we are going to see how it is that the sacraments enable us to fulfill that family life. The New Covenant gives to us privileges that are just incredibly superior to the Old Covenant. That’s why, incidentally, the New Testament sacraments are fewer than the Old Testament sacraments were. They’re easier. We don’t have to sacrifice tens of thousands of cows and sheeps and goats. Aren’t you glad? They’re fewer. They’re easier because they’re stronger to overcome our sin, because Christ is the one who swears the oath behind it all.

Sacraments Enable us to Fulfill our Supernatural Family Life

I’ll tell you one thing that I want you to take home. The highest good in all creation, the greatest goal for all our lives can be reduced down to one thing, outside of God himself, of course, and that is the grace of divine sonship, Sanctifying Grace. The grace of divine sonship is the most precious thing in the whole universe, outside of God himself.

What is that grace? It’s the life of Christ, the Eternal Son, within us. So it’s no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me, as Saint Paul says. Jesus says in John 15, verse 5, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” But St. Paul says in Phillipians 4:13, “I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.” We need to understand that. The highest good in all creation is the grace of divine sonship. He wants to bring that sonship to maturity. He wants to bring that grace to perfection. He wants us to become like Christ. Romans 8:29, “Those whom he foreloved, he predestined to be conformed to the image of the firstborn among many brethren.” Christ is the new Adam because he is the founding father of a new family in his own glorious and divine and human flesh and blood and he calls us to bring that sonship to maturity and he gives to us all that we need to do so. That’s the bottom line. The supernatural life of His children is His biggest concern for History and for the world.

He wants to bring us to maturity. I once spoke to a former professor of mine, probably the most brilliant man I have ever studied under, certainly the godliest person I have ever had the privilege of studying with. I talked to him a couple years before I became a Catholic. I called him because I was scared that I might end up having to take the Roman road and swim the Tiber and “Pope,” as they say, and it was the last thing on earth that I wanted to do. So I called this professor and he said, “Come on, you know my wife is an ex-Catholic, and she left in her childhood and she’s glad; she’s been glad ever since. And all of this sacramental business, what do you make of that?”

I proceeded to explain how the sacraments can fit into a family program, that you can see a natural family life cycle reflected in the supernatural life cycle. “A family life cycle,” he said. “That’s curious. That’s a novel teaching tool to try to make sense to what is so obviously wrong and superstitious.”

At the time, I did think it was novel. I thought it was one of my clever innovations, you know? I was sharing with my students as though I had come up with it. I was in for a rude shock. Of course, I thought I had found it in the New Testament, but I had never heard any of my teachers who found it there.

Then I began to read the early Church Fathers. The early Fathers frequently speak of the sacraments as the most essential part to what they call “God’s economy of salvation.” Now that’s a phrase that is hard to understand for modern Christians. Why? The sacraments are an essential part of God’s economy of salvation. What do they mean by economy? God’s GNP? The heavenly market place? You know, is there Wall Street up there on the streets of gold? I don’t think so. I don’t think that we are merely commodities that are being traded on the heavenly exchange.

The idea that the early Fathers had in mind when they said that the sacraments are the essential part of God’s economy of salvation is only understood when we see that the word economy is a compound in the Greek of two terms — oeconamia is literally family law. Oecas-namas, family law. It’s a household management program. That’s what the sacramental system is, supernaturally charged with divine life for us weak and fallen and needy humans. Family management because God the Father as our provider and as our judge fathers his children from cradle to grave through the sacramental grace that we can receive.

Now that isn’t just something that the Fathers in the early Church had but then the Catholic Church lost once it became so encumbered by superstition. That’s what I thought. What I found in the early Church Fathers I thought, “Well, it’s too bad the Catholic Church lost it.” Then I discovered that in 1439 at the General Council of Florence in Exaltate Domino, one of the great decrees on the sacraments in the 15th Century, all these Papists had it right.

These Roman Catholics were teaching way back, right before the Reformation, “The first five sacraments are ordained to the interior spiritual perfection of the person, God’s children, and the last two sacraments are ordained to the government and increase of the whole Church.” Then they go on to explain what they mean. “By Baptism we are spiritually reborn. By Confirmation we grow in grace and are strengthened in the faith. By the Eucharist we are nourished with Divine food. By Penance we are spiritually healed. By Extreme Unction we are healed in spirit and in body. Through Orders the Church is governed and through Matrimony the Church receives bodily growth or increase.”

The Family of God is the Master Idea of the Catholic Faith

Now, put it all together. Where do you find in life, birth, growth, strength, nutrition, healing, governing and fruitful expansion? Sounds like a family to me. Sounds like God’s family and the Council of Florence understood it quite well, unless we mean by family the impoverished view of parenthood that we have today in modern society or unless we have a very rootless conception of kinship, which is unfortunately too common these days. Then it might be hard for us to understand what and how the sacraments work to bring about this supernatural family life cycle under God’s control.

It’s tragic that Protestants and other non-Catholics don’t understand this. But what is even more tragic is that many Catholics don’t understand it either, many Catholics. The sacraments are not some mechanical, magical ritual, like a car going through a car wash. “Put it in neutral. Now just stand still” and we go through all this mechanical ritual and we come out clean on the other side. That ain’t the way it works! We’re children. God knows that paternalism is a lousy way to father and so the sacraments are oaths that call us to grow up and receive from the Father all the grace and all the truth and the power we need.

This mechanical, magical ritual process is a total distortion of the sacramental economy of God’s family laws. We lose this vision of the supernatural family life cycle. It wasn’t lost in the Council of Trent, the Council in the 16th Century that was called to rebut and respond to the Reformation, the so-called Reformation of the Protestants. In the seventh session on March 3, 1547, in the Decree on the Sacraments, I discovered that even the opponents of the Protestants sought in terms of God’s family: “Because the sacrament, validly administered, contains grace in itself, thus the sacraments effectively confer grace to those who receive it worthily. The sacraments are explicitly linked, therefore, to our justification.” That’s session seven.

Session six, had just explained justification and it explained it basically in one way: sonship. Session six says, “Justification by faith is the gift of sonship in God’s family.” Session seven says that the sacraments are ordered to growing up and maturing that justification, that sonship. In the forward to this decree, it says, “All true justification, that is, all true divine sonship, begins through the sacraments, like in birth through Baptism, or once begun, increases through the sacraments or when lost, is regained through the sacraments.”

Think of the Prodigal Son. When he came back, what did the father say? “Good to see you, kid. You’ve been my son all along. Why did you squander the wealth?” No. He said to his older brother, “This is your brother who was lost but is now found.” And then he says, “He was dead, but he is now alive.” Sonship can die and through penance, it can be revived because Christ gives to us what the Catholic Church calls the “caro vivificens,” life-giving flesh, the power of Christ within us. Trent goes on to explain how the sacraments of the New Covenant contain the grace they signify and “They bestow it on those who do not hinder it.”

In other words if you have a sincere desire as a child to receive something you want from your parents, Jesus says, “Even bad parents know how to give good gifts to their children, and how much more our heavenly Father.” Trent explains that the primary minister of all the sacraments is Christ himself and, in a sense, the original recipient of the sacraments, we saw last night, is Christ himself. It is also Christ himself who produces their effect in our souls, so says the Council of Trent. In other words, the human ministers, the priests, and so on, are merely God’s tools, Christ’s instruments to give his life to his loved ones, to his brothers and sisters.

So the recipients of the sacraments are God’s beloved children. This is not, then, magically manipulating God to get our way. This is a humble submission on the part of God’s children to the words and the works that God has in store for us as a good father. He takes created human symbols. Somebody could say, “Well, they’re just symbols, that’s all, just signs. All they do is signify.” “No,” the Catholic Church says, “they are not just symbols and just signs because they are divine actions by Christ himself. They are Christ swearing oaths for us.” Then, in our lives, they are Christ swearing oaths in us and by us and through us.

As the new Adam, Christ fathers his New Covenant family through the oaths that he allows us to share. This is still something that is a cherished part of the family legacy. In 1947, Pope Pius XII in “Mediator Dei” reaffirms this family of God perspective, this family paradigm, if you will. He says, “In the whole conduct of the liturgy, the Church has her Divine Founder with her. He is present in the sacraments by his power which he infuses into them as instruments of sanctification.” Pope Pius XII goes on, “It is certainly true that the sacraments possess an intrinsic efficacy, that is an intrinsic power to sanctify us because they are actions of Christ himself transmitting and distributing God’s grace.” He goes on, “But to have their proper effect, they require our souls to be in the right disposition so the work of our redemption, though in itself, independent of our will, really calls for an interior effort from our souls.” Let me say that again, “These sacraments have intrinsic power because Christ is the one who administers them, but to have their proper effect, they require our souls to be in the right disposition.” We have to be sincere in desiring what children need from their parents.

So the work of our redemption, though in itself independent of our will, really calls an interior effort from our souls. When we receive the sacraments, we don’t put ourselves in neutral, like a car in a car wash. We don’t say, “Well, here God, you take it from this point on.” We say in effect, “I am going to give you my all because that’s what I received from you and now in this sacrament I ask that you would supplement it with your grace and with your power.” It really calls for an interior effort from our souls.

As I mentioned, this is something that was reaffirmed in 1963 in Vatican II in Sacrosanctum Concilium. This was stated perhaps more beautifully there than anywhere else. I quote, “By his power Christ is present in the sacraments so that when a man baptizes, it is really Christ himself who baptizes. Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ, for the purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify man, to build up the Body of Christ as the family of God and to give worship to God as his children gathered together in this big family reunion around the altar, the Lord’s table, and we celebrate the family life that we receive in his name through baptism.” And Vatican II concludes, “and because they are signs, they also instruct. Sacraments are powerful teaching tools that the Father uses to instruct his children in the ways of love and justice.”

Vatican II Sacrosanctum Concilium concludes, and I want to stress this, “It is, therefore, of the highest importance that the faithful should easily understand the sacramental signs and should frequent with eager earnestness those sacraments which were instituted to nourish the Christian life.”

Conclusion

Do we seek after the sacraments with an “eager earnestness?” Do we desire them with this holy resolve to use the wills that God has given us and the grace that he has given to supplement and to empower us to grow up and to give glory to him. Jesus illustrates this perspective. He says, Jesus says in John 15, verses 7 and 8, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you,” in other words, the words made visible are the sacraments, “ask whatever you will and it shall be done for you. For by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.”

How is the Father glorified? By fruitful children, children who have wisdom and power and love. Is the Father threatened when his children grow up to be great or is the Father’s greatness magnified and manifested? My wife insists that it was not only academic study that made me a Catholic. Since she’s a Catholic, she can say this more emphatically now. She says that it was academic study of the scriptures and prayer, but even more, it was when I first became a father seven years ago. I think she’s very perceptive, right on target.

When I became a father I was really thrown for a loop because I was a typical American, very individualistic, very self-centered, even in my marriage, until all of a sudden I saw this baby who a year ago never existed, whose life came from my wife and me and from our love. All of a sudden I discovered how God calls us to be co-creators and doesn’t feel gypped in the process, but is glorified. Then, all of a sudden, I realized that I don’t give glory to God when I grovel and call myself a mere worm and stop there. On my own I might be a worm, a wretch, but what makes grace so amazing is that it saved a wretch like me!

One of the great unfortunate tragedies in the Catholic Church is how they have mangled that song by the Protestant John Newton. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…” The first time I sang it in a parish, “that saved and set me free.” Give me a break! Another version I heard a few weeks later was “that saved a soul like me.” Original, “that saved a wretch like me.” Oh we don’t want people to feel like a wretch. Well, that’s what makes grace so amazing, that it saves wretches, that it takes nobodies and makes them somebodies! It takes ordinary folks like us, through whom God does extraordinary things. You might say, “Well, I’m a nobody. I don’t study theology like you. I don’t speak like you. I don’t, you know, emote like you do in front of a crowd. I can’t do much.” Bingo! You’re more qualified, then, because the less we are, the more the Father’s grace and glory will be manifested in us.

People see the extraordinary work of ordinary people and they will no longer confuse the cause. “Well, he went to Harvard,” they’ll say. “He has to be filled with God. Look at him! It has to be the Lord. He must be right in giving glory to his Father in heaven.” When we bear that kind of supernatural fruit, our Father takes absolute delight. Our salvation is free, but brothers and sisters in Christ, it ain’t cheap! Christ purchased for us this gift of salvation at the cost of his own life.

This inheritance is ours, freely given within God’s family, but it came at a very high and steep cost. But it is only for those who trust God enough to entrust themselves by oath. God’s free gift of salvation is only for those who trust God, not themselves, but who trust God enough to entrust themselves to God by an oath. Somebody could say, “Well, I’m not going to swear to God to do all of these things because I don’t trust myself enough. Good, don’t! But the whole reason why we swear a sacramental oath is because a sacramentum is an oath plea for God to make up for what we lack.

Don’t trust yourselves, but entrust yourselves to the one you can trust. For those people, salvation is free and full. This is not paternalism. God wants us to work hard. He wants to fill us with his power because when he does his work in us, his life grows up and comes to perfection. He loves us like a father, just the way we are — total acceptance no matter what you’ve done, no matter what sins you may have committed.

At this moment, no matter how far you feel from God, no matter what crimes you have committed, no matter what horrible thoughts and resolutions you may have reached, God the Father loves his children just the way they are — total acceptance! But he loves us too much to let us stay that way, and the sacraments are the tools by which he will transform us into mature sons and daughters. So don’t say, “Really when it comes to religion, I’m a nobody.” God’s greatest joy and his age-old specialty is taking the ordinary nobodies and doing extraordinary things through them.

Let me conclude then by saying the sacraments are not a substitute for holiness. They are not some kind of mechanical morality. To treat them as such is worse than perjury. It’s tantamount to sacrilege. But those sacraments that Christ has given us are powerful because every time we receive those sacraments, we get grace so that we can give grace, and we say to God again, “We swear to live the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So, help me, God.”

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. And thank you.

THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Signed, Sealed and Delivered Program 22 Transcripts Scott Hahn

We’re going to take a move now; we’re going to make a shift away from the foundational concept concerning the sacraments to the sacraments in particular. The next hour we will be discussing Baptism and Confirmation. As we move away from the theory to the practice, as we move from the sacraments in general to the sacraments in particular, I have to confess a real feeling of inadequacy, not only because I’ve only been receiving the sacraments for less than five years but also because I want to assure you that out there, there is a veritable ocean of material to feed your soul on with respect to each one of the sacraments.

So, each one is like the seven seas. You look at the seven seas and how could you possibly chart them all in a lifetime? The seven sacraments are the same way. They are the seven seas of God’s grace. All we can really do then, if I am going to be honest, is just to skim the surface and share some thoughts that I hope the Holy Spirit can plant deep within your hearts and bring forth fruit from.

Introduction

Just briefly by way of review, last night we introduced the sacraments by looking at the nature of the oath and seeing that the oath of the New Covenant was sworn by Christ himself and that that’s what makes the New Covenant so distinct and unique. This morning we took an overview of the seven sacraments, and we looked at them in terms of a supernatural family life cycle. We saw how that perspective is not novel. It’s actually embedded in the New Testament. It’s echoed in the early Church Fathers. It’s carried on through the medieval Church and the Councils all the way into the Council of Trent and into our own century with the Popes of the 20th Century. We see that throughout Church history.

Various Ways of Dividing the Particular Sacraments

Now the way I’ve divided up the sacraments in particular follows the classical order, but there are different ways to distinguish or to categorize the seven sacraments. For instance, we saw in the Council of Florence in 1539 in that document Exaltate Domino, written by Pope Eugene IV, that there was a distinction made between the sacraments of interior spiritual perfection, that is the five sacraments that are designed to bring interior perfection within each one of us as persons and then two sacraments that are ordered for the life of the Church, its government and its growth — Holy Orders and Matrimony.

Now that’s a famous distinction, and that’s helpful. But another way of categorizing the sacraments — some theologians prefer to categorize them as the sacraments of the dead versus the sacraments of the living. The sacraments of the dead would include Baptism, which is only given to those who are still with original sin and perhaps actual sin in the case of adults, and penance in the case of being in a state of mortal sin. Those are the sacraments of the dead. The sacraments of the living would thus relate to the other five.

One way I like, though, one way of categorizing the sacraments that I prefer is to distinguish between the sacraments that have an indelible mark, or what theologians call a character, as distinct from those sacraments that can be repeated. The three sacraments that are known as indelible are Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. The first two represent the prime focus for our time right now. The sacraments that could be repeated, of course, would be the Eucharist, because we receive the Blessed Sacrament at least weekly. We also have the sacrament of Reconciliation, which can be repeated, and it should be received frequently. Also, the Anointing of the Sick — oftentimes we think of Extreme Unction only with reference to the dying, but in fact, it can be given to one person several times. Then also, Matrimony, so that if your spouse dies, you are free to remarry and thus repeat that sacrament.

But those three sacraments that are indelible, Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders, are, in a sense, prime sacraments. Baptism is the sacrament of our new birth whereby we become babies in Christ. Confirmation is the sacrament of battle, whereby we become soldiers of Christ. Then Holy Orders, as we will see tomorrow, is the sacrament of the supernatural Father, the Pontifex, the Bridge Builder who helps and offers himself up to be a bridge between God and man.

Analogy of Sacraments

Using this last distinction, I’d like to give you an analogy. You know the song “Silent Night” — one of my favorite Christmas carols? In one of the stanzas theres a that goes something like this, “Silent night, holy night, Son of God, Love’s pure light.” If we think of Jesus Christ as the PURE light, after all, he said, “I am the light of the world,” in him is light and there is no darkness. If Christ is Love’s pure light, then we can think of the Church as a prism. What happens when light hits a prism? That light is refracted and we have the seven colors of the spectrum, don’t we? Coincidentally, how are those seven colors categorized or distinguished in the two categories? There are primary colors, which are three, and then there are four secondary colors.

To use the analogy, those colors are the sacraments that refract for us the glory of Christ as that pure light is received by the Church. And the indelible sacraments, Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders are like the three primary colors. Let’s keep that in mind because I think that will help us think of these sacraments in their proper context as being beautiful and glorious. They are meant not only to strengthen us but to beautify and enrich our souls. Too often people think of the sacraments simply as medicine. We forget that sacraments don’t just heal; they also strengthen. They beautify. They enrich. They don’t just bring us back to point zero; they take us on into infinity and eternity and fill us with the very life of God.

Basic Catechism Definition

Keeping all this in mind, I don’t just want to overwhelm you with images and analogies and new concepts. It’s always helpful just to remind ourselves of the basic catechism definition of a sacrament and that is “an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace.” What is grace? It’s that divine life within us. It’s the grace of sonship. St. Thomas Aquinas once defined grace as “the act of divine life and love that God is in himself,” so that when we receive grace, we don’t just receive knowledge about God, we receive nothing less than God himself as he is in himself — that eternal communion of life and of love, and that is a glorious gift indeed.

Baptism as the Sacrament of Divine Sonship

Recall also how we said that the highest good in all the universe is grace, the grace of Divine Sonship, and this is the meaning and purpose of Baptism and we will see, secondarily, of the sacrament of Confirmation. Baptism is, in short, the sacrament of Sonship. That’s what some theologians call it. Others prefer to speak of it as the sacrament of our justification; but since the Council of Trent in section six identified justification with the grace of Divine Sonship, it doesn’t matter which you choose. It brings us into the family of God, and that brings up my favorite topic, the family of God, the master idea to the Catholic faith.

Just a few years ago, how important this idea is came home to me in a very, very vivid way. I have a good friend. He happens to be my brother-in-law, and he lives out in Pennsylvania and he works with an Evangelical Protestant organization on the Penn State campus. His primary outreach is to reach international students. One of the things that came up was the opportunity, at least the possibility of a debate, or a forum discussion between a Christian and a Muslim. The Christian would represent the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Muslim would present Islam, the two great faiths vying for control in a sense. They are really interacting in a very interesting way these days.

He contacted me. He asked me if I would consider it. I didn’t need to think about it! I said, “Sure, that would be exciting.” He said, “I already have somebody in mind. He comes from the Middle East. He is very well educated and he is wealthy and he has been financed to go around the country and he has been engaged in these debates on other university campuses.” I said, “Well, then, in that case, let me think about it a little. In other words, this man’s experienced in debate?” “Oh yes, sure. He’s debated many times.” “Oh, I see. What is it he would like to debate?”

The one topic that he wanted to debate the most was the Trinity. I thought, “No wonder, what doctrine is more difficult for the human mind to comprehend? It’s a trick. It’s a setup.” Then I thought about it a little while and I said to myself, “That really does need to be presented in a vital, understandable way to people and maybe debate is a proper context.” At any rate, I consented. Before we debated and before the debate was actually scheduled, my brother-in-law notified me that this Muslim wanted to get together and discuss, I don’t know what; he just wanted to discuss things and get to know me — maybe feel out the foe or something,

We arranged for a lunch time visit at a restaurant in State College, Pennsylvania. I went, nonchalant. I was just looking forward to meeting this man. We sat down and we exchanged amenities and all of the light conversational things to get things started for about two minutes. Then all of a sudden, he just launched right into it. He started talking about the pillars of Islam and Allah and Mohammed and so on. Then he turned to me and said, “What are you going to do to defend the Trinity?” I thought about it for a second and I said, “Well, I’d like to present the Trinity in terms of the family of God.”

He changed the subject. We started talking about Islam in general and Christianity in general and I noted in my mind, “He’s changed the subject.” About a minute later, just in passing, I mentioned God, and I said, “God, the Father, and I went on …” but before I could go on he stopped me, and he said, “Please, don’t refer to God as Father again. Thank you.” I stopped and I said, “Well, all right. Does it offend you?” He said, “It offends me very much. It’s blasphemous to call God, ‘Father.’ God has no sons.” Oh yes, of course, this is Islam and Christianity, the Trinity and Allah, all right, all right.

About a minute or two later in conversation, I happened to mention God the Father again. I mean it’s hard to talk about Christianity and not talk about the Father and the Son, right? This time, he got a little bit more irate, and he pounded his fist one time and he shook his finger and he said, “I don’t want you to bring that up again.” And I said, “What is it with Father?” And he said, “Allah is Master, not father. He has no sons.” Then I said, “All right, now I understand that’s your belief, but you understand that my belief is that he does, that God is a Blessed Trinity and there is an Eternal Son and we all are sons in the Son, Filii in Filio, and all that.” He didn’t know Latin, so it didn’t help.

I tried to explain to him that this is the ancient gospel, how the Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men could become sons of God. He was waiting patiently until finally he said, “I don’t want to hear it. It’s blasphemous.” I said, “Why is it blasphemous?” “Because Allah has no need of sons.” I couldn’t resist a little barb at this point. I said, “Oh, I see. He’s a master and we’re his slaves. Does he need servants? Can’t he get the job done, himself?” He didn’t think that was funny and I probably shouldn’t have said it. Anyway, I tried a little bit harder and we proceeded to talk about some other topics.

We ended up meeting for at least two hours. Then it came around to the Trinity again, and I noted in my mind how long and roundabout that circuitous conversation was before we came back. When we came back, he was expecting me to explain the Trinity in philosophical, abstract language because, historically, that’s how it’s often been explained, using the word usio or essence or substance or nature, then trying to differentiate that from the three Persons who have the one nature, and where in human life and experience do you see anything like that?

The three-leaf clover doesn’t work. Water is ice, steam and liquid doesn’t work. Really, no human analogy works, except the family. Now I can’t get into the whole explanation because we’re not talking about the Trinity; we’re talking about sonship and Baptism. But as I began to explain it, I could see that old anger coming back. I stopped. He stopped. I said, “What is it about all this?” He explained in greater detail. He said, “To take fatherhood and sonship and put that on to God is wrong because it’s something that belongs exclusively to creatures.” “I see. Now, do you think that Allah is wise?” “Of course.” “Well, do humans share wisdom?” “Well, yes.” “Is Allah powerful?” “Yes.” “Do humans also possess some power?” “Um-huh.” “Does Allah provide for our needs? “Yes.” Do we provide for each other’s needs, at least sometimes?” “Well, yes.” “Is Allah caring?” “Yes.” “Is Allah good?” “Yes.” “Can humans be caring and good?” “Yes, what are you getting to?”

I said, “Well, if Allah is all of those things, is Allah loving?” “Yes.” “Well, if he is a loving, caring, providing, good God and all those things are found in human experience and we can project them onto Allah anyway, then why not fatherhood, as well?” Whoa! I said the wrong thing. He said, “Allah loves, but not as a father. Allah is master, we are his slaves. We’re his property. Let me explain.” “Please do.” He said, “I have a dog in my apartment back in the town I’m living in now and I have to move. I’ve found a new apartment to move to in this new city, but I’m not allowed to have pets. The dog in my apartment is my dog. I love that dog. It’s my dog that I love. I am going to move. Before I do, I will kill that dog. It’s mine.”

I looked at him. He looked back at me and I waited for a crack of his mouth into a smile or something. I thought he was joking. Nothing. “That’s love? That’s Allah’s love, the love of a master and an owner. With love like that, who needs hate?” He didn’t laugh. I didn’t push it. We finally had to leave that lunch table, and my brother-in-law and I got in the car and he couldn’t even start it up, and I didn’t want him to because we kind of just sat there stunned. We looked at each other and I knew what he was feeling and he knew what I was feeling. We had always taken so much for granted, that God is our loving Father and that we are his beloved children. Something that is so common, so humdrum, so routine and sometimes practically meaningless to us, we discovered, is absolutely novel, strange, alien and foreign and offensive to other religions.

Thank God, he’s our Father. It’s just embedded into our faith, and yet we still take it for granted. The “Our Father, who art in heaven…. Glory be to the Father and to the Son…. I believe in God, the Father Almighty.” And I had never really appreciated what it meant to be a son of God and how much greater the dignity that was than merely being a slave or private property or the personal possession of our Creator.

Now all of those things are also true in the Christian religion, but our Creator has become our Father and the property has become children and heirs with Christ, and Baptism is what conferred that exalted dignity upon us. Baptism is the sacrament of our Divine Sonship. We could almost stop now and just spend the rest of our time in prayer, asking God to help us see what it really means to have been baptized in the Spirit in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to take upon ourselves the life of Christ, to be clothed in Christ, to be called the children of God because as 1st John 3:1 says, “That’s what we are.” Behold the manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, for that is what we are.” See, it isn’t just an image. It isn’t just a metaphor. It is the metaphysical, supernatural fact of life around which everything else revolves, in terms of which everything else needs to be understood.

Something I learned just recently is that the religion of Islam also uses oaths. Muslims swear oaths to Allah frequently and these oaths are tied up with covenants, but Allah has never sworn the oath. And the oaths that we swear to Allah in the Islamic religion are all the oaths of slaves in a household., not children, not heirs, not sons and daughters.

The New Covenant on which Christianity is built is unique and distinctive because the Son of God became the Son of man so that the sons of men could become the sons of God. And Baptism is this new birth. Saving faith is more than just a feeling. It’s more than just a decision to accept Jesus Christ into our heart as personal Lord and Savior. It’s more than a commitment of our wills and our hearts to Christ. This is the language that non-Catholics use and it’s right and proper to use it, but it is not right and proper to base our sonship on our feelings, on our decisions and on our experiences. No matter how many crusades, no matter how many altar calls, no matter how many times we may have repented and sworn our allegiance to God, it’s the sacrament that Christ lives out and calls us to enact that is the firm foundation on which our supernatural life is built.

When Jesus was baptized, Matthew 3, verses 16 and 17 say, “Behold the spirit of God descended like a dove and lo, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.'” Now did God say that from heaven for Jesus’ sake? No. Jesus knew it with absolute certainty. He said it for our sake so that we would learn to associate Baptism with that same divine declaration. We can’t hear it, except by faith and by faith we hear it every time a child is validly baptized “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” We hear God say, “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.”

What were Jesus’ last words? You know how important people’s last words are always recorded. What were our Lord’s last words? In Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” Do we believe that? Let’s just stop and ask ourselves, do we believe that right at this moment that Jesus Christ possesses all authority in heaven and on earth? He says “All of it has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of the nations.” The word for nations is ethnic group. We get that idea of family solidarity, ethnic identity there. The nations are all descended from Adam and Noah. We are all one, big, unhappy family, broken and torn apart by sin and restored and reunited in the flesh and blood of the new Adam, the God- man, Jesus Christ.

“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” That’s a sacrament, for that’s an oath. When somebody says, “I give you my word,” what do they mean? Is it some secret password? No, it’s not. When somebody says, “I give you my word, the word they mean is their name. So, if Donald Trump says, “I give you my word,” he will proceed to sign underneath your signature on that check.

When we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that’s the oath that Christ swears over us. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” because that’s where our home is, “hallowed be thy name.” How do we keep his name hallowed. How do we hallow that name? By taking those sacramental oaths seriously and by living them out with all of the grace that he gives us and all of the natural power that we have from him, as well. “For, lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

Now when Jesus tells us, “Go baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” why does he immediately say, “for, lo, I am with you always till the close of the age”? Why bother saying that as his last words? After all, if Jesus is God, he is omnipresent. Where isn’t Jesus found? How is it that Jesus can say, “I am with you always till the close of the age?” Jesus is God. God is omnipresent. Does it mean that somehow there is more Holy Spirit packed per square inch when there are baptized Christians in the room? What kind of Divine Presence is that speaking of?

It’s analogous to the Divine Presence that is called down in a court room when the witnesses take the oaths, “So help me, God,” and God comes down and becomes actively engaged to provide the grace those witnesses need and follow it up by judging their testimony.

This is the foundation of Baptism. We have to look now at some scripture texts besides the ones we have looked at already, but just remember that at the very beginning and at the very end of his ministry, what does God ordain for his son? Baptism — his own and the command to go baptizing. It suggests that this sacrament was of the highest priority in the mind and in the intentions of our Lord. Mark 16 paraphrases these last words when it has our Lord saying, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.”

Other Scriptural Texts Referring to Baptism

Now, if you have a Bible, take it out (cradle Catholics, I can see. Nobody has a Bible on a retreat). All right, let me read to you a few texts from Sacred Scripture. Ephesians 5:25: “Christ loved the Church and delivered himself up for it that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the washing of water in the word.” What is that a reference to? Well, when you study the context of Ephesians 5, it’s actually a description of Christ’s marital union with the Church, that that marital union is brought about through Baptism whereby we enter into this family covenant with our God through Christ.

Likewise, 1Peter 3:20 reads, “In the Ark of Noah eight souls were saved by water where unto Baptism being the like form now saves you also. Not by the putting away of filth of the flesh but by a pledge of a clear conscience towards God.” What does it mean, “the pledge of a clear conscience”? When somebody is baptized, they are making a personal pledge. They are swearing an oath, in Christ, by Christ and through Christ. They are calling for God to cleanse their conscience. The book of Hebrews says that all of the ablutions, all of the dunkings in the Old Testament ceremonies didn’t cleanse the conscience. The word in the Greek in that section of Hebrews is “baptismois”. All the Old Testament baptisms couldn’t purify the conscience, implying that the one New Testament baptism does, in fact.

A very important passage for our attention is found in the Book of Romans, Chapter 6. “Original sin is that which took us out of God’s family and made us children of the devil,” as Jesus says in the Gospel of John. That is what original sin does. That’s what Paul describes in Romans 6. Then he describes how Jesus Christ as the new Adam works out our redemption so that we can be brought into the family of God. That’s where Romans 6 begins and the question that the reader has is, “Okay, how do we get in on the action? How do we get out of Adam’s family, where we were children of the devil and get into the family of Christ and become children of God?”

Notice that St. Paul does not say, “For as many of you who have come forth to an altar call or who have received Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior into your heart.” Again, as true and as helpful as those things are, those are not what Paul said. Nowhere in the New Testament is the language like that used. Nowhere do you find, “You have to receive Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior into your heart.” Do you realize that?

The Catholic Church is Bible believing and Catholics are Bible Christians because they base their salvation and sonship upon the very words of the Bible. When Saint Paul raises and answers the question, “How do we get in on the action to get out of Adam’s family and into the family of God?” he says this, “By no means we died to sin, so how can we live in it any longer, or don’t you know (Romans 6, verse 3) that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were therefore baptized with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too, may live a new life.” What is the assurance that we have? The sacramental oath of Baptism whereby God regenerates us.

That is the teaching of St. Paul. It’s very clear. That is also the teaching of John. Let’s turn to the most famous passage regarding baptism, John 3. This, of course, is the passage that’s famous because it’s used by so many Bible believing Christians to explain what you’ve got to do to be saved. You’ve got to be what? Born again. Right? And that is what Jesus seems to be saying in verse 3 when he says to Nicodemus, ” I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born anothen.” Now that Greek word is a deliberate choice. That word can mean two things, either again or the same word means from above.

Jesus says, “Unless you are born anothen.” Nicodemus takes it to mean “again.” So he asks, “How can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb?” Jesus realizes that he has misunderstood the word. Jesus says, “You’ve got to be born anothen.” Nicodemus thought it meant “again.” The word can also mean “from above.” I would suggest that it means “from above” primarily. And Jesus clarifies this in the following verse, John 3, verse 5, “I tell you the truth. Amen, Amen, truly, truly I say to you.” When Jesus begins the statement with “Amen, Amen,” he is attaching an oath to his words. “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”

So, if you want to see or enter the kingdom of God, you’ve got to be born from above or again. In other words, you’ve got to be born of water and Spirit: A equals B equals C, therefore A equals C. If we have to be born of water and Spirit to enter into the kingdom of God, what does it mean to be born of water and Spirit? Well, John has already shown us, hasn’t he? In the first chapter just preceding this section, in John 1, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and what came down “anothen” from above? The dove, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. When he received water, he received Spirit and both came from above in his baptism.

What is John hoping the reader understands by this teaching of Jesus, “You must be born again”? That is, you must be born of water and Spirit. That is, you must be baptized for when you are, you are born from above a second time through water and Spirit. We are Bible believing Christians. We’ve also got to become Bible studying Christians, haven’t we?

Now I would also suggest that the rest of John 3 backs up this Catholic interpretation of this crux passage. John 3, verse 22, right after this discourse with Nicodemus, tells us, “Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside where he spent some time with them and baptized.” It’s the only reference in the entire New Testament where Jesus and the disciples are baptizing and it immediately follows Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus about being born again or being born of water and Spirit.

In fact, the same passage uses the same word, anothen two more times. In John 3, verse 31 and 32, it tells us, “the one who comes from above is above all; the one who comes from heaven is above all.” The word anothen is used, showing that it’s not born again, like reincarnation, but rather born from above in the sense of regeneration. We do not believe in reincarnation as Catholics or as Christians. We do believe in the necessity of regeneration, and that is baptismal. No wonder in John 3, verse 25, an argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. They came to John the Baptist and said, “Rabbi, that man Jesus, who was with you on the other side of the Jordan, the one you testified about, well, he is baptizing and everyone is going to him.” They were crying on his shoulder. What does John the Baptist say when he hears that Jesus and the disciples are now baptizing? “You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.'” And by the way, what does Christ mean? Christos is the word for “anointed one,” the christened one. The bride belongs to the bridegroom, the friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine and is now complete. “He must increase and I must decrease.” Old Testament baptisms are now out of the picture because Jesus and the disciples have begun baptizing, introducing a new hope into this hopeless world, the hope of becoming the children of God.

Now, I hope you heard what I just said, because I guarantee you the 1990’s will not be through before at least two or three people come up to you and ask you, “Are you born again?” And they’ll mean by that something simple as accepting Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior into your heart. So you should say, “Yes, I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but the reason I’m born again is because I’ve receive the sacramental oath.” Just to give you a clue as to what to say when they come knocking on the door, because you know they will.

Anyway, we have to get on to Confirmation. Let me just try to summarize here a few elements of the teachings on Baptism in the Church. It’s been said by a great saint that if we could see with the angels’ vision a newly baptized soul, we would be sorely tempted to fall down and worship. If we could see how pure and glorious Christ makes a soul at the moment of baptism, we would almost mistake that soul for God because that soul is adorned with the glory of God.

Baptism of Infants

Now that’s speaking hypothetically, but it raises the question in many minds and that is, “Why do we baptize babies if it’s the sacrament of faith?” Well, Baptism is the sacrament of rebirth, regeneration. Did you decide when you would be born the first time? Did you make any negotiations with the doctor and the nurse as to the moment that your physical birth would occur? Did you work things out in advance with your mother? She sure wished you would have!

Your physical, natural birth occurred without any decision on your part and without any help as well. So, likewise, supernatural rebirth from above comes from God’s grace alone. Did you hear me? It’s by grace alone that we have been saved. It is not our works. We do not buy our way or work our way into God’s family. We work, but as sons. We do not buy membership in the family. We are freely given sonship and then we are expected to work it out because he has given us the capacity to do so. But don’t ever mistake that state of grace for a wage or a salary. It’s not. We are sons who inherit by grace alone. We are saved by faith working in love but this comes to us by God’s grace and God’s grace alone.

That is why the early Church believed that the baptism of an infant was so appropriate, because what better picture do we have of our own soul, helpless and dependent for new life? And so it was from the very beginning that John 3 and Acts 2 and other passages were used to explain why from the very start the Apostles were not only baptizing individual adults but entire households as well. So, there are good solid reasons from Scripture to baptize babies and to see those children as reborn children of God. Good reasons, and most Protestants accept those reasons. The Baptists don’t and they are frequently the ones who will come at your door. So I just say this to get you ready.

Responsibility of Parents

I also want to say one other thing to get you ready to baptize your baby. Parents who baptize their infants obey the Lord’s command, but parents who baptize their infants with little or no commitment to raise the child in the context of the living faith profane a divine institution. They endanger their own souls as parents, and they also deprive their child of all of the benefits and the advantages and graces that normally are associated with Baptism. It’s a lot like having a baby and then letting him starve. Let’s pray, because we are surrounded by many Catholics like that who have been baptized as babies but raised in homes where the faith was never really brought up or lived out or loved. Let’s be sure that we reverse all of that.

One other thing I want to mention before I move on to Confirmation is that in the early Church Baptism was understood as an exorcism. Did you know that? That in the liturgy of Baptism, even to this day, there is a rite of exorcism whereby we not only renounce the works and the pomp’s of Satan, but where Satan is driven out through Baptism. How does that happen? You mean a sacrament can exorcise demons? That seems a little far fetched, doesn’t it? I want to tell you one little known fact. The word exorcism is a compound of two Greek words, “ex orchia”. The word “orchia” is the Greek word for, guess what? Oath. Exorcism is the act by which demons are oathed out of people. Exorcism gains its power from sacramentum, from oath. If sacramentum is the Latin word, orchia is the Greek word and to exorcise is to drive out the devil with the oaths of Jesus Christ, the sacraments that he has instituted for our life.

So we were baptized out of the name of the devil, out of the name of Adam and in the name of Christ and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So the Blessed Trinity becomes the first family of our kingdom and the Church becomes our universal family and we become, not only children of God, but priests and prophets and kings. Because that really is the ultimate significance of the sacrament of Baptism. Because those were the three offices anointed or baptized in the Old Testament.

Confirmation

Now, I see we are running short of time, and I want to discuss Confirmation. Let me say a few things about this second sacrament. Confirmation could be described as our own personal Pentecost. It’s where the Spirit, received in Baptism, all of a sudden bursts into life with Confirmation. If Jesus was declared to be a child or a son of God at his baptism, do you remember the Mount of Transfiguration where all of a sudden the glory of sonship blinded the disciples and they fell down at his feet? Then they hear that same heavenly voice coming down and saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” Only this second time God adds a new phrase, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” “Listen to him.” And right after that event, Jesus, we are told, set his face like flint to Jerusalem because he knew he had to go up and do spiritual battle with the devil.

He had to offer up his life in the great war for our souls, as the great martyr and sacrifice, victim and priest for our salvation. In a sense, Baptism and Confirmation make us “little Christs.” Christos means anointed. Anointing is what Baptism and Confirmation both involve. It is the sacrament of spiritual adolescence. You know how that body you received at birth was small and weak and dependent and so it had to be nurtured and cared for until you gradually developed more and more independence? Then all of a sudden puberty sets in and that’s where we want all of our independence yesterday. Right? What is it about puberty, what is it about adolescence that transforms us?

Biologically we could describe it as the release of hormones. I don’t know much about it, but I do know that doctors and scientists talk about estrogen reaching new levels in testosterone for males, and all of a sudden facial hair begins to grow and the voice begins to deepen and the body begins to grow and so on and so forth. In other words, we have physical hormones that are released at certain times according to a kind of biological clock whereby our bodies grow up to prepare us to become soldiers and more — husbands, wives, fathers and mothers.

Sacrament of Spiritual Adolescence

Confirmation is the sacrament of our spiritual adolescence. You could almost say that it releases supernatural hormones to enable the teenager, the Christian adolescent, to overcome all the temptations associated with all of the new powers and the new desires that flood into the human soul during those early teen years. It’s the sacrament of fortitude whereby we take courage, and we take courage to fight the fight. It’s also called the sacrament that makes us soldiers of Christ. We’re drafted, or hopefully we volunteer and enlist in Christ’s army, and we become soldiers of Christ fighting the devil.

I believe that Confirmation is the most underrated of the seven. Confirmation is the most underrated sacrament. It gives to us the capacity to gain spiritual self-mastery, and what do adolescents need? It gives to us a greater conformity to Christ so the glory of our sonship might be lived out morally at a time of increased temptations and opportunities and occasions for sin. And it releases the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s power in us. We determine ourselves by choices and by actions and we need God’s help to make the right choices to do the holy actions.

Let’s face it. Modern life, like never before, presents our teenagers with greater temptations and trials and tests of purity and moral courage than we can barely imagine. The sacrament of Confirmation gives to human beings something more than natural virtue. It gives to them what is known as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 11, verse 2 describes these seven gifts: “wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, Godliness and the fear of the Lord.” These gifts of the Holy Spirit are supernaturally infused into the spiritual teenager’s soul to give that person powers to overcome occasions and temptations to sin and to rise to a new level of holiness and glory. And let’s face it — this is what our Catholic teenagers need like never before. And we’ve got to be explaining to them what it is they are receiving in this sacrament so they don’t despair of chastity, so they don’t give up hope in being perhaps the exception to the rule of their high school. Because we face tough times and we need the gifts of the Holy Spirit because natural virtues are not enough.

Theologians can compare the natural virtues that we can develop by exercising our will to choose holiness. Theologians compare these natural virtues of the gifts of the Holy Spirit by comparing oars on a boat, you know, which we have to use with great effort to move the boat closer to God. If the boat is our soul, the oars are the natural virtues that we use to get closer to God. But the gifts of the Holy Spirit are like a sail. All we have to do is hoist the sail, and the Holy Spirit comes along and provides the energy and the drive that we need in the sacrament of Confirmation lived out to overcome impurity. But not just to overcome the negative, but to attain the positive and the constructive virtues of chastity, of self-mastery so that we can learn to give ourselves to the needy among us. That’s what the sacrament of Confirmation is all about.

Conclusion

Now, why do we need it? Let me give you some interesting statistics and let’s ask ourselves whether this sacrament should cease to be the most underrated. By the age of 20, we are told by a recent poll, 81% of today’s unmarried males and 67% of today’s unmarried females have had sexual intercourse – by the age of 20 – teenagers. The number of never married teenage girls having intercourse increased by two-thirds in the decade of the 70s. It increased even more in the 80s. Fifty percent of today’s sexually active 19-year-old males had their first sexual encounter between the ages of 11 and 13. God provides supernatural hormones to accompany these natural hormones so that these new drives and desires can be harnessed into a supernatural drive for holiness. But our kids don’t know it, do they?

The New York poll from Audits and Surveys Research Study show that 57% of high school students and 79% of college students had lost their virginity. In 1987 more than 1.1 million teenage girls became pregnant. Of these, about 400,000 ended in abortion — 100% increase in the last 15 years! Teen pregnancy rates are at an all-time high. A 25% decline in birthrate between 1970 and 1984 is only due to a doubling of the abortion rate during that same period. And this is the last thing I’ll leave with you. A recent survey reveals, “Religion conscious girls are 86% more likely to save virginity until marriage is important contrasted with non- religion conscious girls. However, the former group, the religion conscious girls, that former group, is only 14% more likely to be virgins at marriage than the non-religion conscious girls.” This isn’t just for young men. This is for young women.

Future of the Catholic Faith in America Depends on our use of the Sacraments

The future of the Catholic faith in our land depends upon it, and don’t you believe that God has made a promise at the feet of Americans that there will always be a Church. You read the New Testament. Where is the Church today in Corinth? Where is the Church today in Ephesus? The seven letters of the seven churches in Revelations, Smirna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Laodicea? The Church is gone. In all seven of those churches, in almost all of the churches in the world. Christ has never said that the kingdom of God is staked to the life and the power of the United States.

The gates of hell will not prevail against the Chair of Peter, not the President of the U.S. We have got to be responsible as parents to tap the power of these sacraments and a love for God and a love for our kids and to spread the word, don’t we? Let’s hear it for the Holy Spirit and let’s make sure this sacrament does not become the underrated sacrament of the 90s. Let’s sound the message that Confirmation brings the glory and the power of sonship to bear upon those who may well need it more than anyone else in all of America, our teenagers. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Communion as Reunion Program 23 Scott Hahn

Introduction: Eucharist is the Sacrament of Sacraments

Tonight our topic is the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament, and there is so much to be said on this subject because this is THE Blessed Sacrament. This is the Sacrament of sacraments! This is the principal sacrament of the Christian religion. This is truly the mystery of faith, and when I say that, I mean THE mystery of faith because none of the other six give to us Christ himself. But in the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, we receive Jesus Christ Himself — His body, His blood, His soul, His divinity — total Christ is ours in this sacrament.

So what I would like to do is to break up the talk into four parts. I’d like to share with you the four parts right now so you might be able to follow along. The first part is a catechetical summary. Now I’m not planning on doing this with the others necessarily, but I want to touch the basics to make sure that we all have the basics in mind because we have to be able to assume that to move on and I don’t want to take it for granted. I want to just touch it briefly, but I want to touch it so that we all understand what the Catholic Church’s teachings are.

The second thing I would like to do is to focus upon the Biblical background of the Church’s teaching and to see where in Sacred Scripture — I wouldn’t say where in Sacred Scripture the Church got its teachings because the Church got the teachings from Jesus Christ. Sacred Scripture is rather a reflection of what Christ handed down to the Apostles.

The third section will be to consider some objections that people have expressed to the teachings regarding the Holy Eucharist. Not just theological objections, we are going to consider one or two of those, but also some psychological objections that you may have as Catholics.

Then finally, I would like to share with you some of the most inspiring thoughts that I’ve gathered in reading what the saints, the Doctors and the Fathers of the Church have said about the Blessed Sacrament. And I want to share these by way of conclusion in the fourth part to give you something to take away and to take into your prayer, to take into the silence of the night so that you may visit our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and have a very intimate time with Him.

Catechetical Summary

The catechetical summary: I just photocopied some pages out of a very good and reliable catechism. I’m not going to read it all to you but I want to touch upon some highlights. What is the Holy Eucharist? The Holy Eucharist is a sacrament. All right, so we can think of everything we have said so far about a sacrament being an oath, sacramentum, and an oath being that which constitutes a covenant. In this case, this is THE sacrament that constitutes THE New Covenant. And what is a covenant? It’s practically equivalent to a family, a sacred family bond.

So as flesh and blood are the bonding agents in the natural families that we all were born into — we received our flesh and blood from our parents. So that when Christ establishes a New Covenant, a new family, a sacred family, he does so using the same sort of material. Only the flesh and blood of Christ becomes supernaturally charged as the bonding agents for God’s universal family, so that we are actually temples of the Holy Spirit in which the Blessed Trinity indwells.

So the Holy Eucharist is a sacrament and a sacrifice. It’s a sacrifice, an unbloody sacrifice in which our Lord Jesus Christ — body, blood, soul and divinity — is contained wholly and offered and received under the appearances of bread and wine, (under the appearances of bread and wine by which we mean color, taste, weight, shape and whatever else appears to the senses.) In the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, we have the one sacrament that really seems, doesn’t it, to contradict our senses?

Here we do not have bread and wine and something else. Here we have Christ himself no longer bread and no longer wine, though our senses would tell us otherwise. We call it the Eucharist because Christ instituted it at a meal in which he gave thanks at the beginning and “eucharisto” is the Greek word for thanksgiving. So this is a thank offering, a specific kind of sacrifice. In addition to being a thank offering, it also pulls together all of the many Old Testament sacrifices. And there were several, and they were bloody and they were costly, and all of them have been reduced down to one clean, pure sacrifice of the altar, namely, the Eucharist.

The Holy Eucharist is also called the Blessed Sacrament because it is the most excellent of all the sacraments because it gives us Christ Himself. The Holy Eucharist is called Holy Communion when it is received, usually in Church. Sometimes Communion is taken to the sick, in which case it is called Viaticum. So the Body and the Blood of Christ can be received in communion.

Now how did Christ institute the Holy Eucharist? Because after all, how have we defined sacraments for ages? An outward sign, instituted by Christ to give grace. So how and when did Christ institute this sacrament?

Institution of the Eucharist

He instituted the Holy Eucharist in this way, “He took bread, blessed and broke it and giving it to his Apostles said, ‘Take and eat, this is my body.’ And then he took a cup of wine, blessed it and giving it to them said, ‘All of you drink of this for this is my blood of the New Covenant which is being shed for many unto the forgiveness of sins.'” Do you realize that in all the gospels Jesus Christ never spoke the word “covenant” except on this occasion? Somebody could conclude, “Well, maybe the word’s not important.” On the other hand, anybody who knows Judaism of Jesus’ day and the Old Testament religion which he embraced and fulfilled would tell you that, no, there probably is no other word with the significance of covenant. So, I would suggest to you that Christ reserved that all-important term for the all-important occasion when he would institute the glorious New Covenant, the new family, the Divine, sacred family that constitutes the Church.

Then finally, he gave his Apostles the commission, “Do this in remembrance of me.” So that when our Lord said, “This is my Body and this is my Blood,” the entire substance of the bread and the wine was changed into his Body and his Blood. We call this “transubstantiation” for lack of a better word. It’s a metamorphosis. It’s a total transformation. Why? Because we take Christ at His word. Isaiah 55 verse 11 tells us, “My word shall go forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty but, it shall accomplish that which I purpose.” When Jesus Christ says, “This IS my Body” to a piece of bread, that word spoken by Christ is spoken by the same One who said, “Let there be light,” at the beginning of creation. And the darkness didn’t answer back and say, “No, we’re darkness.” No, light came into existence by the mere expression of God’s all-powerful word, because Christ is the living word spoken by God which is all-powerful. If Christ were to say to me, “You’re a woman,” I would become a woman because that is the word of God.

Some people quote the passage in Hebrews where it talks about the fact that our Lord does not lie. Our Lord does not speak falsehood. Well, you know what? It isn’t just morally impossible for God, for Christ, to lie. It’s physically impossible, for whatever Christ would say, by the fact that he said it, his word would make it so. It isn’t just that he wouldn’t lie; he couldn’t lie, even if he wanted to, because his word is so powerful and when that word is spoken over the bread and the wine to transform it into the ultimate gift, the ultimate act of self-donation, because a lover isn’t done giving to the beloved until he has given himself, wholly, freely and entirely.

Well, that is the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Why do we believe that Christ changed bread and wine into his own Body and Blood? Well, because he said so, because of what we will see in the sixth chapter of John, which was taken from the reading of the Mass this morning, but also because the Apostles understood that he meant these words literally and we’re going to see that in the Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, lst Corinthians, chapters 10 and 11, which we will look at in a minute. It has also been the continuous belief of Christians everywhere, in all times.

St. Augustine said, “Our Lord held Himself in His own hands when he gave His body to the Disciples.” Isn’t that beautiful? Our Lord held himself when he gave the gift to his Apostles in the Upper Room. Now part of the catechism’s presentation of this doctrine also includes the Real Presence. I mentioned transubstantiation. Christ gave to his priests the power to change bread and wine into his Body and Blood when he made his Apostles priests at the Last Supper. He ordained them. Maundy Thursday refers to the “mandatum,” the mandate that Christ gave to his Apostles by which he made them priests, and then he told them, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” So at Mass, at the words of consecration, transubstantiation takes place, that is the entire substance of the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of our Lord.

Sacramental Effects of the Eucharist

Then, finally, since a sacrament is instituted by Christ to give grace, we want briefly to ask and answer the question, “How is it that the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist gives grace?” First of all the sacramental grace that it gives is a one flesh, one spirit union with our Lord, which is the most tremendous grace in heaven and on earth. It’s something that the angels can never imagine because they never became flesh. They do not partake of human nature. It’s an ultimate gift that surpasses everything else in all creation.

In addition to the sacramental grace, there is also what is known as sanctifying grace; that is the grace which increases our maturity as God’s sons, who grow up in his family – sanctifying grace. The third effect as it relates to grace is that it preserves us from sin. It preserves us from sin and it strengthens our resolve unto holiness and finally, the fourth thing that it does is that it remits all venial sin.

What should we do when we receive Holy Communion? We should spend some time adoring the Lord, because we have become a temple. We have become a tabernacle. We have become almost like the Blessed Virgin Mary who carried the Word Incarnate within her womb for nine months. We carry the Word Incarnate for about ten or fifteen minutes and as he is flowing through our veins, and as he is assimilated into our bodies, we need to speak the most loving and generous words that our hearts can create. We shouldn’t leave the church as quickly as possible. I sometimes look around at Mass and my kids, we all look around and we see these people leaving. Sometimes they leave before they even come back and take their seat. Other people leave very quickly, as soon as the song begins. We refer to it as the “Judas shuffle” in our family, because as soon as Judas received our Lord in the Upper Room, what did he do? He went out into the parking lot…no, no, out into the night.

We too, need to restore the practice of thanksgiving. If we don’t give thanks when God our Creator and Redeemer is within us, flesh and blood , body and soul and divinity, when will we give thanks? What will make us pause, stop and sacrifice a little time to really give him thanks? Let’s restore that old tradition of five, ten, fifteen minutes of thanksgiving or at least a brief family prayer with the kids to tell our Lord, “Thank You for coming into me. Thank You for creating Your new family.”

You know how we respond whenever we hear that an important guest is coming to our house? We clean up. We scrub it down. We get ready and then we dress up and then when that guest comes, we spend time. You know when you visit somebody’s house and you’re there for dinner, do you keep your coats on? What would that signal to the people? If you came and said, “Oh make yourselves at home. Let me take your coat.” “No, I’ll keep it on.” How many times do you find people just sitting at Mass with their coats on, looking at their watches, wondering about the football game and the starting time, or whatever? Our Creator, our Redeemer is going to come into our body and be united to our soul. It’s always helpful to remind ourselves of the basic catechism and its teachings.

Eucharist is the Cause of all the Other Sacraments

Now let’s move on. Let’s just remember briefly that the Eucharist is the principal sacrament. It is the sacrament of sacraments. In fact, I’m going to suggest right now that the Eucharist is rightly understood as the cause of all the other sacraments. How could that be so? Well, think of Baptism. Baptism incorporates us into the Church which is the Body of Christ. It is the qualification to receive the Eucharist. We are baptized to come into the Body of Christ, so that the Body of Christ can come into us in the Eucharist because in the Eucharist the Church becomes what it eats. We are what we eat when we receive the Eucharist because we are united to the Mystical Body of Christ in the most perfect way, and that’s the whole point of Baptism.

Confirmation is the sacrament that enables us to gain Divine power to live out Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice, so that we ourselves can become extensions of Christ’s sacrifice as we serve others and as we serve God and offer up ourselves.

The sacrament of Penance is also caused by the Eucharist because the whole point of Penance is to restore us into the fellowship of the family so that we can be back at the meal for supper, so that we can receive the Eucharist.

Likewise, Anointing. It prepares our body, Extreme Unction does, it prepares our body and soul to become perfectly united with Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice, as we are prepared to be resurrected and glorified and united to Christ in heaven in his Mystical Body.

Even Matrimony, I believe, could be seen as caused by the Eucharist because the whole point of Matrimony for St. Paul in Ephesians 5 is this “one flesh” union that signifies the Eucharistic union of Christ and the Bride, the Church. That’s really the symbolism and the power, the dynamism that makes Matrimony sacramental.

Then, finally, the sacrament of Holy Orders is caused by the Eucharist because the whole reason why priests are ordained is to perpetuate the Eucharistic sacrifice in the Church’s life and through history. So the Eucharist is the principal sacrament in the sense that it is that from which all of the other sacraments are caused, from which they flow.

Biblical Background of the Church’s Teaching on the Eucharist

Now, what I would like to do with you is to take a look at some of the crucial Biblical passages that the teaching of the Church is built upon or, you could say, reflects the teachings of the Church. If you have a Bible, turn with me to John, chapter 6. This is the locus classicus, John, chapter 6. Now it’s important to realize, to understand the Eucharist. We need to understand a little bit about the Old Testament sacrifices and feasts, but we don’t have the time for it. Especially we need to understand that Christ instituted the Eucharist while he was celebrating the highest and holiest festival of the Old Testament, namely, Passover.

He was and still is our Passover Lamb. He was and still is God’s firstborn Son. You remember back in Egypt the Israelites sacrificed the Passover lamb and the Egyptians sacrificed their firstborn sons. Christ comes along as the sacrifice for Israel and for Egypt because he is both the Lamb that we present and God’s firstborn Son. He unites and he fulfills all of the meaning and the significance and the power of the Passover in the New Covenant of the family, the flesh and blood that he creates with the sacrament.

In John, chapter 6 begins by saying, “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews was at hand.” In other words, everything that is about to take place in John, chapter 6, takes place within the context of celebrating Passover. First we have the miracle, the multiplication of the loaves. Jesus said to Phillip, “How are we to buy bread so that these people may eat? This he said to test him for he himself knew what he would do.” And so everything unfolds. I think you know the story. Jesus then took the loaves and when he had given thanks, in the Greek that’s “eucharisto”, he distributed to them to those who were seated so also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over.’ ” And, of course, there were twelve baskets with fragments and the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

“When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, ‘This is, indeed, the prophet who is to come into the world,'” which is a reference back to Deuteronomy where God told us that the Messiah would come and he would be like a second Moses. And as Moses fed the people in the wilderness with manna, so the Messiah would feed the people of God as well. And it goes on, down in verse 25, “When they found Jesus on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Amen, Amen, I say to you’.” He is swearing the truth of his utterance. “You seek me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food which perishes but for the food which endures toward eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you for on him has God the Father set His seal.”

We all work as breadwinners. We all work for life to sustain it. But Jesus’ saying put things in the right perspective because the work we do on earth only redowns to earthly life, earthly sustenance, sustaining human life as it is here and now in our flesh and blood bodies. Whenever we work and we get some bread and we eat it, we are hungry again. I think what Jesus is getting ready to tell the people is that all of the bread that we eat on earth for which we labor so hard, really all this is a symbol or better yet, the hors d’oeuvres served by the master before the main course.

What happens sometimes when you have hors d’oeuvres at a great feast and you’re really famished? Or what happens when you’re at a great restaurant and you know they have this great Filet Mignon, but you’re so hungry that they keep giving you salad and rolls and what do some of us do? We pig out! We eat the hors d’oeuvres and we eat the rolls, and so when the main course comes, we don’t have room for it. Well, Jesus is saying, “The food down here is like the hors d’oeuvres. Don’t stuff yourselves. Whet your appetite, but don’t satiate your appetite. Don’t satisfy it because the banquet that I have prepared for you in heaven is just so glorious you can’t even imagine.”

So bread on earth is but a token, proving to us that God will provide, but pointing to a much greater provision: the Bread which we eat after which we never hunger again, for it’s the Bread of Life. Then it goes on, “What work do you perform. Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven.’ Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven. My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.’ “

It seems like the people were trying to cut him down to size. They were saying, “Well, you multiplied loaves. Impressive, yeah, but Moses multiplied loaves. What special trick do you have up your sleeve? I mean are you more than Moses?” Jesus corrects that little strategy. He says, “It wasn’t Moses who gave you that bread from heaven because my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.” Hors d’oeuvres. I’m the main course. “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Lord, give us this bread always.” And we say, “Lord, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to me shall not hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst”. The Jews murmured to him because he said, “I am the Bread which came down from heaven.” They say, “This is Joseph’s son, what are you talking about, ‘coming down from heaven?'” They will only go so far with him. I mean you multiply the bread. We’re impressed. We want to make you king. You could set up a great welfare state, provide for all of us and we wouldn’t have to work, especially if you give us this bread which we eat, we will never hunger again. We might even re-elect you next time around.”

Jews Find Jesus’ Claim Repulsive

Jesus says, “No, this isn’t politics. I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever and the Bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Every Jew in the audience thinks of Leviticus. Oh no, you don’t eat flesh. If you eat flesh and if you drink blood, you are cut off from your kindred, according to the Old Testament law of Moses. “So the Jews then disputed among themselves saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?'” So does Jesus say, “Well stop, guys, it’s just a teaching device. It was just a little illustration to help get a point across.” No, He ups the ante; He intensifies their crisis of faith. So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no life in you.”

That’s the first thing he says. Then he states it a second way: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.” Then he says it a third way: “For my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed.” And then to top it off, he has to say it a fourth time: “He who eats my flesh,” and that word in the Greek means chew, munch down on my flesh, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” I can almost feel the dizziness of the Jews in the audience, and many of his disciples when they heard it said, “This is a hard saying. Who can listen to it?”

They don’t say, “Well, who can understand it?” They don’t say, “Who can believe it?” They say, “We can’t even stand to listen to it. That’s how offensive it is.” But Jesus, knowing himself that his disciples murmured at him and at the saying, said to them, what? “Oh guys, come on, come on. Relax. It’s just a metaphor, just a symbol, just a sign.” He doesn’t say that, does he? He says, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

What is Jesus meaning? He is saying, “Look, I am not saying here is my arm. Why don’t you guys just stand in line and take a bite.” Right? Well, what is he saying? He is saying that it’s the Spirit that gives life and so my flesh and my blood are not quite ready for the communion meal. When will they be? When the Spirit takes the Passover Lamb in the tomb and revives and resurrects and glorifies and infuses the fullness of the infinite Holy Spirit to that flesh and to that blood, so that Christ’s flesh and blood is perfectly united to the eternal spirit of God. At that point, Christ’s flesh and blood will not be mere flesh and blood. It’s the Spirit that gives life. The flesh alone is of no avail.

“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” What does he mean? The words that Christ speaks are what cause his flesh and his blood to be transformed. Those words are spoken over bread and wine and that is what causes the great communion meal to take place.

Jesus Loses Many Disciples Who Reject His Teachings

Verse 66: “After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.” You can imagine, if Jesus was really interested in public relations, commercial sales, popularity — you know, recently the bishops contracted some advertising firm to see what they could do to upgrade the tarnished image of Catholicism in America. Now, if Jesus had done that, you know, the first thing that the Madison Avenue PR agency would have undoubtedly said to him is, “Trash this stuff here. I mean, how many did you lose in one fell swoop in just a few minutes? A few thousand disciples. You want to be recognized as the King of kings and the Lord of lords? We’re going to have to scale down the rhetoric, Jesus. You’re going to have to figure out a better way to package the goods. After all, we don’t want to tarnish the image.”

Jesus said to the twelve, “I’m sorry guys, I didn’t mean to reduce our ranks.” No. “Do you also wish to go away?” He can start again from scratch if he wants. But Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” Once again, Peter speaks out on behalf of the disciples and answers the question with a question, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy One of God.” Peter does not come out and say, “Come on, Jesus, just between us guys, it’s easy, you know, this Eucharistic doctrine, we’ve got no problems with this teaching. I mean all those outsiders, those lame-brains, those pagans. They’ve got problems with the doctrine.” Peter didn’t say that. You had better believe that Peter also realized how bankrupt his five senses were when it came to understanding this teaching. All Peter could say is what all we can say and that is, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy One of God.”

I am grateful for the fact that the thousands of people left. I’m grateful. And I’m also grateful when Catholics act with integrity and leave the Church when they no longer believe in the teachings of the Church with regard to the Eucharist. They are doing themselves a favor, acting in sincerity and integrity and they are doing the Church a favor. They are also putting themselves in a position where they are not going to have to play a part that they really can’t fill. They are not going to have to pretend to be something that they are not.

Thousands have left in John 6, but one person should have left and he didn’t. Who was that? The very next verse, “Did I not choose you the twelve and yet one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot for he, one of the twelve was to betray him.” This is the first occurrence of any mention of Judas’ intention to betray Jesus. When priests and when faithful lose their faith in the Eucharist and make that very fatal decision to stay in the Church, whether they know it, whether they intend it or not, they fulfill a very tragic and a very evil role. And the very next verse which begins chapter 7 is, “After this, Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him.”

This sets the stage for the rest of the dramatic story of Christ’s passion because the Jews seeking to kill him are going to join forces with Judas within the priesthood, within the Church, who is seeking to betray him because these teachings are just ridiculous. Do you imagine that Judas is probably one of the ones who wanted Jesus to strike while the iron was hot: make yourself king now that you are popular enough to become their king.

John 6 reflects the Eucharistic realism of the Catholic Church. The Church teaches it not because it’s proof text its doctrine in John 6. It’s the other way around. John 6 says what it does because Jesus made it so abundantly clear to the Apostles who made it so abundantly clear to the first generation and the second and the third. This is a reflection.

The Church never went to the Bible alone to proof text its doctrines. You have the tail wagging the dog if you think that way. The scriptures reflect a common mind set, and what’s so significant is that there is no felt need to even argue the point because for 1500 years, there wasn’t really any argument. All Christians, everywhere accepted the teachings.

Turn to 1st Corinthians, chapter 10 and we can see that reflected very clearly in St. Paul’s teaching. 1st Corinthians, 10, very strong language beginning in verse 16, St. Paul says, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a coenea, (the Greek word), a communion or a participation, in the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a coenea a communion or a participation in the Body of Christ? Because there is one Bread, we who are many are one body.” We are what we eat, the Body of Christ. For we all partake of the one Bread.” Let me say that again. “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread, the one loaf.”

Now what does that mean? Does it mean that back in Corinth and throughout Asia Minor and throughout Northern Africa and throughout all Judea, every week they got together and baked a huge, megaloaf of bread, and then sent portions of that one enormous loaf out everywhere? Course not. They ate from many loaves in terms of the bread, but St. Paul says, “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body because we all eat of that one loaf.” He’s talking about Christ whom he identifies as the Bread of Life.

He goes on and he says, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” In other words, he’s saying, “You’re under oath. Do not dream of deceiving the Lord.”

Elsewhere he says in 1st Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 23: “…for I have received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my Body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the New Covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in the memory of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.'”

Is he just speaking symbolically? The following verses betray the fact that he is not. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and the blood of the Lord.” He will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. That’s ancient language that’s hard for us to understand. It’s tantamount to saying, “murder.” It’s a Semitic way of saying that you put somebody to death when you’re guilty of their body and blood.

Now, if Paul was just thinking symbolically, he couldn’t say that people who eat this unworthily are guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. He might say that they are guilty of some anti-religious unbelief, but I couldn’t put up a picture of somebody and then, all of a sudden shoot a bullet in it and be charged with murder, unless I put a bullet in the person. Paul says, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. He will be guilty of the body and blood. “Let a man, therefore, examine himself and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” The reckless, fearless pseudo courage of people who deny 2000 years of teaching and risk their souls on a novel interpretation. We’ve got to get the word out.

Christ doesn’t just give us trinkets and tokens. He gives us himself, spiritually and materially, because he is the creator and redeemer of spirit and matter, and we’re both body and soul. “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” What does that mean? Does it mean that come judgment day you guys are going to be in a heap of trouble? No, it means even more than that. Verse 30, it says, “That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.” Do you mean to tell me that St. Paul actually believes that because people were receiving the Lord’s supper unworthily — they were profaning the Lord’s body and blood — that some were sick and some were dead? You bet St. Paul believes it and teaches it, and so we ought to believe it and teach it.

Why? Because this is an oath that Christ has sworn and that he swears in us and through us and for us; and if we deliberately deceive ourselves or God, we do so to our own destruction. It’s like saying, “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” We can’t do that safely, but if we judged ourselves truly, we shall not be judged; but when we are judged by the Lord we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So the teaching of St. Paul coordinates perfectly with the teaching of the Apostle John and all of it fits perfectly with the words of Jesus and the universal teaching of the Church down through all the ages.

Objections to the Teachings Regarding the Holy Eucharist

Now, let’s move on to consider some possible objections to this. Objections come in two varieties: the theological and the psychological. The most common theological objection is normally taken from Hebrews 10, verses 10 through 12, where the sacrifice of the Body of Jesus Christ is spoken of as being once for all. Once and for all, or more literally, once for all, and then it says, “He sat down at the right hand.” He is not continually killed. He is not continually put to death, and I want to make something very clear. As Catholics we do not believe that Jesus dies again and again and again in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the altar. We believe, rather, that this is an unbloody sacrifice. It doesn’t mean that he is being killed, only without any bloodshed. It means that he is not being killed at all. It means that Jesus Christ, raised in heaven and glorified, continually presents himself to the Father in a perfect sacrifice, the once for all sacrifice. It’s once and for all times and it continues into eternity. That’s what it means.

The sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ was once for all and he sat down at the right hand. Now when somebody takes that to mean that there is no longer any continuation of his sacrifice, they run into problems because in Revelations 5, verse 6, we see a difficulty. John in his vision of the heavenly throne room is told to look and he will see the Lion of the tribe of Judah who is conquered. He looks expecting to see a royal figure. The lion is a royal figure of the tribe of Judah which is David’s tribe, and so he expects to see a king. Instead, it says in Revelations 5, verse 6, “He turned and beheld a lamb, looking as though it had been slain in the center of the throne.”

Jesus Christ was sacrificed on the Cross, raised from the dead and yet that resurrected body bears the wounds; ascended into heaven and glorified so that those wounds are not removed but glorified; so that when we behold our King in heaven at the right hand of the Father, what does he look like? A lamb, looking as though he had been slain. Why? Because the Passover Feast continues on into eternity. Christ is priest and victim. He is the Passover Lamb. No wonder Paul can say in 1st Corinthians 5, verse 7: “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us.” Therefore, what? Therefore, all we have to do is to believe because after all the sacrifice was once for all, it’s over and done with; there’s no continuation? No, he didn’t say that at all.

St. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 5, verse 7: “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us, therefore, let us keep the feast.” What feast? The Eucharistic Banquet, the covenant Passover. But why? Because sacrifices are never complete until the sacrificial victim is consumed. It’s the consuming of the victim that really signifies the purpose and goal of the sacrifice, because God ordained and commanded sacrifices in the Old Testament for sin, but not simply to kill animals. What happened to the animals after they were slain? They were eaten because to have that meal, to share communion is the purpose and goal of the sacrifice. It signifies the restoration of family bonds, because who do you eat your meals with? Family members.

So the ultimate, final stage of a sacrifice is communion. Back in Egypt, 1400 years before Jesus, if you had sacrificed the Passover lamb and sprinkled his blood on your doorpost to preserve your firstborn son, and then you went to bed and that’s all you did, you would wake up in the morning and your firstborn son would be dead, because you had to eat the lamb. You had to commune upon the victim. You had to consume the sacrifice. What if you don’t like mutton, and instead you decide to bake some lamb cookies or lamb wafers with a lamb stamped on them. “This is the lamb we eat: it’s just a wafer. It symbolizes the lamb that we slew earlier in the evening.” You’d wake up in the morning and you’d be dead. You had to eat the lamb. John 6 at the Passover, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world says it emphatically four times, “My flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.”

That’s what communion is all about and that’s what Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary is all about. Redemption is accomplished on Calvary. It is applied by Christ through the Spirit from heaven and we keep the Passover Feast every Eucharist when we receive the Passover Lamb in his risen, glorified and all-powerful Body and Blood, soul and divinity. That is the heart and soul of it.

Now, there are some psychological objections as well. We need to touch upon them very briefly. Psychologically, I find that many Catholics have trouble celebrating weekly Eucharist because it’s routine. It’s humdrum. It’s mundane. It’s just constant and this idea of routine is a real problem. This is much more of a practical, psychological problem for practicing Catholics. A few suggestions: It is necessary to avoid at any cost a routine spirit. Grace comes with the sacrament intrinsically because it’s contained in the sacrament. But the amount of grace we receive depends upon our disposition, our fervor, our love. We receive little from the sacrament because we love little and we want little and we ask for little.

If we sometimes despair of getting our requests because we don’t really think God loves us, look again at the Cross, but look again at the Blessed Sacrament. If God the Father will give us His only eternally begotten Son, what will he withhold from us that we need? We need to unite our prayers with the Holy Eucharist. We need our requests to be united and joined with the Eucharistic prayer and sacrifice of the Mass. Those prayers are powerful, indeed. Preparation is most important. We shouldn’t just wait until the last minute. Sometimes we just can’t seem to wake up. There’s a song I like with a line that goes, “He rose from the dead, but you can’t even get out of bed!” Isn’t it odd how little we get because of the little we love?

We need to trust Him. We need to entrust ourselves to the one we trust more than ourselves. But ultimately there is no excuse for rejecting regular practice, just because it’s routine. Most of life is routine. The daily hugs and kisses, the prayers, the meals. All of the things that make family life ongoing and ordinary but beautiful. These are the routines of lovers and family members. The real purpose of routine, then, is to instill deeply ingrained habits, virtues, loves, bonds of love and commitment.

Now some people are part of a cult of spontaneity. They reduce faith to feeling. They want just simply a deeper experience. “What I feel right now is what I will do, and so I will only go to Mass if I feel like it.” Well, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work at home with your parents and your brothers and sisters. It doesn’t work in marriage with your spouse, and it certainly won’t work when you parent the children. You’re not just going to take care of them when you feel like it. You’re going to take care of them when they feel like it.

That gets us into another psychological stumbling block: this idea that it’s really just magic. We’ve got God under our thumb, wrapped around our little finger. Say the magic words and presto, God is beholden to us! There’s a half-truth in that because God has made himself beholden to us. The Master has become the servant. The Host has become the main course. What an awesome thought. This is a real danger though for priests and for lay people who do not prepare to receive the Eucharist in the Mass. The way to overcome this magical mentality is to realize that it’s God’s faithfulness, not man’s magical manipulation. God will give us grace whenever we comply with the words of the covenant that He has established, but His faithfulness in appearing is precisely what prevents the Eucharist from becoming magic, because he will appear in holy power, not like some genie reluctantly pulled from some lamp, but like the Lord of the covenant who appears in the midst of his people to give aid to those who sincerely desire it but to give judgment to those who profane the table of the Lord.

If someone insists on comparing this to magic, I’d have to insist that God is the One who plays the part of the magician. He pulls the rabbit out of the hat because he takes the nobodies like us, and He gives us the Body and Blood of his Son and the power of the Holy Spirit. It is He who really does the work. The words and the actions are established by Him. It is only by conforming our words and our actions to his and by conforming our intentions and our dispositions and our desires that all of this becomes beneficial.

This is not some magical or mechanical or manipulative process. This is the act by which God’s children submit to the father of a new family. The power of the sacraments is comparable to sunlight. The sunlight intrinsically contains warmth, illumination. The sunlight is in itself strong, bright and warm; but if we want, we can choose to close the shutters. We can reject the light. We can nullify God’s grace, if we so will, if we deliberately choose to neglect the grace. So, the Eucharist does not detract from the work of Christ. It manifests the work of Christ.

The sacraments are not detractions from the glory of Christ’s work on Calvary. They are refractions of that light. Christ is love’s pure light, sacrificed on Calvary, given to the Church which is like a prism, displaying the colors of the spectrum in the seven sacraments. And the sacraments do not undermine or compromise the work of Christ on Calvary. They apply what was accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God and his children.

Practical Insights and Inspiring Thoughts

Now, what can we take home from this? What practical insights can we gain? First of all it tells us, it urges us not to gauge our faith by our feelings. Christ is there whether we feel it or not. He is not a genie. He doesn’t just do whatever we feel like doing. He does what he has promised and sworn to do. But that is a glorious fact and that is the only adequate foundation for our faith.

I just listened to a tape this afternoon. You can talk to Terry Barber of St. Joseph Communications and perhaps get a copy of it. It was done by Betty Brennan and it was entitled “Return to the Sacraments.” Betty Brennan is a New York cradle Catholic who fell away from the Church when she lost her child and she became bitter and hateful towards God. She actually got heavily involved in Satanism for years. She was raised up into the upper echelons of Satanism before some unbelievable experiences brought her back to Christ. The one thing that she testifies to is the fact that in all of the Satanic cults, they don’t go by non- Catholic practices. They realize the power of the sacraments. She said, “If a witch who really was a witch walked into a room with 2000 wafers, only one of which was consecrated, she would know the one in a minute.

She describes how in Satanic cults, it’s the Catholic sacraments that are really feared and initiated in a blasphemous way. She goes on to talk about how it is that these devil worshippers know, even if Catholics do not, that the sacraments are like the spiritual equivalent to nuclear weapons to completely blast Satan out of our lives. Busy Christians reading books, listening to tapes, going to conferences and neglecting the sacraments. We shouldn’t do that. We can read the books and listen to the tapes and do all of those good things, but the best thing we must not neglect. Those sacraments are awesome and divine, especially the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

I want to take some thoughts from some of the saints to close our time. St. Augustine once said, “He who is all-knowing knew of nothing more that he could give than the Eucharist. He who is all-powerful could not do any more than he does in the sacrament and he who is all loving had nothing more that He could give. The Eucharist,” he goes on to say, “is a Divine storehouse filled with every virtue.”

St. Teresa of Avila once said that here on earth it’s impossible to perform a more meritorious act than visiting Jesus often in the Eucharist. If you took all of the good works done by all of the humans who have ever lived in all of history and stacked them all up and multiplied them by a million, they wouldn’t equal the merit, the virtue and the worth of one Mass. The Eucharistic sacrifice is Christ’s infinite merit, infinite value.

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque said, “Every time you visit the Church for the love of Christ, His heart draws us in an embrace of sheer delight. The tabernacle is like Mary’s womb wherein dwells the same Christ who reigns above, adored by angels, He who enters our bodies and souls.”

St. Teresa of the Little Flower once said, “He doesn’t descend from heaven to remain in golden vessels but to enter and fill our souls.”

St. John Bosco once said, “We don’t receive the Eucharist because we are good, we go to receive the Eucharist in order to become good and pleasing to God.”

Cardinal John Bolderman said, “Just one communion received with the best dispositions, just one with the best dispositions and with true devotion would be enough to make a saint.”

The Cure’ of Ars once said, “An entire lifetime would not be enough to thank God sufficiently for just one communion, if its value is properly estimated. The sacrifice of the Mass is, of itself, more glorious and meritorious than anything and everything in creation.”

St. John Cafiso once said, “If the angels could receive communion just once, they would spend the rest of eternity thanking God for the privilege. The tongue that receives the Lord of mercy, how can it then be used to curse and revile?”

St. Cyril of Alexandria said, “If the poison of pride is swelling up in you, turn to the Eucharist and he who is your God in such a humble disguise, will teach you humility. If the fever of selfish greed rages in you, feed on him and you will learn generosity.”

St. Philip Neri once said, that as far as teenagers are concerned, nothing but communion can keep your heart pure. The words of consecration are greater than the words that were spoken at creation, for the words spoken at creation merely brought forth the creation, but the words spoken by the priest bring forth the Creator and the Redeemer. The glory that God calls us to share is the love of an infinite Father. It wasn’t enough for Jesus to merely enter into Mary’s virgin womb to dwell for nine months. It wasn’t humble enough for him to be born in poverty and squalor or to be born and laid in a feeding trough in a cave. It wasn’t enough for him to be circumcised or hunted down by Herod the greedy tyrant. It wasn’t enough for him to be humbled through being ignored, denied abused, tortured and killed. But now, He is there hidden under the appearance of bread and wine so that we who have done all of this may discover the infinite love and the eternal humility of a loving God as we swallow him down and utterly consume him.

Conclusion: To Receive Holy Communion is to be Assimilated into the Body of Christ

As He said in John 2, “Zeal for my family will consume me, will eat me up.” Unlike physical nourishment, the Eucharist is different, very different. When we receive plants and animals in a meal, we assimilate it into our bodies but when we receive our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, it might be truer to say that He assimilates us to his body and He makes us one with himself, one flesh and one spirit.

In the early Church the Eucharist was known as the medicine of immortality. Jesus when he instituted it, spoke the language of love. That is the language we have to learn anew if we are to live our lives in the family of God.

In the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Holy Healing Program 24 Transcripts Scott Hahn

We’re going to be focusing on two more sacraments in particular. We’re going to be focusing on the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick or Extreme Unction as it has been historically called. I’d like to reverse that order though. I’d like to spend our first few minutes on the Anointing of the Sick, and I’d like to restrict myself somewhat so that I can focus a little more time and attention on a sacrament that I suspect will probably relate to more of us at least in the next few years, that is the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick

First, the Anointing of the Sick. What is the Sacrament of Extreme Unction or the Anointing of the Sick? It’s essentially a help granted to the whole person to enable him to live intensely his supernatural life in spite of the special burden of sickness. The sacrament is conferred validly through the anointing with blessed oil by the priest, along with prayer. It imparts health and strength to the soul and sometimes to the body for all Catholics who have the use of reason, who are experiencing serious illness, or who have experienced an accident, or who may simply be close to death due to old age. It’s especially important in the cases where people are in danger of dying.

Now where do we find the roots of the sacrament? Well, we find them in Christ’s own ministry as it is recorded in the gospel. Christ was devoted to the healing of the sick. He didn’t just restrict that power of healing to himself. He also gave it to the Apostles. In Mark chapter 6, verse 13, we’re told that he gave this healing power to his Apostles to “cure many sick persons by anointing them with oil.”

Now, if God is omnipotent, then why use Apostles? If God is omnipotent, then why use oil? Because God is the creator of all creation and of all matter and of all persons. Again, he does not feel left out. He does not feel pushed to the side. His glory is not detracted from when he uses or employs secondary means. In fact, God’s omnipotent love, as we have seen, is displayed when he uses ordinary means and ordinary people like us so that when supernatural works are accomplished through natural means, we know that God is in our midst, and it’s the assurance that we have that we are in fact his covenant family and that he is the Lord of the covenant in the midst of his people.

There is also another important passage found in the New Testament Book of James. If you have a Bible, turn with me to James, chapter 5, where we will read verses 14 and 15. Let’s back up to chapter 5, verse 13: “Is anyone among you suffering, let him pray. Is anyone cheerful, let him sing praise. Is any among you sick, let him call for the Elders of the Church.” The word is presbyter, that’s the root for our word “priest.” We get the word priest from this term presbyter or presbuteras. “Let him call for the Elders of the Church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer of faith will save the sick man and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed, for the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.”

Now we’re going to come back to this particular passage again when we look at the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation because it serves double duty, as you can probably sense right now. But it talks about various effects, various sacramental effects. What are the effects of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick? Well, basically it’s a four-fold effect. First, the Church teaches that Extreme Unction strengthens and aids and heals the soul. The second effect: it comforts us in sickness and it strengthens us in the face of temptation. The third effect is that it prepares us for entrance into heaven by remitting all venial sins and it also has the power to remove the remains of sin, the weakened will, the darkened intellect, etc. The fourth effect is that it may restore the health of the body, as well. Now, that restoration may not occur in this life. It might be the anointing of Jesus, we see, that prepares him for the ultimate healing in the resurrection.

Some theologians add a fifth effect, that Extreme Unction takes away mortal sin when the individual is unconscious, so long that if he regains consciousness, he is bound to confess his sins. But generally speaking, we speak of the four-fold effect of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick or Extreme Unction.

Common Objection: Aren’t we Endorsing a Superstitious Approach to Healing

Now we have to ask and answer a question that really is common today because of a kind of secular, scientific outlook; that is, doesn’t all this reflect a somewhat primitive outlook on disease and illness? In other words, aren’t we really endorsing a superstitious approach to healing? I mean do we want to engage in all kinds of faith healing adventures where we are really doing things that are primitive, unscientific and outmoded?

Well no, I don’t think so. I don’t think this implies any rejection of modern science. It certainly does not imply any rejection of modern medicine or the need or the propriety to go see medical specialists. It assumes the propriety of all that, but it builds on the gospel teachings and how they relate to Christ’s own ministry. In other words, again we see how the Church lives its life through the Body of Christ. Christ infuses the Holy Spirit into the Church so that the Church’s ministry can be an extension of Christ’s incarnation. What he did in his personal body on earth, the Church does in its corporate ministry through those that Christ has appointed and their successors.

Now I want to stop here for a second because this is very easily misunderstood. Why is that? Because we tend to judge the Church and assess its nature on the basis of sense experience, that is, what we pick up simply through our five senses and through our human reason. I would suggest, I would urge you to see that the Body of Christ is something much more than human reason and experience can tell you.

The Church in the Book of Ephesians is referred to as being “the mystery of Christ.” Now how is that so? To understand the true, supernatural character of the Church takes supernatural faith. We say in the Creed, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty.” Apart from faith and apart from grace and apart from God’s revelation, we would not know our Creator as Father. It’s only by grace that we become his children. If we speak of God being the Father of all humans, that’s metaphorical. If we speak of God’s Fatherhood with regard to Christians, that’s sacramental and that’s metaphysical. That has a validity that goes far beyond God as Father because God is creator.

The Creed goes on, “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son,” and it goes on to talk about the things that Jesus Christ did and who he is. Now, if Jesus Christ walked into the room right now and somebody were to look at him, would they say, “Wow, check it out, the God-man. Look at those biceps. He has to be God! Look at the eyebrows and the way the hair just kind of goes, and look at those shoulders. I can just tell that he is one of a kind. He’s the God-man.” Of course not. If he were to walk into this room and sit down and he hadn’t showered in a few days, you’d know it. He had his human body, fully, completely and truly human. He might have to get up and excuse himself to relieve himself because he had bodily functions, if you don’t mind. I don’t think that’s irreverent at all.

If we were to sit there and stare and study, we would say, “This person is a human.” And if someone were to whisper in your ear, “No, no. That person is the eternal Logos, the second Person of the eternal Godhead, the Creator of the vast, unchartered universe.” You would look and say, “You didn’t get enough sleep last night or you’ve been drinking something besides hot chocolate. I mean the guy’s about thirty, maybe thirty-three, why do you say he’s God? God’s eternal. I mean just to fit the job description, he’s got to be eternal, right?”

Then suppose a skeptic pushed you and said, “Now you think that this guy really is divine? Well, look here. Let’s put him out on the table and let’s do a little disective surgery. I mean, let’s check out his kidney. Does that look divine to you? I mean, is this an eternal liver? No, purely human. So get off it. What’s this divine stuff?” But God has revealed and we have believed by grace, through revelation, that Jesus Christ is more than meets the eye because, through the eyes of faith, we see God made man.

Now, it takes faith and revelation and the aid of grace to accept all of that, and I would suggest that the early Church put into its creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church,” because they recognized the fact that we could not properly understand the true nature of the Church apart from the same kind of supernatural faith, apart from the same divine grace to help us, so that we would look and see what seems to be merely a human bureaucracy, a human hierarchy, a human society, a religious organization with lots of internal problems. Just like Christ’s skin cells were dying and then regenerating and being replaced, so the Church has all of these human elements. So how can we say that the Church has this divine character to continue Christ’s incarnate ministry? Because Christ taught it and because Christ did it and because Jesus Christ still does it and will do it until the close of the age.

He is with us through the sacramental oaths that he himself swore, by which he unites us to himself in his living, organic, Mystical Body to continue this healing and to continue this wonderful, life-giving ministry that he started 2000 years ago. That is the theological foundation for the Anointing of the Sick and, as we will see, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as well. So, is this a primitive outlook? Is this a superstition? Is this just an obsolete, antiquated, prescientific outlook that really modern medicine contradicts?

No, of course not. Jesus Christ gives to us an outlook on illness that surpasses what science can tell us without undermining it. We can embrace the true accomplishments of science at the same time we can embrace the true teachings and practices of Our Lord and his Apostles. Christ’s teachings on illness and how the spiritual and sometimes even the demonic powers relate to illness can be found throughout the gospels. For instance, in Luke 13 we see a person who has the spirit of infirmity for 18 years. It isn’t just physical, it’s a spirit of infirmity, as well. So through prayer this disease is removed.

In Matthew 12, verse 22, somebody is blind and dumb because of demonic power. Now, scientists could not have ever detected that which is spiritual because science is restricted to the five senses. Science is restricted to the empirical. It would have had sensible manifestations, but those supersensible spiritual elements faith alone can see, and the sacraments alone can heal. So, in Matthew 12: 22, Christ again heals somebody in a spiritual and supernatural mode because that’s the origin of the disease. Likewise in Luke 8, verse 2, Mary Magdalene had seven demons cast out of her, seven evil spirits.

So we have to affirm somehow, even in this modern age, the existence of evil forces that go beyond the biological factors of physical life, pure spirits, as the Church has always taught, that are hostile to God and powerfully active to subvert and pervert creation to themselves. One of the greatest German scholars of the 20th Century, a convert, Heinrich Schleer, who was a widely respected Protestant Biblical scholar for decades until his study of the Book of Ephesians after many, many years, led him into the Catholic Church. Heinrich Schleer said this, “No matter what physical or psychic causes it may have, illness is also due, at least sometimes, to a superior evil power. The incidence of illness may seem fortuitous to man, but it is sometimes due to the calculated action of superior wicked powers. This superior power has its being not only in the impairment of the body, but also in the confusion and ruin of the spirit.”

In other words, we are engaged in spiritual warfare, as St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6, and so our battle has to be fought with spiritual and supernatural weapons, and none of our weapons are as powerful as those sacraments that we are speaking of. Pope Pius XI in 1923 said, “We are particularly anxious.” He’s talking about how people have kind of pushed aside the Sacrament of Anointing. “We are particularly anxious to dispel in every possible way the deadly error which to the detriment of souls has given rise to the practice of not anointing the sick with holy oil until death is imminent and they have all but lost, or lost altogether, their faculties; for it is not necessary either for the validity or the licity of the sacrament that death be feared as something proximate. Rather, it is enough that there should be a prudent or probable judgment of danger.”

Let me explain what Pope Pius XI was saying. A lot of people reduce the Sacrament of Anointing to the death bed: that is, it’s just simply something that you do to get them ready to die. It certainly is that, but it’s much more than that. It’s something which touches upon this human life in other moments as well. If there’s just prudent or probable judgment of danger, this sacrament may be validly administered. This is a healing sacrament, and it touches the body as well as the soul because the body is redeemed as well as the soul.

Some people want unmediated access to Christ apart from material, apart from any creaturely mediation, but that’s not the way Christ created things. He created us with bodies. He created us with five senses. He created us so that we would experience his love and his power and his wisdom through all kinds of creaturely things and creaturely means. That’s how he redeems us as well, because all of this doesn’t detract from his glory. Rather it refracts his glory, like the prism of the church refracts the pure light of God’s love in Christ.

So we should take advantage of this sacrament whenever there is such a prudent or probable judgment of danger because it heals the soul and strengthens the soul to overcome sin and also often heals the body. This is something that Protestants have been experiencing outside the Church. We have seen all kinds of ways in which God is working outside the ordinary means of the Catholic Church to kind of wake us up so that we can experience the far superior power of the sacrament itself. This sacrament is powerful to heal. Let’s get that into our heads and hearts and spread the word.

Now does this mean that we should become basically a worldwide faith healing cult and stop visiting the doctors? After all, what’s going on with all the rising health costs? No, of course not. That would be wrong and wrong-headed. Therapy should be sought. We should consult specialists. We should not despise true scientific knowledge. We should also depend upon the Lord and we should pray and we should depend upon the sacraments. Throughout the gospels we have this balance.

Anointing is Meant for the Healing of the Whole Person, Body and the Soul

So what we should see is that the sacrament is meant for the healing of the whole person, body and soul. The object is not necessarily or specifically or exclusively a medical cure, but rather a recovery and strengthening of supernatural life to bear up under the burden of sickness and weakness. Why? Because what does sickness do to us in our spiritual life with Christ? Think about your own experience. How do you feel and how do you respond to people and how do you relate to God when you’re really sick? What happens? Why would Christ institute a sacrament relative to our sickness, relative to human danger of body? Because there are three effects of sickness that radically affect our relationship with Christ and those who are in his Body.

First, it’s easy to lapse into self-absorption where you become so preoccupied with your weakness, it’s hard to even get out of yourself to see other people and their needs. Second, we also have what theologians call “spiritual lethargy” where the body is taking so much attention and energy away from the soul that spiritually we become very weak, tired and lethargic. The third effect of illness is frequent proneness to discouragement. Do you know that despair is a mortal sin, where you simply say, “Even with the help of God’s grace, I can’t make it?” That’s a mortal sin because it is seriously calling into question God’s love and power. And illness can frequently lead people to that kind of discouragement which then takes them to the boundaries of despair.

So Christ knows our infirmity. He took it upon himself and through it he healed us, and so through our infirmities he heals our souls and also our bodies. Way back in the 16th Century, in the famous Catechism of the Council of Trent, we were told this, a very interesting statement relative to the healing power of the sacrament. Why is it that the sacrament is frequently administered without any healing effect? Is it because really the sacrament is to be spiritualized away so that God really isn’t concerned about using the sacrament for healing the body but just simply the soul? No, back in the 16th Century, the Catechism of the Council of Trent said the following, “And if in our days the sick obtain this effect,” that is of healing, “less frequently, this is to be attributed not to any defect in the sacrament, but rather to the weaker faith of a great number of those who are anointed with the sacred oil or by whom it is administered.”

In other words, the sacrament is valid when it is performed according to the Church’s teachings built upon Christ’s teaching, but the sacrament is powerful dependent upon the dispositions of the minister and the recipient. If we have little faith, we will see little effect. It’s the same way it was in the gospels. So the Catechism of the Council of Trent says back in the 16th Century that if this sacrament is not healing many people, physically as well as spiritually, it’s not due to any weakness or defect in the sacrament. No, the weakness or the defect needs to be properly located in our faith. I think that’s true today even more so.

Anointing is Intended to Transform our Life and our Understanding of Sickness, Weakness, Suffering and Death

The bottom line for the sacrament, I believe, is that the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is intended to transform our life, and I would suggest, our understanding of sickness and of weakness, of suffering and of death. Why? Because Christ took death, that gloomy, despairing subject that we all fear and we all avoid; he took that and made it the door of heaven. He took away the sting of death. He actually made death into a holy sacrifice, practically a means of grace. He made suffering a tool for sanctification. So it transforms your understanding of suffering and death. Why? Because we are now called by these sacraments, these oaths, to unite ourselves and our sufferings to Christ. We are to mystically insert our sufferings into Christ’s living Body, the Church. Our suffering and death are united with his in redemptive value and in healing power.

I believe that the kingdom of Satan is dealt a death blow every time Satan’s great weapons, suffering and death, are reversed in their effects by people who offer them up in union with Christ’s sacrifice so that through Christ, suffering becomes a powerful tool of victorious sanctity. That is what this sacrament is meant to lead us to, to see and to live. It increases our own faith in Christ’s healing power. It causes us to rethink our attitude toward suffering and toward sickness and death, and it’s to encourage ourselves and others to a greater openness to receiving God’s healing power through his sacrament.

I recently came across a homily that the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, gave just this year where he is calling 20th Century Catholic disciples to a radical commitment to Christ. He says in effect, “This is not for the elite. This is for all of us.” If Christ is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all. We can’t pick and choose that which he can control in our lives. Who then is Lord? We are. He becomes lackey. He becomes “go-fer.” He becomes our little household servant. He is Lord of Lord and King of Kings, and he calls forth a radical commitment of total service to himself because he has died for us. So John Paul told parishioners of the Roman Parish of Jesus of the Divine Agony, “Either God and his kingdom or wealth, power and success.” He told the parishioners that, “when wealth, power or success are considered these days as absolute goods, they are inevitably transformed into idols.” And people who think of wealth, power and success as absolute goods will refuse to accept illness, suffering and death as tools for wholeness, as the means by which we are actually made stronger and fulfilled as humans.

So he goes on, “Today we live in an atmosphere of secularism which prefers having things to being a person under God. In many people this creates an insatiable thirst for possessions and an unbridled race for riches which society thinks are the only things that count. These are the new forms,” he tells us, “of the sins of idolatry which, while they wipe God off the horizon of life, also create dramatic situations of injustice in society.” So he says, “Compromise is a serious danger for many Christians who live in such a pluralistic, secular society.” Compromise is a serious danger for us. Pope John Paul II goes on, “God does not tolerate living with idols around him. He does not tolerate any facile compromise between good and evil. He cannot stand divided hearts and communities. ‘Either God or money,’ our Lord says. Either the justice which makes us children of God, or the injustice which produces sin and division. Either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of man. A witness of fidelity and consistency, of detachment and service is asked of all Christians,” he says, “but particularly of those who have public responsibilities in social and political life.”

He calls forth moral strength which does not tolerate compromise and for generous involvement. In short, he’s calling for sacrifice — total commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and to the Church as his family, to the Church as his kingdom, to the Church as his army and to the Church as our hospital.

Sacrament of Penance (Reconciliation)

Let’s move now to the second sacrament under consideration, that is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or as it is sometimes called, the Sacrament of Confession, Penance or Repentance. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the sacrament by which post-baptismal sins are forgiven through priestly absolution. It isn’t just me and Jesus. It is me and Jesus, but it isn’t just that! Jesus Christ has instituted the priesthood, and it’s through priestly absolution that we receive the grace of this sacrament because it’s through them that the oath is sworn and the grace is given.

What do we need to do as recipients, as penitents? The first thing is we need to come to the sacrament with contrition, that is sorrow for sin. But the sacrament is an oath that is powerful and it’s designed to make up for what we lack. We pledge ourselves in the oath, but we also plea for help in an oath. Sometimes attrition is sufficient. The Church teaches that if a person approaches the sacrament without perfect contrition, that is, without a total sorrow for sin but they merely have what is known as attrition, that is, a fear of punishment, fearing the loss of heaven and dreading the pains of hell — if that’s all you come to the sacrament with, it isn’t enough; but the sacrament will aid you. It will complete what is lacking and defective in your resolution and disposition.

So we come with contrition. We come with that Godly sorrow for sin. We also come for confession, that is, telling the priest sincerely and humbly and entirely our sins in number and kind. Then, after receiving absolution from the priest, we do penance. We not only do penance to give restitution, to provide restitution and repair the damages done by sin, but we also do penance to restore and strengthen our bond of love with Christ and the people of God.

Let’s keep all of this in mind. This is sort of the basic, simple, catechetical summary. Scripture records Christ giving power to the Apostles to forgive sins, but this is sometimes misunderstood. Some people think, “Well, as long as Catholics tell their sins to the priests, they can go on committing sins, whenever they want, whenever they choose.” That’s a total distortion. The truth is, unless that sinner is truly sorry, unless that sinner approaches the sacrament with contrition or at least attrition and confesses all known serious sins sincerely, humbly and completely, the sacrament not only does not confer the absolution, but then it becomes sacrilege.

To go to confession and deliberately withhold confessing a mortal sin is a mortal sin. You have perjured yourselves, you have committed sacrilege. So we have to approach this like we approach fire. Fire can be a very, very powerful tool for good. It can also be a very deadly tool for evil and for harm.

Effects of the Sacrament

The sacrament is designed for spiritual healing and for the restoration of our relationship with Christ. It, too, has a four-fold effect. It restores sanctifying grace in the case of mortal sin. It increases our sanctifying grace, the grace of divine Sonship, if all we confess are venial sins. Second thing is that the sins are forgiven. They are covered over. They are washed away. The third effect is that eternal punishment is remitted and temporal punishment, at least in part, is remitted as well. Then, fourthly, the sacrament gives us supernatural power to help us avoid sin and the occasions of sin in the future.

It’s important to realize that when we make the act of contrition, that we are resolving not just to do penance and to avoid sin, but to avoid those near occasions which we know will lead us into sin — whatever her name may be, whatever the place may be. We resolve to avoid those things that lead us to sin.

Now we’ve got to get out of the mind this idea that it doesn’t really matter if you’re sorry or not. You just confess your sins and, you know, automatically this stuff is given. It reminds me of a Charles Schultz cartoon. You’ve seen Peanuts. One of my favorite comic strips is Peanuts, and there’s one in particular that really stands out in my memory. It’s where Linus is packing a snowball, getting ready to pelt Lucy. All of a sudden she turns around and says, “If you hit me with that snowball, so help me you’ll be sorry!” She turns around and walks away and sure enough, Linus heaves the thing, whack, splat on the back of her head. She comes back with her fists ready to pound him, and he says, “You are so right. I am sorry.”

It doesn’t work that way. You know a famous Harvard philosopher, William James, once said, “I would sin like David, if only I could repent like David!” Well you know, you can gauge and manipulate your contrition and your sorrow for sin. You’ve got to strike while the iron is hot, while God’s grace is working in your heart, you’ve got to express in true sorrow for sin and receive the grace to help in time of need. The truth is, unless the sinner is sincerely sorry and confesses entirely, the grace is not helpful. The sacrament is not fruitful.

Now this is not a novelty. The Old Testament provides many antecedents for confession, but you would have to say that the confessional system in the Old Testament was much, much more complicated. Think of the sacrificial system and how people had to offer up sin sacrifices whenever they did something that was deliberately wrong. Whenever they did something that was seriously evil, they had to provide a trespass offering or a sacrifice for sin.

Now what did they have to do? They might have to bring cattle. They might have to bring a goat. They might have to bring sheep. And I’ve got to tell you, the more you study the Old Testament, the more you realize that the priests weren’t the ones who did the dirty work. You all, if you lived in the Old Testament, would bring your animal sacrifice for sin up to the altar. A knife would be given to you. You would do the cutting and the ripping. You would do the separating of the parts. You would also be doing the singing and then the priest would basically just take care of all of the ritual parts that relate directly to the altar.

In other words, when you acted sacrificially in the case of sins back in the Old Testament, it was personal. It was public, and it was costly. You had to sacrifice cattle, and back then in an agrarian culture, that’s capital. That’s economic power. God called forth from his people Godly sorrow for sin and true personal sacrifice. It was costly. It was public and, I’ve got to tell you, it was humbling! And it’s still a duty for us.

Back then it was a duty that was annual, and so it is for Catholics today. We are obliged as one of the precepts of the Church. Do you know the precepts of the Church? You should. One of the precepts is that we’ve got to receive the Eucharist at least every year — the Easter Duty — and we have to have our sins confessed at least once a year as well. So also, Old Testament Israel — the lay people had their sins confessed and the sacrifices for sin in Passover and the priests on the Day of Atonement. But the sacrificial system is what Christ transformed into a much cleaner and easier system. Why? Because God is concerned for the health of our soul and the effects that sin has upon it.

The priests of our Church are to be trained as doctors of the soul, ministers for our spiritual health. We need to realize our duty and obligation toward ongoing conversion. Every day we’ve got to convert again and return to Christ anew. We need to practice contrition on a daily basis. Every night before you go to bed you ought to have at least a brief examination of conscience. Just like bookkeepers, when they close the books and when they close the shop at the end of the day, they balance the books, so we ought to balance the books at the end of the day and express Godly sorrow for our sins. If we have found a serious sin that we have committed, then make a resolution to go to confession as soon as possible.

Common Objections

We don’t go to the priest instead of going to Christ. We’re going to deal with that in a minute or two. We don’t go to the confessional instead of going to the Lord of Mercy. We go to the Lord of Mercy and we hear him telling us to go to the confessional. When we go to the priest, we hear Christ and we meet Christ. This is not some bypass, some alternate route. Christ has instituted these creaturely means for the health of our soul. Sin is like an infection. We need to go to the doctor for the right prescription, for the right dosage; and then we follow that if we trust him.

Grace is like an antibiotic, the antibiotic that takes away the infection and the fever in the body of Christ. Sin is like a broken bone in the Body of Christ. The doctors need to X-ray. We need to give them a clear picture by telling them sincerely and accurately what we’ve done. And they can set that bone. If they’re doctors or physicians of the soul, they are empowered with the grace that goes beyond their educational background. They are empowered with sacramental power, so that’s Christ himself. As Archbishop Sheen used to say, “Whenever you see the hand of absolution of the priest, the priest raises his hand for absolution, picture Christ. He is the Priest behind the priest and his hand is dripping with the blood that was shed for the forgiveness of our sins and it washes us pure and clean.”

That is the assurance that we have in the Sacrament of Confession. We are meeting the true high Priest through the human priests for the health and for the healing and the strengthening of our soul. How many of us would go to the doctor if it was free? A free monthly checkup? Whatever drugs, whatever prescriptions we needed, we’d get free. Whatever X-rays, whatever surgical procedures were necessary were all paid for? Can you imagine hospital overcrowding, if that were the case? Why are the confessional lines so short these days? I suspect it’s because we emphasize the goods of the body to the neglect of the goods of the soul and the health of our spirit. If we properly prioritized spiritual health, we would see this sacrament grow in popularity. We would see people flocking to it in fact.

Here’s a problem that many people face practically, “But I keep on committing the same sin.” In other words, my problem is not some theological question, my problem is a personal crisis: that I keep going back and confessing the same darn sin over and over and over again. Either I must be out of grace or else the sacrament might not be all it’s cracked up to be.” Well, how do you respond to that kind of dilemma? I would suggest the following: first of all, an examination of conscience, true and sincere self-examination. Am I sincere in my desire to avoid sin? Am I humble and sincere in confessing all of my sins? If I say “yes” to that question, then I ask, “Is there any improvement?”

I mean, maybe it’s ten steps forward and nine-and-a-half steps back, but is there ANY gradual, slight improvement? We have to be tending toward perfection, but in some cases that might be slow, but we have to continue growing in the Lord. If you are not growing, you’re not standing still: you’re shrinking. You’re going backwards because in the spiritual life there is an inner dynamism. It’s either moving forward or it’s going backwards. We’re either growing in our spiritual life or we’re dying in our spiritual life. So we have to ask ourselves, “Is there any real sorrow for sin?” Sometimes the victory is simply in the struggle, the ongoing battle to overcome temptations.

You know, sometimes it takes a lot longer to overcome certain sins because God wants to use those sins to humble us and to show us how dependent we are upon him — how weak we are in ourselves and how discipleship is nothing but a long obedience in the same direction. We have to trust Christ from beginning to end.

Isn’t the Priest Taking Away the Prerogatives of God

Somebody could go back to the old theological objection, “But isn’t the priest taking away the prerogatives of God? Isn’t he claiming for himself that which belongs exclusively to God?”

I would urge that that’s not the case. God alone possesses supernatural power to work miracles, but does he appoint miracle workers when he calls certain ministers who, like Moses, does things that no human could do? Moses did divine miracles or at least God did them through Moses, through the prophets and through the Apostles. God uses creaturely means because that’s how he is glorified, by raising us up. Because in a family what do the parents do? They love to give it all away at the right time, in the right way, when we’re ready. But the Father wants to share all his glory with us, just as he has eternally shared it with his eternal Son. As we are his children, he wants to raise us up and fill us up with all of his wisdom and power. So, if we see priests doing things that God alone can do, that isn’t proof that the priest is taking it away from God. It’s proof that God is fathering us, just as he promised.

We have to take a look at a few passages. First of all, Matthew 18. In Matthew 18, Jesus tells us how to deal with sin in the Church. He says, “If a brother sins against you, go to him privately and show him his fault, and if he repents, you’ve gained him back; but if he doesn’t listen, take one or two others along with you that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. It he refuses to listen to them, then tell it to the Church. If he refuses to listen even to the Church,” you could hear Christ’s emphasis, “EVEN to the CHURCH.” Can you imagine somebody not listening even to the Church — to an individual, sure. To two or three individuals, sure; but if he won’t listen even to the Church, Jesus says, “Let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.”

Why? Because Christ institutes, in the 20th chapter of John, the sacrament that we are speaking of. Let’s take a look at that. If you have a Bible, turn with me to the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 21 through 23. This is Christ in one of his resurrection appearances: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you’.” He says this to the eleven Apostles, not to all of us indiscriminately, “‘As the Father has sent me, even so I send you,’ and when he has said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. As the Father sent me, so I send you’.”

In other words, we have in the priests the very authority of Christ. The priest is an alter-Christus, another Christ. Christ is the Priest behind the priest. He is the Priest within the priest and he is the Priest acting through the priest. He is the tool and the instrument that God has chosen to use for our help and for our salvation. He is the judge. He is the physician. He is the counselor. He is a friend. Why? Because the priest is a father and a good father is all of those things.

The penitent is at once a criminal, a patient, a client and a child with a broken heart; because what Christ is interested in doing is restoring the friendship and the family bonds of the New Covenant.

Let’s take a look, once again, at James, Chapter 5, and we can see what we saw earlier when we were looking at the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. James, Chapter 5, verse 16 tells us, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.” Now, that verse is frequently quoted by non-Catholics to insist that we don’t need to go to priests to confess our sins.

I would say two things: First, why is it that if we can go to Christ, we need to bother to confess our sins to anybody? In other words, why does Ephesians 5:16 say, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another?” That’s an imperative. We have to confess our sins to one another. Why? Why isn’t confessing my sin to Christ alone good enough? It isn’t; that’s clear. But, why? Because it’s a family and that’s not a way the family works. If we back up, we see in particular how this refers to priests. James 5, verses 14 and 15, “Is any among you sick, let him call for the priests or the presbyters of the Church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith, which presumably they pray, will save the sick man and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven through the priestly ministry of these presbyters. Therefore, confess your sins to one another.”

Now whenever you see that word, “therefore” in scripture, you always have to ask yourself what it’s there for. It’s built upon the priest’s healing context. It’s because we can go to the presbyters and receive healing and forgiving power that we confess our sins to one another. That is obviously reference to the priests. It doesn’t rule out the possibility of confessing our sins to fellow lay people, but it certainly has contextual reference to the priests in particular.

This is something that the early Church saw clearly. For instance, in the 4th Century, St. Ambrose said, “Christ granted this power to the Apostles, and from the Apostles it has been transmitted to the office of the priests alone.” St. John Chrysostom in the 5th Century, actually he lived in the 4th Century and died in the 5th. He said, “As often as you sin, come to me and I shall hear you. Be not ashamed to approach the priest because you have sinned. No one says, ‘Because I have an ulcer, I shall not go near a physician or take medicine. We priests know well how to pardon, because we ourselves sin.” St. Augustine said, “Let us not listen to those who say that the Church and the priests have not power to forgive sins.” St. Athanasius said, “He who in penance confesses his sins receives, through the priest, forgiveness in virtue of the grace of Christ.” And St. Cyprian said, “It’s only through the priests.”

This Sacrament was Just Instituted by a Power Hungry Clergy

Well, that raises another objection. Then, perhaps, this sacrament was just instituted by a power-hungry clergy! No, I think if you think about it, you realize that’s not likely. First of all, any priest will tell you that this is the hardest and most draining part of the priestly ministry — Long, boring, stifling in those dark confessionals, listening to the same old sins over and over again. Secondly, the priest is not allowed to use the knowledge he gets from the confessional because, as soon as the priest breaks the seal of the confessional, he breaks his priesthood and he can’t practice it any more. So it’s not just gaining knowledge for power as priests because they can’t use the knowledge for their own personal advantage or gain. In addition, the priests themselves must also confess. The Pope confesses more than once a week and priests are also obligated to confess their sins. So I don’t think that this was something just instituted by a power-hungry clergy.

Well, maybe then it was just called forth by a guilt-ridden laity who didn’t appreciate the work of Christ? No, I think even less thought will suffice to do away with that objection. Very few things in human life are more humiliating and difficult and sometimes just downright terrifying than laying your soul out for a priest. You’re making yourself vulnerable. Lay people wouldn’t invent this, but Christ would for the health and for the salvation of his family.

Let’s remember, though, that we’re not confessing our sins to God because he doesn’t already know them. He knows them better than we know them. Well, if he knows them, then why bother to confess them? Well, why do we pray? Do we pray because God doesn’t know what we need or do we pray because we know what we need better, or do we pray perhaps to change God’s mind?

I would suggest that if you were praying to change God’s mind, then you could do us all a big favor and stop praying. What is your mind compared to his mind? If you’re praying to change his mind, then stop praying. And only restart when you realize that the primary purpose of prayer is that God uses it to change our minds and our hearts and our intentions and resolutions to conform them to Christ. We’re not manipulating God. We’re not trying to get him strapped over a barrel to do our will. Our prayer is to do his will on earth as it is done in heaven. We pray to know his will and to gain the grace to do that will, even when it’s difficult. We offer up all of our concerns and anxieties to him through the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ, and he hears us and he says, “You have not because you ask not.”

But we don’t ask to change his mind. His mind is infinitely knowledgeable of all our needs and of all the ways to meet them. He has us pray to change our hearts and minds and lives. That’s why we confess our sins as well. We confess our sins not to alert him as to what we have been doing. We confess our sins so that we can take a look at our souls and see them through the eyes of Christ. We can take a look at the medicine that he gives us and realize how he will suffice to save us and not we ourselves.

It is the sacrament that restores total confidence that we can’t trust ourselves, but we can entrust ourselves to the one we can trust more than ourselves. And that’s what Penance is for, and if we follow this, I believe that we will understand the nature of Christ’s intention. Sin is a very, very dirty business. It’s very confusing. It really messes up our minds. Sin is something that we cannot really get a handle on. Sin makes a cesspool of human life. Sin gets out of control very easily. It becomes a tangled mess, a snarled heap, a smelling pile of garbage and human refuse.

We need to see that God alone can really heal that kind of radical evil. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are doing. Often we don’t know how much we are sinning. We sin in ways we can barely imagine. We look at the saints and we read of them in their writings that they regarded themselves as sinful wretches. If they regarded themselves as sinful wretches, why don’t we? Because we’re holier or blinder?

Sin Gets out of Control so Easily

Sin just causes massive devastation in human lives. We don’t even see it all. Reminds me. A lot of you are in 11th grade preparing for Confirmation. Reminds me of an 11th grade experience in my Chemistry Class. I had missed the previous lab the week before and so I had to make it up while my two buddies were back in a corner of the lab doing the two experiments that were scheduled for the day. We don’t normally have two experiments in our labs in high school, but he was making up for lost time because of Easter vacation. I remember Tom and Joe were bothering me. They were saying, “Come on, Scott. We need you. You’re the one who always sets up these experiments and we’ve got two of them, you know?”

So, after 45 minutes of doing all my work to make up for the previous week, I go back there and the place is just a mess! There’s a beaker here and a Bunsen burner there; all these test tubes and chemicals and I said, “What’s going on?” “Well, you know,” Joe looked at Tom, “Well, there was one experiment that involved sugar and then there was another one that involved potassium. I think we’ve mixed them up.” “Oh, I see. Okay, great.” I remember this day. You’ll find out why. You know if you add a mole of sugar to water, you raise the boiling temperature point .52 degrees and you lower the freezing point 1.86. Traumas have a way of sort of fixing certain things in your memory and a trauma was about to occur.

“Well, why don’t we just pour it all into one beaker, put it over the Bunsen burner and evaporate it out in the next 15 minutes until the lab period is over. No one will know what we’re doing.” So we did it. We poured all the chemicals in the one beaker, put it over the Bunsen burner and just kind of watched it as it sort of turned yellow. We were having fun, “Hey, look at this. Wonder what it is, you know?” And we started lighting matches off the red hot wire gauze. We just flicked these matches. You know we used to play football and you kick it away so that you wouldn’t burn up, you know?

We were doing all sorts of things for about five minutes or ten minutes; playing around while this thing is sort of turning light brown. Wow, wonder what it is? Dark brown, light black, if there be such a color, dark, bubbly black, like syrup. Wow, and I mean it was a big beaker full. We were watching it and then, I don’t know why, but at that moment we all bent down. I bent down to open up a drawer to put some test tubes back. Tom and Joe both leaned down to put some things in the cupboard below, and in that two second period, an ear-piercing explosion burst through the room! We looked up and we saw Hiroshima, this mushroom cloud filling the room and the room was enormous and the entire ceiling was covered with about a foot-and-a-half of thick smoke. Whoa, and our ears were ringing and my arm was bleeding. We were bent down but there was glass in our hair, the windows were shattered, these glass doors were broken. This explosion just knocked the whole thing out. If it had happened three seconds before, it would have blown our heads off.

Dr. Kline came running back with a fire blanket in his arms and he was white as a ghost. He said, “Is anybody on fire?” We said, “No, no, we’re not on fire.” We were dazed and confused and quite stunned. “Well, go down to the nurse’s office.” So we went down to the nurse’s office, combing glass out of our scalp, looking at our ripped shirts. All of a sudden, about ten feet from the nurse’s office, we looked at each other and we all said in unison — all three of us at the same time — “We could have died!” And we were all white as ghosts.

We all started going to church quite regularly from that point on. You can understand why. But as I look back on that, I realize that oftentimes we mix up bad habits in our behavior. We don’t really search out the sayings that mess up our lives and hurt the other people in our lives. And frequently an explosion will rip through our lives and we say, “Why did that happen? I don’t understand.” Because we haven’t followed the instructions carefully. We haven’t listened to the Teacher, the Master Instructor, and we often create an awful, awful mess.

I remember when I was growing up and I’ve got to tie this together with an experience that still shakes me down to my very roots to this day. When I was a high school kid, one of the most popular kids in class decided that I would be his best friend — in 8th grade, it was actually before high school. We’ll call him Dave. Dave decided that we would just do everything together. So we played together. We ran around together. We got into a lot of trouble together with the law — lots of trouble! The St. Clair police could tell you in detail how much trouble. But we were best friends, and we did lots of wild and crazy things. I used to ask him, because he was a Catholic, “What do you do when you go to Confession?” He said, “Well, I confess certain things.” “Do you confess like, you know, everything?” I was concerned for my freedom, you understand? I didn’t realize that there was this seal of confession.

He said, “Well, you know, I do sometimes. This is kind of a game, you know. We don’t really confess everything. We just sort of go, you know.” Every year his mother would just sort of drive him to confession. I heard about this two or three years in a row. By the third time, it was obvious that this guy was just having contempt for Confession. It was just a charade, a game. He was a typical guy. He wasn’t the epitome of demonic evil; he was just a typical guy.

Well, we got into so much trouble that we almost ended up with a year-and-a-half sentence in Youth Detention Center. We lied our way out of a very bad sentence and we were granted freedom by the skin of our teeth. I remember coming out of the Juvenile Court thinking, “God, if you’re up there, I want out of this mess.” And I got out of it. I stopped doing the things that got us into so much trouble. They kept doing it and they ostracized me from the group. I didn’t see Dave for almost three years. I didn’t even see him once in the high school. You know there were almost 2000 kids in our high school.

The last week of my senior year, the very final semester, as I’m preparing to leave town and go out into the world and make it big, I was walking to high school one night because our band had a rehearsal. And, for the first time in my life I think, I was early for a rehearsal and I noticed that the light was on in his bedroom window, and I could see his shadow moving. And I thought I hadn’t seen this guy in three years, and we used to be best friends. We used to do everything together.

In the meantime I had become a Christian. I had experienced Christ’s radical and transforming power in my life, and I had heard through the grapevine that things for him had gone from bad to worse. And so in my situation I said, “Well, I’ve got twenty minutes. I’ll just go up. I’ll say, ‘Hi.’ I may never see him again. I’ll just go in and say, ‘Hey, Dave, have a nice life. I’ve got to get going’.” So I went up to the front door, knocked on the door. His Mom opened it up. She was glad to see me. She had heard that I had found religion. “Come on in, come on in. Dave’s upstairs.” “Fix his soul,” she must have been thinking.

So I went upstairs and as I was going up the stairs, I noticed that he was coming down the stairs, getting his coat on. And I said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stop you from doing something.” And he said, “Oh, no.” He just kind of stopped there, staring at me and said, “Come on up into my room.” He couldn’t believe I was there. I couldn’t believe he was there. We went into his room. In about two minutes, it was like old times again.

We were talking about our favorite groups and songs and wild experiences, and we were just having a grand old time. We talked like this for an hour, for two hours. I think it almost went three hours. And then, all of a sudden I remembered. I was supposed to go to a rehearsal. I had completely blown it off. He looked at me and he said, “Well, thanks. But why did you stop by?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know. I was just walking by your room and thinking, “I’m going off to college and going out into the world, and I might never see you again. At least I want to say good-bye, we did so much together.”

All of a sudden I began to see his whole demeanor change. I’d heard that he had gone through hard times, but I didn’t know how hard they were. I saw his hand beginning to shake, really convulsive shakes, and his face began to really look down. He reached across the bed and said, “Why did you come tonight?” I said, “I don’t know. Did I interrupt something? You were leaving. Did I cause you to miss something important?” He said, “No, not really, but….” He reached across the bed and he pulled off his jacket and he reached into his pocket and he pulled out this long, 10-foot piece of rope at the end of which was tied a noose. And he said, “When you came, I was getting ready to leave, to go out into the night, to go out to the apple orchard behind our house to hang myself.”

I just kind of stared at him. I said, “You’re kidding!” He said, “No.” And in my mind I was thinking, “Dave? Not you!” He was the funniest guy. When I was his friend in 8th and 9th grade, he was the guy everybody loved to be around because he was always the funniest. Great athlete, good student, all-American-type guy. And in three or four years I saw a life ruined. And by the skin of his teeth, he was spared an awful way to go. He started crying, and he didn’t cry. I started crying, and I didn’t cry. He said, “Would you — you have God — could you pray?”

So I tried to pray. We prayed for a couple minutes and at the end we embraced. We didn’t exchange another word. We just kind of looked at each other. And I went out into the night and I thanked God. And as I looked up, I realized what can happen to a person when they are granted great graces that they spurn. And I thought back to the times when he used to describe to me how he didn’t take his sins and he didn’t take confession seriously.

Concluding Summary

Today, I look back on that and I realize how many lives have been laid waste because these awesome spiritual weapons known as sacraments have been spurned, especially the Confessional. The Sacrament of Reconciliation has greater power than we could possibly imagine. If we could see it through the eyes of the angels, we would go at least once a week and we would prepare not for just one or two or five or ten minutes, but much more. We would ask our Lady, “Help me, your little child, to confess my sins to our Lord.” We would ask the Holy Spirit, “Search my heart and show me if there be any evil way that displeases you.” We would tap into infinite power to cleanse our lives and to make them pleasing and delightful to God Almighty.

Sure, we only have one mediator and that’s Jesus Christ. Christ alone is our only mediator. Our mediator redeemed us. Our redemption is accomplished. It is finished. The priest does not redeem us. He is only an instrument used by Christ, but brothers and sisters, he is used by Christ in a way that far exceeds his own sensibilities. If we could only take Christ at his word and believe that Christ is the one who established this family system of priestly and fatherly mediation and he wants to take his redemption, which is fully and finally accomplished and make application of that redemption. Redemption is accomplished and now redemption is being applied to all of us through the sacraments and other means. We’ve got to learn how to take Christ at his word.

Christ gave the supernatural power of his own to the Apostles and to their successors to bind and to loose, to forgive and to retain. How can the Apostles know what sins to forgive or retain unless they are specifically told number and kind? If forgiveness is all or nothing through Christ alone, then why didn’t

Jesus say to the Apostles, “Just go and proclaim that all sins are forgiven through faith alone?” Why did he give to them specifically certain powers that would heal our souls and give to the early Church and to the Church for 2000 years all around the world this clear sense that the priests have been given the power of absolution for the healing and for the saving of our souls?

We need to do it, not because we can’t go to Christ. We need to go to Christ and to Christ alone to start it all off. Don’t go to the priest in the confessional instead of going to Christ. Go to Christ first and as soon as you get there, guess what he is going to tell you? “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” And what has he commanded? To confess our sin to one another, especially the presbyters and the priests. Why? Well, the individual benefits are great. We need humility. We need health.

The inner personal benefits of the Church are great. We can have inner personal healing. We can have relationships restored in parishes. And I’ve got to tell you, after four years of being a Catholic, our parishes need reconciliation because there are divisions and there are strifes in every parish I have seen. And the sacrament is not being tapped for all of its power. We need the sacrament for the benefit of our families, especially our marriages and the relationships between parents and children. We need it for our society, to re-establish justice and mercy in our world.

Let’s renew our commitment now to make life miserable for Father Marx and for our other priests, to go and bother them. What father is bothered when the children come and say, “Would you help me overcome these bad habits, these sinful tendencies?” “Oh no, kid, that’s not important.” A father’s heart takes delight in that kind of concern within his growing kids.

So, exhaust him. Wear him out. He’d love it! That’s why he took the priesthood, and that’s why God called him. I know his heart and I know the hearts of many priests, they’re fatherly hearts filled with a supernatural grace that goes beyond their own natural capacities. Go to them and renew your commitment. In effect we say, “Lord, we swear to tell the truth and to live the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” And in this sacrament we say, “So, help me God.” Help us, God. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GOING ON VOCATION: Marriage and Holy Orders Program 25 Transcripts Scott Hahn

As I have in the past, I’d like to begin just by pulling together some simple summary catechetical teachings with regard to the Sacrament of Holy Orders. What is the Sacrament of Holy Orders? Holy Orders is the sacrament through which men receive the power and grace to perform the sacred duties of bishops, priests and other ministers of the Church. This is something that our Lord also instituted to give grace. He instituted the sacrament at the Last Supper when he gave them the power and the responsibility to say Mass, to “Do this in remembrance of Me.” He breathed on them, later on the Holy Spirit, after his resurrection, and he gave to them the power to forgive and to retain sins, as we saw when we looked at the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation.

Signs of a Priestly Vocation

Now a really basic question I want to ask is, “How do you know, as a young man, whether or not you have the signs of a vocation?” Because, really that’s what Holy Orders consists of. It’s a divine calling, a “vocacio.” How do you know? Well, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Am I living habitually in a state of grace? Do I experience the Lord’s help?” Secondly, a young man has to ask himself whether or not he feels and he senses and he believes all that which the Catholic Church teaches. Does he feel the importance of it for his own soul? Does he believe it with his own mind? Does he seek to share that and live it out the best he can with the help of God? Does he enjoy Confession? Not in the sense of enjoy sharing your sins, but enjoying the meeting of our Lord in that sacrament. Does he look forward to Communion? Does he look forward to teaching catechism and growing in his faith and does he have that right and simple intention to fill his soul with the grace of Christ for salvation? Does he have that desire to share with others?

Now, this is what a catechism says. A whole lot more is involved these days, however, than simply what a catechism has to say. Why? Because we are having a crisis of vocations. There’s no mistaking it. I think a fundamental reason why we are having a crisis of vocations when it comes to the Sacrament of Holy Orders is simple. We don’t understand what it means to be a priest!

The Meaning of Priesthood: Fatherhood

If you look at the Old Testament, you find the same thing that you discover in the New Testament. To be a priest is to be a father, and I want to suggest something before we delve into Holy Orders. That is that the Catholic Church teaches and has always taught that all of us are priests. Do you understand that? All of us are priests by Baptism and that priesthood is made strong by Confirmation. The priesthood is a natural priesthood giving us the capacity to share and mediate with others the grace of Christ.

Now what do we mean when we distinguish between natural priesthood and supernatural priesthood? In a very real sense, we all know what fathering means because we have experienced it at the natural level-the idea of giving life, the idea of providing for that life. Because what do parents do? They give life. They nurture life. They care for it. They instruct. They teach. They raise that life to maturity. That’s what we are called to do and in Baptism and in Confirmation, we have that charism, that vocation. And in Matrimony, we see that priesthood realized in a very real way.

However, from earliest times we have realized that nature itself is incapable of elevating humanity to the supernatural state of grace whereby we really live out the life of Divine Sonship. For that, Adam wasn’t enough. What Adam lost is restored in Baptism and strengthened in Confirmation, and that’s a natural priesthood. But Adam never had the capacity in himself to bestow upon the whole human race full membership in the Divine family the way that Christ has through the hypostatic union when he united humanity to his eternal divine nature. And that special gift of supernatural paternity is what the Sacrament of Holy Orders is all about.

Some people raise the objection, “Why can’t women be ordained to the priesthood?” Well, if you go back and study the idea of priesthood in the Old Testament as well as the New, you realize that the priest in a public capacity was to serve the role of a father figure. In Judges, chapter 18 and elsewhere, priests are called “Fathers” because they provide that kind of supernatural or at least that spiritual provision. They are providers and they are rulers and they are fathers.

Now, nature itself does not bestow the capacity of paternity upon women, and nature was created by God. And nature is what God uses to bring about the supernatural transformation of grace in the New Covenant. So it’s appropriate, I believe, and the Church has long taught and always will teach, I believe, that the Sacrament of Holy Orders is only proper for men.

Common Objections to Priestly Vocations

That raises other questions, though, because there are lots of young men here and I think in our society today, it’s very, very difficult for men to have a sense of vocation. If you go around and tell your friends, “I’m thinking about the priesthood,” what kind of comments do you think young men will get from their friends? “But you’re so normal. You’re such a regular guy!” Or you might hear from a teacher or a parent, “What a waste. What a shame. You could do so well in business, out in the world, you know, to have to go into the priesthood.”

You encounter those kinds of objections: you encounter that kind of mentality very, very frequently and within young men, you often have the idea, “I love and desire feminine companionship. And I also find myself feeling at home in the world. So I must not be a priest.” Well, I would say to young men who do not desire feminine companionship and who do not feel at home in the world, that you are not qualified to consider the priesthood. I say that with real gravity and seriousness because God calls men, and men are by nature inclined and attracted to women. And men who are attracted to women are the applicants, the qualified people for the priesthood.

The priesthood entails sacrifice. If you give up something you don’t want, if you sacrifice something that isn’t really attractive, it isn’t really a sacrifice! A sacrifice is an expression to God that I like all these things, but I love you and I want to serve you so much that I am willing to give up these lower goods. So God is calling men who feel at home in the world, who can make it in the world, who are manly who love or at least desire and are attracted to women.

It’s a shame that this idea is skewed, but it’s very common, I’m afraid. I had a student ask the question, “But isn’t it unnatural for the Church to require celibacy, because isn’t it unnatural to suppress your sexuality?” That’s a good question, isn’t it? I mean, after all, God has made us the way we are, male and female. To be sexual, that is, to be male or female is natural. Is the Lord of nature calling us to suppress the natural in order to attain the supernatural? Not really. Not really, at all. What I think is unnatural is the way our society reduces sexuality down to genital activity. In other words, to be a man requires sexual intercourse. Oh, really?

I don’t think that is necessarily the case. Genital functions in marriage, sexual activity within marriage is the natural means to express marital love. It’s also the natural means to propagate the race, to become mothers and fathers. It’s also the proper means for establishing marital communion, but it isn’t the only way to experience your masculinity or your femininity. Our society reduces sexuality down to genital activity. That’s not natural. In fact, I would say that my experience is this: that after being married, it wasn’t until I became a father that I really discovered all that is meant in being a male and being masculine.

It is not just genital functions; it’s even more: a calling to be a husband, a father, a brother, a son or a wife, a mother, a daughter or a sister — to find your role and function, your calling, your gifts within the family and within the larger family of God. So the priesthood is calling forth people, not for men to suppress what is natural in them, but for them to supernaturally elevate that to experience fatherhood through Divine grace.

Take a look at somebody like John Paul II; I mean, is he a wimp? No, you look all around the world and you’re hard pressed to find somebody more manly. He’s outgoing, he’s handsome, he’s attractive, he’s intelligent, he’s athletic. He’s got a sense of humor — he’s a man’s man. He is an ideal priest and an ideal pontiff and he’s a message to the world that you don’t suppress natural masculinity when you become a priest. In fact, you allow God to supernaturally elevate and strengthen and exalt that masculinity, that sexuality.

So you might say, “Well look around at the priests we have.” I look around and I have found many Godly priests. There are a lot of priests who struggle these days, a lot of priests who may be confused about their identity, their function in the Body of Christ. We need to pray for them. We need to sacrifice for our priests because, well, just face it. If you were the evil one and you wanted to attack the Church, who would you target? The hoy poloy, the rank and file, the likes of you and me? Not before you would signal out the bishops and target the priests. We have to pray for our priests and pray for an increase in holy vocations and seek a greater understanding of the sacrament of Holy Orders, because it’s a beautiful gift that God has given to us, a supernatural fatherhood.

Sacrament of Matrimony

Now I know there are many loose ends. There are many questions that remain and I wish that we had time to answer all of them, but at this point in time, I think what would be best would be to move on to the Sacrament of Matrimony, mainly because it’s more relevant for the majority of people here because we are going to be going home to our families where we are going to call upon the Lord to release more grace from the Sacrament of Matrimony for the well-being of our families.

So what is the Sacrament of Matrimony? A catechism might describe the Sacrament of Matrimony as that sacrament by which a baptized man and a baptized woman bind themselves for life in a lawful marriage and receive the grace to discharge their duties of state, the married state. The Sacrament of Matrimony, the catechism says, “consists in the mutual expression by both contracting parties of their free and mutual consent.” It’s the free consent of two individuals that constitutes the sacrament. It’s an indissoluble sacrament. Why? Because of the very nature of covenant. The marital covenant is a reflection of the Blessed Trinity, as we will see.

The marital covenant is called by God to live out the love and the union of an indissoluble covenant bond. If we had the time, we could really unpack how it is that the Sacrament of Matrimony fits perfectly this understanding of “sacramentum,” oath, of covenant as a sacred family bond. But I want to keep our discussion at a more practical level. I should say one other thing along these lines because the catechism teaches that the Church transmits this truth, but it often is misunderstood. That is, as soon as a couple expresses and exchanges consent, you’ve got the sacrament. But the Sacrament of Matrimony only becomes purely and intrinsically indissoluble when that marriage is consummated through the act of marriage, sexual intercourse.

Why is that? Because sexual intercourse is, in a sense, the oath enacted by which the contract is transformed into a covenant and that covenant shares in the sacramental grace that Christ instituted. So then, the Sacrament of Matrimony is purely indissoluble once it’s consummated.

Now, all of this stuff sounds kind of humdrum and obvious perhaps. I often take a moment in my theology marriage classes to ask my students a basic question: “How many religions in the world teach and require strict monogamy?” How many religions in the world? Invariably, the response I get from students is, “Well, don’t all of them teach it?” No. Hinduism doesn’t. Buddhism doesn’t. Islam? Well, maybe just the monotheistic religions? They require strict monogamy. No. Judaism has always allowed for polygamy up until the 1940s and that was just a tactical shift. Islam allows up to four wives.

Christianity is the only religion in world history to require strict monogamy. I don’t think you can find any statement in the gospels as revolutionary as the statement found in Matthew 19. Turn with me to the first gospel, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19, “The Pharisees came up to Jesus and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?'” So they were no longer two, but one flesh. And then Jesus makes this unbelievable statement, “What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”

God is the one who unites the two and makes them one. It isn’t government. It isn’t the Church. It isn’t even the two individuals themselves. God is the bonding agent in the sacrament. So Jesus is saying, “Hey, don’t give yourselves so much credit. If God is uniting these two, who do you think you are, a mere man to break apart what God has joined together?” He goes on, “He said to them, “For your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so.” Then he goes on to make that revolutionary statement when he says to them, “I say to you whoever divorces his wife, lewd conduct is a separate case marries another commits adultery.”

What does that mean? Well, we could go into a long discussion and into every phrase of that, but it means, once married to a person, you are married for life! And what do you vow? You vow for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, better for worse as long as we both shall love? Is it just a contract? As long as the payoff is greater than the sacrifice? No, as long as we both shall live, because this is no mere contract. We’re not just exchanging goods and services, pleasures and pleasantries. We’re exchanging persons! I am yours and now you are mine God stands between us to bind us together in this covenant chain of matrimony. And he stands in between the two, not just to hold them together, but to be an endless source of grace and power and forgiving love so that they can work out whatever problems they face. And I’ve got to tell you, every married couple will have its struggles. I don’t care who they are or how quiet and patient and gentle they may be. Effects of the Sacrament

So, here is the Sacrament of Matrimony. Now what does the Sacrament of Matrimony confer in terms of this grace? What are the effects of the sacrament, in other words? Well, the first thing is that it’s an increase of sanctifying grace; that is, even apart from your spouse, you are joined closer to Jesus Christ. You receive a greater fullness of the Holy Spirit. You mature as a child of God. Then you receive a special sacramental grace that enables you to love with a divine love, to love like Christ loves, to forgive like Christ forgives. And unless we are willing to forgive like that, marriage won’t work!

Goods of Marriage

It goes on and talks about how there are three goods of marriage. What are the three goods? Well, you go back to St. Augustine and he talked about the three goods of marriage. He said they were prodes, fides and sacramentum. Those three Latin terms speak of children. Children are one of the goods of marriage that God has always intended. Fidelity, that is faithful love and communion between the spouses, and also sacramentum, that is the grace that makes this marriage something more than merely marriage.

Every sacramental marriage becomes, as it were, a homily, a message, an icon of the union between Christ and his Church. Let’s take a look at Ephesians, Chapter 5, and we will see how the Church got this idea. Ephesians, chapter 5, beginning in verse 22, it says, “Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord.” And all the men are thinking, “Heh, hey, I like this.” “…For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, is himself its savior. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.” So far, so good for the men, right? I see a few guys back there (laughter) until all of a sudden we come across verse 25, gentlemen, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church.” “Just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by washing of water with the word, that he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot, or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy without blemish.”

Do you realize that the husband’s task is to bring the grace of salvation to bear more and more on the marriage and the family? How often have men wimped out on that? In treating religion like it’s a “woman’s thing?” How many families, how often have men wimped out on that, in treating religion like it’s a woman’s thing? How many families do you find where the woman is the one responsible for the religious instruction and formation, because, you know, “It ain’t cool” to be religious if you’re a man in American society?

What a total distortion of masculinity. We are called to be like Christ. We are called to lay down our lives in love for our bride. He goes on, “Even so, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hates his flesh but nourishes and cherishes it as Christ does the Church because we are members of his Body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”

Now, verse 32 says, “This mystery is a profound one.” The Latin translation is, “This sacramentum is a great or a magnificent sacrament,” and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church. It is the fact that Christ has married the Church, indissoluble and eternally, given his own life for her life: that makes matrimony a sacrament. Let me say that again. Prior to the coming of Christ, marriage was in a sense a covenant and a natural sacrament, but it didn’t become a covenant sacrament of the new law, of the New Covenant until Christ established this new family order in his own flesh and blood by his flesh and blood constituted the Church as his bride.

It’s that revolution in history that revolutionized social life. If societies would just practice this one idea of strict monogamy, we would have so much more harmony among men and women, between parents and children and so on and so forth.

Now, what does it mean to receive the grace of the sacrament in a practical way? I would like to quote from a famous encyclical written by Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, because he gives to us a special insight on what St. Paul just said in Ephesians, 5:22, because, let’s face it, what St. Paul just said is very, very controversial. Pope Pius XI says, “This subjection does not take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman, both in view of her dignity as a human person and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion. Nor does it bid her to obey her husband’s every request, even if not in harmony with right reason or the dignity due her as a wife. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family. It forbids that in this body, which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin.” And here’s what I like the most, “For, if the man is the head, the woman is the heart and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, she ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.”

This is a revolutionary insight. The man loves to claim priority and primacy in the order of authority, there’s something right but inadequate or incomplete about that statement because the man if first in the order of authority must acknowledge that the woman is first in the order of love. Man is the head of the home; woman is the heart of the home. But look at yourself. Which is more important, your head or your heart? That’s like asking which blade in the scissors does most of the cutting or which wing of the airplane does most of the flying? What a dumb question!

The head can’t live without the heart and the heart can’t live without the head. I would suggest that the New Covenant gives us a very interesting and radical insight because if the man is first in the order of authority and the woman is first in the order of love, if you came to compare those two orders, which order is superior, the order of authority or the order of love? Now, I’m speaking only in terms of personal opinion, but I might suggest to you that, as far as we humans are concerned, the order of love takes precedence over the order of authority, because somebody who has lots of authority but not lots of love is way below somebody who has lots of love but little authority.

The greatest saints in heaven are not the ones who had lots of power and lots of brains, but rather those who loved a lot. We need to live this out in our families before our society can get rid of a kind of radical feminism which wants to do away with the Christian family. Until we restore this perspective, this balanced vision of what it means to love as man and woman, we’re not going to be able to balance the scales and restore the harmony and love of a covenant family.

Divorce and Remarriage, or Serial Polygamy, Corrodes the Foundation of Trust of Society

Now we’ve seen in Matthew 19 how Jesus Christ, very quietly, almost imperceptibly launched a social revolution in establishing for the first time in history strict, mandatory monogamy. And I’ve got to tell you that non-Catholics have slipped away from this because once you allow divorce and remarriage, like the non-Catholic churches all do, you have for all practical purposes serial polygamy. It might be one wife at a time, but it has all the practical consequences of polygamy; and the more we understand human psychology, the more we understand that this corrodes the very foundation of trust that every culture depends upon to continue living and thriving as a society.

Why? Because nowhere else in human relations do two people bare their souls as much as when they bare their bodies in marital union. When you take off your clothes and you become one flesh, you make yourself more vulnerable than anything else that can take place between two people. It’s like you’re putting your guts on the table. And if in society, we allow people to say, “Well, thank you very much for these pleasures and for these experiences and here, I’ve enjoyed our time, but now I’m moving on to greener pastures.” It’s like taking all those guts that you’ve put on the table and the guy just throws the table over and says, “I’m moving on.”

If a man can’t be trusted to protect the soul that has laid itself bare, who can that man be trusted with, or who can that woman be trusted with? If after somebody has given themselves so completely to you, you pack your bags and you leave and you say, “Well, I’m on to bigger and better things,” what individual in society will you be safe with? What bond won’t you break for convenience?

Divorce is the most fundamental violation of the covenant. We have got to hear the Lord say in Malachi, “For I, the Lord, hate divorce.” The Lord hates it and we have to also the more we understand the covenant the more we will.

I shared this perspective with a class one time in Washington, D.C. I was teaching a Theology and Marriage course and I related a story that I had heard from a friend of mine. A friend of mine knew a friend of his who was a very top executive in U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh. The U.S. Steel building is enormous. You can see it from just anywhere in the Greater Pittsburgh area it’s so large. On the top floor is the Executive Suite, the Executive Offices this one man, from what I understand, decided one day to go down to the spa and work out, which was just a few floors below his Executive Suite, near the very top of the U.S. Steel building.

After working out, after lifting and all this kind of thing, he discovered that he didn’t have a towel and he needed a shower. Well, since he had the executive elevator, he could swing back up to his office and just pick up the towel that he left there on the floor there by the elevator, right? So he decided to do that, take a little risk. He punched the wrong button and the doors opened up in front of the Executive Cafeteria and the man stood there for a split second and then collapsed and covered himself.

I said to this seminar, “Can you imagine anything more humiliating than that, you know?” I mean that was just so humiliating, to be naked and ashamed. Oh, my! And two hands went up. And I said, “That was a rhetorical question, I didn’t want to start a game of, ‘Can you top this?'” And the hands stayed up. Since at the time they were married longer than me, I decided to go ahead and I called on the one guy. And he said, “I can imagine something far more humiliating than that. It’s when you go back to the apartment where you and your Ex used to live when you were married and you’re there and you take a shower and you’re leaving the bathroom and then she walks in because you forgot she had a key and the two of you stare at each other and break down and sob.”

I’m trying to teach a seminar and the other guy’s hand is still up and his head is nodding I said, “Go ahead.” And he said, “It wasn’t an apartment: it was our old house. The same thing happened to me and of all the excruciating, humiliating experiences in my life, that is easily the top.”

And I just shook my head at both of these guys, big, strapping guys their eyes just welled up with tears. They said, “When you’re married, it is so beautiful. You’re naked, you’re not ashamed. You’re joined together. You can love spiritually as well as physically when all of a sudden it all falls apart, it isn’t just like you separate, it’s like your body is ripped down the middle. It’s like your limbs are taken off.” And the one guy just went on for another five or ten minutes I just kind of sat there listening and learning more than the rest of them could have learned in two hours worth of lectures, as he went on describing the pain and the discovery of what covenant love was meant to be and of what is lost when that covenant love falls apart.

Does that mean that marriage should be dissoluble? No. Because the marriage covenant is that chain, that fetter, that covenant bond that keeps us together, so that we can be free to grow old and not fear being alone, being dumped, being trashed, rejected. Some of you out there know the pain. Some of you out there wish you could hold your hand up and say, “Oh, it’s even worse than that.” Our society has got to stop, look and listen once more to the holy Roman Catholic Church’s teachings because they come straight from the heart of our Creator and our Redeemer and the lover of our souls and the lover of our families, Jesus Christ. Because he looks and he says, “If you don’t have the love any more, come back to me and I will give you my infinite, endless love. If you don’t have the energy to forgive any more, come back and I will give it to you.” And he will.

All we have to do is think about it and regain our common sense. Whenever we find ourselves in a situation where we feel it’s impossible to forgive and restore, let’s just think about what God has done for us. The sins that we have committed against Almighty God are immeasurable. The debt that we owe to him is just limitless yet, he didn’t just forgive us, he offered his own Son as the ransom and as the payment for our sins in order to be able to forgive us.

If God longed to forgive us so completely and so truly, who are we to withhold forgiveness for sins against ourselves? Who are we? If God, the Almighty, Majestic Ruler has forgiven us, then we should be greedy in looking for opportunities to share that forgiving love with spouses and with children and with friends and ex-friends. That is the one, distinctive, revolutionary idea that Christianity is still trying to establish on this earth and let’s allow the Lord to do it through the covenant of marriage because apart from this, there is just no hope.

Marriage Forces Parents to Grow Up

I’ve got to tell you from my own experience, marriage “grew me up.” You know, marriage is to have children and parents are supposed to work hard to help raise their children, to help their children grow up. Well, if parents help children to grow up, I’ve got to tell you from my experience, children force parents to grow up.

When I was a single man, I was a Christian and I tried, and I thought that I was living a good Christian life. When I got married, I discovered how selfish I was. But that discovery wasn’t complete until I had children. Oh, my! To realize, first of all you’re holding this little child. I remember Michael, seven years ago, holding my firstborn son, Michael, and looking at this little child and realizing that a year ago he had no existence whatsoever, no being at all, until our love brought forth new life. And the message of Christ came home to me in a way it never could have through mere study.

Love and life belong together. I remember thinking, “That’s why contraception is so unnatural, because marital love is life-giving in its essence. And here is the life, the two of us have become one and that oneness is no merely defiction. That oneness is so real that it becomes a living person, and that little baby embodies the unity that those two have become.” And all of a sudden, you hold your baby and it throws up down your back, and it wakes you up at three in the morning, and you’ve got to change the diapers and the return on your investment of time and energy is not always considerable. I mean you can’t just say to your kid, “If you’ll be cute for just 30 minutes each day, I’ll put in two or three hours each night to care for you.”

The kid just basically says, “What? No deal.” And I looked at that child and I said, “Do you realize, Hahn, that that was you twenty-some years ago?” Do we realize that if it weren’t for our parents, we wouldn’t be here? And if they weren’t loving us when it wasn’t very convenient, we wouldn’t have received an education. We wouldn’t have received all of the social and spiritual necessities of life, as well as the physical and material necessities. We have been loved and cared for. Sure, our parents have flaws and warts. We all do. But if we can’t cover up their sins, if we can’t overlook and forgive them, who will we forgive? Who has given us so much as our parents.

The Sacrament of Matrimony enables us to enlarge our vision of human life to see history as the sphere in which God enables us to become co- creators, co-teachers, co-redeemers with the one who created and redeemed us all, Jesus Christ.

George Gilder wrote a book a few years ago entitled “Naked Nomads.” “Single Men in America” was the subtitle. I remember reading that, and I discovered the following: that single men in America are 400% more likely to commit suicide. Single men in America have six times more accidents on the road. Single men in America account for 90% of crimes that are committed, while single men in America constitute 13% of the American population.

Married men, though with less time, make double the income. Married men pay lower insurance rates. Married men actually have longer lives, life span. In school, they have higher grades in colleges and universities across the board; and, of course, in the business world, they have better credit. Though they have less time, less energy, they have more of a sense of responsibility because they are growing up. They are finishing what they should have done when they were teenagers.

It’s induced sanctification, imposed maturity upon us because, when I was a teenager thinking about marriage, and then when I got married in my twenties, I thought, “I’m going to do it so differently than my parents did. I’ve learned from all their mistakes.” And then, all of a sudden I held that first child, and like, “Where are all my new ideas? What am I going to do? What AM I going to do?” And all of a sudden, I started calling my parents asking them for advice.

Mark Twain once quipped that at sixteen, he couldn’t believe how dumb his father was, but by the age of 21 he said, “I can’t imagine how much you’ve learned in five years.” Something else is really going on here. We need men who are mature as fathers. We need men who understand what sex is all about, what female bodies are really for. And I tell you, our cities need it most of all.

I worked a few years ago in a ghetto ministry in Pittsburgh. I worked there for several months and I remember in our training session, we were told right out, “You are dealing with kids, about 99% of whom do not have their biological father in their house or their apartment.” I thought wow! Then he added, “And those who might still have their fathers in from time to time, have fathers who are drunk and violent.”

I remember thinking, “I can’t even imagine what that would be like.” And then the man made this conclusion, “Therefore, I do not want you to refer to God in your talks with these kids as Father.” It was obvious why, and he said, “because as soon as they hear “father” what are they going to see? What are they going to conjure up in their imagination, some drunken bum, some violent tyrant?” And I raised my hand and I said, “You know, on the other hand, after experiencing nothing but fatherly failures, maybe this is their last chance. Maybe God is the last hope these people have to recover a sense of what fatherhood is.”

In other words, if we bail out now, what hope do these kids ever have of thinking through what fatherly love entails? We had the most intense discussion for the next three hours and we decided to turn it around and to emphasize God as Father. And you should have seen what some of the kids had to say at the end of our summer ministry. It was beautiful. Maybe they didn’t see it in their house or their apartment, but they began to believe and sense that the reality is there in God.

You know some people say, “All of this family of God stuff just doesn’t work for me because I come from a bad family experience or so and so has had rotten parents.” Well, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t come from the most glorious and holy family either. My parents are great, but I’ve got to tell you, I sinned so well, I made family life very miserable for all of us, and my brother and sister threw in their two cents worth, too. Our family wasn’t a big, happy Christian family. And I’ve got to tell you something, my wife comes from one of the godliest families I’ve ever, ever run into and when I was converting to the Catholic Church, I kept sharing with her how exciting it was to discover the family of God, where father and where mother and where brothers and sisters are supernaturally charged with this divine grace to love in God’s universal family known as the Church.

It didn’t impact her the same way. I didn’t understand why until we talked about it some more and we realized that she had such a godly, loving family, she didn’t have this intense, burning desire, this driving need to find that family to fulfill her, the same way I did. Now I’ve got to tell you, God has done miraculous things in my family. I’ve got to tell you, my Mom and my Dad are the two greatest human beings on earth. I love them. But it wasn’t until we went through some hard times that we began to realize the sacrifices that are required to build strong family life.

My wife and I have experienced the same thing in terms of our married life. For the last four years, I’ve been Catholic and she has been Protestant, up until three weeks ago when she was received in the Catholic Church after much long, hard study. I hope that she has the opportunity to share her story with you some time. It’s exciting. But, if it were not for the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony, we wouldn’t have made it.

The Catholic Church teaches that baptized non-Catholic men and women who marry have the sacrament. Do you realize that? Protestants who were baptized and who marry receive the sacrament and the grace of the sacrament, as the Catholic Church teaches. And I am here today to tell you that I thank God that that is true because it is the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony that enabled us not just to weather the storm, not just to survive the difficulties. I mean ten years ago, when we were first married, we were involved together in ministry, in reaching out to troubled kids, sharing Jesus Christ with them.

She wanted to marry a minister. Her father is a minister. Her brother is a minister. Her uncle is a minister and her husband was a minister, and then he left the ministry and became a Catholic, after she had married a man who was very anti-Catholic. Do you want to know about a marriage that went through a real trial? I’ve got to tell you, ours did. It wasn’t just the grace of the sacrament that enabled us to survive. I’m here today to testify to the grace of Jesus Christ to say that the grace of this sacrament enabled us to go through all of that and come out with a love supernaturally forged and stronger in a way that I have never seen in most other marriages that I have come across. I thank God for the pain and the tears and the struggles.

We’ve gone through a lot. Other couples have gone through even more, I suspect, but the struggles and the trials are not that which makes marriage less than sacramental. Those are what make marriage a sacrament. It’s so necessary and right for Christ to institute marriage as a sacrament because that’s where we need grace the most. To raise kids these days is not easy, especially teenagers. To teach them and to role model for them what love entails is very, very challenging.

Contrasting Perspectives: John Paul II and the ACLU

I want to share with you just briefly a contrast of perspectives to understand exactly what I am saying, and how important it is for Catholics to recover the grace of the sacrament. On the one hand, I want to share a few comments that Pope John Paul II has said about marriage and the family, and then I want to compare those with statements made by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU. Some call it the Anti- Christian Liberties Union.

Pope John Paul II said this, “In the family, each person is introduced to the human family and the family of God. The way of humanity passes by way of the family.” He goes on to say in this article back in January, 1989, in this talk that he gave, “The Church and the family are each in its own way living representations in human history of the eternal loving communion of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. Nowhere in all human life do humans signify and live out and symbolize the Holy Trinity like we do in marriage and the family.” Pope John Paul adds that the Church, especially since Vatican II, has recognized herself as family. She is an immense family on mission.

Within this immense family Church is every human family, every family community as family on mission.” He goes on to say that, “the family is on mission and this mission is fundamental for all peoples. For all humanity it is the mission of love and life. It is the witness to love and to life. Let’s pray together,” he adds, “for the most fundamental and important thing in the Church’s mission, for the spiritual renewal of the family, of the human and Christian families in every nation, especially in our Western world. In this entire world, there is not a more perfect, more complete image of God, unity and community. There is no other human reality which corresponds more to that divine mystery of the Trinity.”

“With this great testimony, the family on mission is the image of the Trinity on mission, a program which I would call socio, political and economic. We must carry it forward. However, one cannot truly protect the family without getting to its roots, its profound reality, its intimate nature; and its intimate nature is the communion of persons and the image and likeness of the divine communion, family on mission, Trinity on mission.”

Now that’s very abstract. That’s very theological. That’s very lofty. That might seem to be up there in the stratosphere. I’ll bring it down to earth. What he is saying is simple. The family is the lived image of the Blessed Trinity. We, in our families are responsible for enabling the world to believe that God can be three in one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. No other religion has ever said that God is family, eternal family. Every other monotheistic religion has made God a solitary loner, an individual, merely a law-giver or a creator or a judge; whereas our God has revealed a family, an eternal family communion of love and of life.

In order to make that believable, we have to live it out in our families, through our marriages. How do we do it? Well, how do we don’t do it? How do we not do it? We do not practice contraception. Contraception is unnatural. It goes against human nature and natural law. It goes against scriptural law. I just came across a book recently, written by a Protestant entitled, “The Bible and Birth Control”, in which the author, Charles Provan, shows that for 400 years every single Protestant theologian using the Bible alone came to the conclusion that contraception is contrary to God’s law.

The Protestants have been saying this for centuries. On the basis of the Bible alone, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Swingley, Knox, Cranmer – – all of them concluded that contraception is contrary to Divine law and contrary to human love. It wasn’t until the 20th Century, when Protestant denominations began slipping and their stance on purity and chastity began to erode, and then the erosion became a flood, and the flood has become a disaster, as one Protestant denomination after another first allowed contraception, then allowed abortion. Many of them now actually endorse federal funding of abortion through tax dollars. Some have allowed homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. All of them allow divorce and remarriage.

The Catholic Church stands alone and it is taking a lot of heat, and it calls forth Catholic believers to take a stand, to take a stand here on the basis of the Bible and natural law, to explain, but even more, to live out to the world the nature of marital love. The unitive and the procreative meaning of marital love and sexual intercourse belong together inseparably. Contraception breaks that apart, like divorce breaks it apart in terms of human persons. In order for us to take this lofty vision of John Paul II out into the world and make it believable, we have to start right at home, in our own lives.

Now let me read to you some insights from the ACLU. The American Civil Liberties Union recently sent a letter to the members of the Assembly Education Committee of the Legislature of the State of California, where we are right now, quote – I’m quoting from the letter now, “It is our position (the ACLU) that teaching monogamous, heterosexual intercourse within marriage as a traditional American value is an unconstitutional establishment of a religious doctrine in public schools.” Monogamy and heterosexuality are unconstitutional to teach in our public schools!

The ACLU says that the first amendment must protect all pornography, including child pornography. The ACLU said that those who sell and distribute child pornography are protected by the first amendment. If caught in the act of making child pornography, they can be prosecuted, but once that child pornography is produced, it is protected by law. The ACLU has as its spokesman and legal counsel a Baptist minister by the name of Barry Lynn. Reverend Lynn came to Milwaukee one night to debate a radical feminist on pornography. For an hour-and-a-half I watched as he made mincemeat of this feminist.

He just showed that feminism is not adequate to outlaw pornography and you could see that in that hour-and-a-half time, he had swayed almost the entire audience to his side. And then came time for questions from the audience. I did a hundred yard dash up to the mike. I said, “Reverend Lynn, would you clarify something for me? I’ve been delving in, a little bit, at least into the ACLU’s official position on pornography, especially child pornography. Now, do I understand correctly that the ACLU says that child pornographers ought to be prosecuted as they do it, but once they’ve done it, it should be freely distributed for commercial profit?” And you could see him turning red from 50 feet away and he began to squirm, and there were murmurings in the crowd and he said, “Well, well first of all, let me say that when it comes to child pornography, we in the ACLU really…its…just a…” I said, “I know, it’s a detestable, horrible thing and you just can’t stand it, and it ought to be prosecuted as soon as it’s done, right? But once it’s done, should it be freely distributed for commercial profit?”

And he said, “Well, we think the first amendment ought to be implemented….” And I said, “Now wait a second. Let’s get practical. Suppose my children were kidnapped, and they were molested and sexually assaulted, and it was put onto film while it happened, and suppose the perpetrators did or didn’t get busted, but those films were produced. Should my neighbors be able to see my kids get molested so that some commercial pornographer down the street can make a buck as people watch my kids getting molested?” I said, “That position is so irrational that neither the far right nor the far left in this country could even conceive of it.” And all of a sudden about 700 kids began applauding and as soon as he began to try to respond, they shouted him down. And for dramatic effect, I turned around and stormed out of the theater. And I was followed by a hundred other people who did the same thing.

We’ve got to get the message out that the ACLU is the vanguard of the sexual revolution. They’re poisoning our kids. They are ruining our families, all in the name of the first amendment. It’s lunacy for us to tolerate it! Do you know that over 80% of hard core pornography is produced in Southern California, and that’s what they want to protect? That stuff is acid that kills and eats away at our marriages. It’s going to poison our teenagers. It’s going to ruin any sense of marital love, personal chastity, purity. People are going to despair that God’s grace is enough to enable us to give ourselves for all of life in love.

We have got our work cut out for us. The ACLU is on record opposing any legislation outlawing drugs. Not just marijuana, cocaine, crack and heroin should all be legalized, they say. X-rated movies should not be rated because it suppresses artistic freedom. Homosexuals should be allowed to be foster parents.

How is it we sit back and tolerate this? We’ve got to pray. We’ve got to say a million more rosaries, but we’ve got to get out on the streets and take the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony and protect our kids and our marriages and our families and our society. We’re in a war. The stakes are life and death.

As long as we depend on ourselves, Satan can sleep in because the battle is his. We’ve got to entrust ourselves to God Almighty. We’ve got to entrust ourselves to the sacraments as the almighty weapons he has given us to overcome the evil that has been unleashed in our society in a way that nobody could have imagined thirty years ago. If you had told somebody thirty years ago that in thirty years from now drugs are going to be on the streets, homosexuality would be rampant, pornography would be freely distributed all over the country, snuff flicks will be made and distributed widely where women are actually murdered on film; they would have thought you were a crazy lunatic!

Yet in thirty years, all this has happened, faster and far worse than anybody could have imagined, and we have been asleep at the wheel. And we’re raising families. We’re building marriages. We’re teaching our children that purity is a possibility with the help of God and the grace of the sacraments. We’ve got to get out there and fight. Don’t wait for the bishops! Don’t wait for the priests. Love your kids. Don’t wait until they are the ones molested. Don’t wait until they are the ones divorced. We’ve got to get out there and fight.

Concluding Remarks

We’re going to have to close our time in a minute, but we’re going to have to stop and pray and ask that this retreat be made a means of grace to empower us to go out and love and live the life of marriage as a sacrament in our homes, but then to go out and help others, aggressively, confidently, sincerely, humbly but boldly in the name of Jesus Christ. He is the Lord of lords. He is the Lord of American society. He looks down on our country and he says, “It is mine.” There’s not a square inch of this country that he doesn’t look at and claim for himself. And we are his tools. We are his instruments. We’re the lovers that he depends upon. We’re the arms that he will use to embrace this wayward people. We’ve got to allow ourselves to be embraced by Christ through the sacraments so that we receive that Divine power to embrace others and to bring them back into God’s universal family.

This isn’t hard. It’s humanly impossible apart from the Divine power of the sacraments! They are our nuclear weapons spiritually speaking. Let’s stop relying upon our own personal jujitsu and use these sacraments to destroy the Satanic strongholds that are being built in our own cities, on our own blocks and in our own TV sets. Let’s be wise. Let’s be courageous. Let’s fight. If we are not going to fight now, if we’re not going to fight here, when are we going to fight? Where are we going to fight?

Let’s ask Jesus Christ to show us, to fill us and to lead us to love like we have been loved!.

Copyright 1994 St. Joseph Communications Inc. Provided Courtesy of: Eternal Word Television Network 5817 Old Leeds Road Irondale, AL 35210 http://www.ewtn.comhttp://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/SACRMNT.TXT