I have chosen to write on Baptism as a sacrament that I believe invites us to a deeper union with Christ. Baptism, like all of the other sacraments has both a visible sign (Opus Operatum) and also an interior action (Opus Operans) that is symbolized by the physical action of the actual baptism. It is this interior action (Opus Operans) that I propose, the deposit of saving grace and as Aquinas would say, the imparting of a baptismal character that allow Christians/Catholics to now participate, “incorporated” with Christ, in the life of the spouse (Church). As the foundational encounter with both Christ and his Church and with the imparted Character that Aquinas describes as having the following effect, “ This character is directed to what belongs to divine worship. Now this is one kind of manifestation of faith by external signs. Accordingly, the character must be found in the intellect where faith resides.” What I believe this means is that once a person has truly, faithfully and authentically received the salvific grace that baptism imparts, he simultaneously receives the character the Aquinas describes that if we were to believe his supposition to be true, would drive the newly baptized individual to pursue not only divine worship within the Church but also, a natural deepening of the deposit of faith that they have received via an intellect that is now infused with faith and thereby deepening the union with Christ as it is established via Baptism.
Furthermore, we need to also look in how the deposit of Charity, that many believe also comes with Baptism and understand how it also can deepen our union with Christ. Charity in the sense that O’Neill expresses it in the case of Baptism, is the love of our fellow man and our willingness to love and cooperate with others. He states, “ No limit can be set to the holiness of life to which the Christian is called in virtue of his baptism, nor, which is the same thing, to his concern for his fellow men.” That appears to be a pretty steep slope to climb in this day of political, racial, economic and gender divisions and yet, it is exactly what the term Catholic Social Teaching embodies. It is also one of the two Commandments that Christ makes of us as Christians on which “hang all the law and the prophets” When Charity toward our fellow man is combined with the love of God, there is no way that a man cannot be prayerful and through that prayer, deepen his relationship with God through Christ our redeemer. Love begets love and love of God and your fellow man begets holiness which is the desired end state for mankind.
To conclude, the Sacrament of Baptism is the beginning of our journey with Christ, it consummates our desire for Christ both internally and also externally in His earthly Church. It is the mustard seed that is planted in the new Christian where they are “incorporated” with both Christ and His Church. It is watered and fertilized with the Character Aquinas describes and the Charity that O’Neill describes. It is the beginning of a new life, where the old one has been left behind, but Baptism is only the first rung on the ladder of our Christian Journey. If we have truly received grace, charity and the character of Baptism, we will naturally seek to follow and imitate Christ in our daily lives. Without the imbuement of the Grace imparted at Baptism, sacramental and liturgical growth, the deepening of our union with Christ would not be possible. We would not be drawn through the other sacraments of Confirmation and Penance to arrive at the Holy Eucharist, which establishes complete union with Christ. O’Neill states, “To be saved is to have fellowship with Christ in and through the Church; and all that is in the Church is directed towards the Eucharist.” To be baptized, is to be “saved”, to receive the undeserved gift of grace and as such, as O’Neill points out, it is then to be directed by the Church to the Eucharist (either actually or in desire ). We are called by our Baptism to it. However, it is my opinion after reading O’Neill’s functional commentary on Aquinas’ account of the Sacraments, that when I kneel before the Eucharist for Adoration and I contemplate Christ and his sacrifice as a means of drawing nearer to him, “deepening my union” with him, I am also contemplating the gift of grace that my baptism imparted to me that allowed me to climb the sacramental rungs to be able to join with him in a more intimate manner over and over again at every Sunday in the Mass. As a protestant, the gift of grace did not have the value that it now has for me within the liturgical context of the Catholic Church. I did not see it as the jumping off point for the growth of my spiritual life, rather it was the end point that became over time a place of stagnation. The Sacraments are a journey of both personal and spiritual growth and they all begin with Baptism! Without the grace imparted at baptism, it would be impossible for individuals such as me, who come to the Church late in life to “discern the features of Christ in the doctrinal, juridical and liturgical organs of the Church” while being external to Her. It was only through the grace of Christ, via baptism that we were able to be called back to the Church and thereby not only deepen our union with Christ but, complete it in the manner in which have been sacramentally prescribed.
Henri De Lubac Blog
Are the Sacraments a part of a generally graced world?
Absolutely not! First off, a “generally graced” world would appear to imply grace has been provided to the entirety of mankind and that would be patently false. However, what one could say is that, grace has been offered to the entirety of mankind and that would be true. The “Collective Salvation” model, where everyone is already saved by the Grace of God, as Henri De Lubac points out cannot work because sin is “eminently personal” and not collective in nature and as such the “avowal of guilt must be personal also, and God’s pardon must reach down into the depths of our heart, of our sinful councious, to convert it.” De Lubac points out that those who hold such beliefs often hold beliefs about sin that also make it impersonal and often seek to transfer sin outward into society or objectivize it rather than dealing with it in a personal manner.
Dealing with the concept of grace in this manner not only removes the personal responsibility of the individual but, it also removes the supernatural act of the sacrifice of the Incarnate Word from the equation. Once again, I will refer to De Lubac on the matter when he says, “ we sought to make clear how the supernatural had in fact affected man through the event of the Incarnation of God’s Son and in consequence of his revelation; but this incarnation could not yet be fully understood in its redemptive aspect because we had not yet considered the second meaning, often combined with the first, which the word “grace” has in the Scripture” To remove the Supernatural, the Divine from the process of Salvation is to also wipe away the entire concept of grace. Grace, despite how we use the word in our daily vernacular is uniquely a supernatural act. The very act of achieving grace implies that something or someone had the authority and ability to grant it to you because it is something you cannot grant to yourself or that another being can grant to you when dealing with the possibility of eternal salvation. It is the sole act of Love (and Sacrifice) reserved by God for those who turn unto Him in the humility of understanding how incapable that they truly are in achieving salvation on their own.
Grace and the Sacraments within the Church are inextricably tied together. One does not simply receive grace outside of having received the Sacraments inside of the Catholic faith unlike the beliefs of our Protestant brothers and sisters. The concept of general/universal grace is absurd from the outset in so much that Catechesis/Education is required of the candidate for initiation prior to partaking in the Sacraments of Initiation. Additionally, Catholic Sacraments still involve the Supernatural. Unlike many of the Protestant churches who have been swayed by realism, atheism and other modernist efforts to reform core tenets and liturgies of the Church, The Catholic Church has soundly held to the belief of Supernatural interaction within the Sacraments even when others have tried to rationalize them away as simply mimicked memorials. De Lubac addresses the secularization of the church, which is in fact what has happened within many of the Protestant traditions, very appropriately on Page 160 when he defines the role of the Church, he states, “This makes clear the proper role of the Church, she is the messenger and bearer of this salvation and hence she cannot be assimilated either in her structure or in her aims, to any of our human societies.”
To conclude, I would like to say that I found no clear position that De Lubac would have held on General Grace or even Calvinist “Common Grace”. I would have to think based upon the reading that he would have rejected, out of hand, General Grace if it involved universal salvation. I have to think as a rational man, he potentially was not opposed at least in concept to most of the tenets of “Common Grace” in so much that a loving God provided for the creation that He loved. However, where I am certain that De Lubac would have held firm was dealing the “nature” vs “supernatural” debate. He is firmly in the Supernatural court on this one and as such, would have also held the belief that the Supernatural was present in the Sacraments and that the Supernatural presence in those Sacraments are what produces the full measure of Grace. His thoughts on Grace on “conversion” in the chapter of the same name were inspiring when we look at the effects that both Grace and Faith should be having on our lives via “radical transformation”. The scary part, is that as I look around me, I see fewer people who are working their way through the transformation than I see of those that have given up both hope and God.
Absolutely not! First off, a “generally graced” world would appear to imply grace has been provided to the entirety of mankind and that would be patently false. However, what one could say is that, grace has been offered to the entirety of mankind and that would be true. The “Collective Salvation” model, where everyone is already saved by the Grace of God, as Henri De Lubac points out cannot work because sin is “eminently personal” and not collective in nature and as such the “avowal of guilt must be personal also, and God’s pardon must reach down into the depths of our heart, of our sinful councious, to convert it.” De Lubac points out that those who hold such beliefs often hold beliefs about sin that also make it impersonal and often seek to transfer sin outward into society or objectivize it rather than dealing with it in a personal manner.
Dealing with the concept of grace in this manner not only removes the personal responsibility of the individual but, it also removes the supernatural act of the sacrifice of the Incarnate Word from the equation. Once again, I will refer to De Lubac on the matter when he says, “ we sought to make clear how the supernatural had in fact affected man through the event of the Incarnation of God’s Son and in consequence of his revelation; but this incarnation could not yet be fully understood in its redemptive aspect because we had not yet considered the second meaning, often combined with the first, which the word “grace” has in the Scripture” To remove the Supernatural, the Divine from the process of Salvation is to also wipe away the entire concept of grace. Grace, despite how we use the word in our daily vernacular is uniquely a supernatural act. The very act of achieving grace implies that something or someone had the authority and ability to grant it to you because it is something you cannot grant to yourself or that another being can grant to you when dealing with the possibility of eternal salvation. It is the sole act of Love (and Sacrifice) reserved by God for those who turn unto Him in the humility of understanding how incapable that they truly are in achieving salvation on their own.
Grace and the Sacraments within the Church are inextricably tied together. One does not simply receive grace outside of having received the Sacraments inside of the Catholic faith unlike the beliefs of our Protestant brothers and sisters. The concept of general/universal grace is absurd from the outset in so much that Catechesis/Education is required of the candidate for initiation prior to partaking in the Sacraments of Initiation. Additionally, Catholic Sacraments still involve the Supernatural. Unlike many of the Protestant churches who have been swayed by realism, atheism and other modernist efforts to reform core tenets and liturgies of the Church, The Catholic Church has soundly held to the belief of Supernatural interaction within the Sacraments even when others have tried to rationalize them away as simply mimicked memorials. De Lubac addresses the secularization of the church, which is in fact what has happened within many of the Protestant traditions, very appropriately on Page 160 when he defines the role of the Church, he states, “This makes clear the proper role of the Church, she is the messenger and bearer of this salvation and hence she cannot be assimilated either in her structure or in her aims, to any of our human societies.”
To conclude, I would like to say that I found no clear position that De Lubac would have held on General Grace or even Calvinist “Common Grace”. I would have to think based upon the reading that he would have rejected, out of hand, General Grace if it involved universal salvation. I have to think as a rational man, he potentially was not opposed at least in concept to most of the tenets of “Common Grace” in so much that a loving God provided for the creation that He loved. However, where I am certain that De Lubac would have held firm was dealing the “nature” vs “supernatural” debate. He is firmly in the Supernatural court on this one and as such, would have also held the belief that the Supernatural was present in the Sacraments and that the Supernatural presence in those Sacraments are what produces the full measure of Grace. His thoughts on Grace on “conversion” in the chapter of the same name were inspiring when we look at the effects that both Grace and Faith should be having on our lives via “radical transformation”. The scary part, is that as I look around me, I see fewer people who are working their way through the transformation than I see of those that have given up both hope and God.
Danielou Blog#3
Congratulations on the completion of your full initiation into the Church and although your Catechesis will now cease, you have in front of you the opportunity for even greater learning and understanding. As a jumping off point for this as you begin to work on and perfect your faith, tonight I would like to do a short review of the rituals/rites/Sacraments that each of you have participated in throughout your initiation and hopefully give them additional meaning moving forward in your faith and call you to continued study. Your growth in the faith does not stop at initiation.
Beginning the process, each of you were Baptized and, in that Baptism, you became inserted to its timeline, the Christian timeline and you were sealed to Christ by both the water and the sign of the cross on your forehead. Although not, explored extensively in your preparation, the act of Baptism has a long history beginning with the waters of Genesis, the flood of Noah, the parting of the Red Sea, the Israelite crossing of the Jordan and right down to John the Baptist baptizing Christ in the Jordan and the Spirit of the Lord descending upon Him. Water in the Bible can be seen as a spiritual element whereby God interacts with mankind. In the case of Noah, God wiped his sinful creation from the earth, saving only 8 to replenish the earth . In much the same way, your baptism wiped the stain of “original sin” from you and implanted the Holy Spirit within you as guide. In that sense, you made it over the first hurdle that Christ set before us in John 3:5 (read verse here). However, you journey was not yet complete.
In your next step, you were Confirmed, meaning that you were confirmed both to the Church but, also to Christ. In that rite, two major things happened, the first being the anointment with the Chrism Oil (I bet you can remember that smell, I still do and wished I could smell it every day, even today) and secondly, you received the Gifts of the Spirit. With regard to being anointed, there are two major reasons for anointing in the Bible. The first the anointing of a leader, of a King and in that sense, you were anointed as an heir into the Priesthood of Christ our King . In your Baptism, you set aside the “old you” to walk a new path and the continuation of that path was and is, to receive what Christ offered you on the cross, which was life in Him, eternal life with him and the anointing further seals you into that relationship with him. The second half of anointing in the Biblical tradition is for the dead. The dead’s entire body was anointed with sweet smelling oils prior to be wrapped in funerary clothes and buried. Multiple examples of both can be found in both the Old and New Testaments and so in this way, you are once again inserting yourself into the Christian timeline once more, becoming participatory in it from its beginning and even right up to the end, when we shall be raised in Christ at the end of time as we know it. In this act, as mentioned earlier, you also received the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as a means of sustaining you on your journey in Christ. These are important in so much as they will provide you with wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of God for the rest of your life, should you choose to employ them. Remember, they are a gift and as such, they are not imprinted upon you, you will have to seek each of them in your spiritual life with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.
Having been Baptized and Confirmed, you now approached the Altar of our Lord to complete your initiation, the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Once again, you were inserting yourself into a timeline of pseudo Eucharists that existed from the times of the Old Testament and were always pointing directly at the coming meal that was to take place in the upper room with Jesus. In many ways, we can look at the manna from heaven as provided by God during the Exodus as eucharistic an little doubt can be had about the wine and bread offered by the High Priest Melchizedek directly pointing to the Eucharist celebrated by Christ with his disciples. The Eucharist, just like your Baptism via water and your Baptism via the Spirit at Confirmation, is ordered to our lives by Christ himself. We need look no further than John 6 to gain a fuller understanding of this. In feasting upon the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ, “often” you are maintaining his presence in your life and as such you are participating with him, in him and through him in what will be your eternal life.
So, as I conclude this short little talk, I hope that you have come to understand that in each of the Sacraments, you have become participatory in the history of not only our savior but, also a history that proceeds from His Father since the beginning of creation. The Sacraments as we know them now were always in the process of becoming prior to the Word Incarnate and became fulfilled, exemplified and ordered to our lives through his birth, life, death and resurrection. Oddly enough, if you take the time to truly study the history leading up to Christ, you find them quietly in the background, again and again. Tonight, much of what I have presented to you with regard to the Sacraments was taken directly from the thoughts of Jean Danie Lou in his book, The Bible and the Liturgy. If you would like to explore his thoughts and the history of the Sacraments, I would highly encourage you to pick it up on Amazon.com. It is relatively easy read and far more eye opening with regard to the participatory nature of the Sacraments but also their historical origins as “Signs”. In days past and more specifically the days of some of the early Church Fathers, your Catechesis in the two weeks leading up to your Sacramental completion on Easter Day would have been far more significant, almost to the point of rigor but, hey times have changed. Therefore, I would like to propose to each of you a once a month “book club” study of Danie Lou moving forward, if you have any interest. Let me see how many of you by show of hands might be willing to give up an hour a month to go through the book chapter by chapter? Great, I think you will find it intellectually stimulating and also spiritually rewarding and for those of you seeking to work in the missions field someday, I think you will find the information handy.
Beginning the process, each of you were Baptized and, in that Baptism, you became inserted to its timeline, the Christian timeline and you were sealed to Christ by both the water and the sign of the cross on your forehead. Although not, explored extensively in your preparation, the act of Baptism has a long history beginning with the waters of Genesis, the flood of Noah, the parting of the Red Sea, the Israelite crossing of the Jordan and right down to John the Baptist baptizing Christ in the Jordan and the Spirit of the Lord descending upon Him. Water in the Bible can be seen as a spiritual element whereby God interacts with mankind. In the case of Noah, God wiped his sinful creation from the earth, saving only 8 to replenish the earth . In much the same way, your baptism wiped the stain of “original sin” from you and implanted the Holy Spirit within you as guide. In that sense, you made it over the first hurdle that Christ set before us in John 3:5 (read verse here). However, you journey was not yet complete.
In your next step, you were Confirmed, meaning that you were confirmed both to the Church but, also to Christ. In that rite, two major things happened, the first being the anointment with the Chrism Oil (I bet you can remember that smell, I still do and wished I could smell it every day, even today) and secondly, you received the Gifts of the Spirit. With regard to being anointed, there are two major reasons for anointing in the Bible. The first the anointing of a leader, of a King and in that sense, you were anointed as an heir into the Priesthood of Christ our King . In your Baptism, you set aside the “old you” to walk a new path and the continuation of that path was and is, to receive what Christ offered you on the cross, which was life in Him, eternal life with him and the anointing further seals you into that relationship with him. The second half of anointing in the Biblical tradition is for the dead. The dead’s entire body was anointed with sweet smelling oils prior to be wrapped in funerary clothes and buried. Multiple examples of both can be found in both the Old and New Testaments and so in this way, you are once again inserting yourself into the Christian timeline once more, becoming participatory in it from its beginning and even right up to the end, when we shall be raised in Christ at the end of time as we know it. In this act, as mentioned earlier, you also received the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as a means of sustaining you on your journey in Christ. These are important in so much as they will provide you with wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of God for the rest of your life, should you choose to employ them. Remember, they are a gift and as such, they are not imprinted upon you, you will have to seek each of them in your spiritual life with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.
Having been Baptized and Confirmed, you now approached the Altar of our Lord to complete your initiation, the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Once again, you were inserting yourself into a timeline of pseudo Eucharists that existed from the times of the Old Testament and were always pointing directly at the coming meal that was to take place in the upper room with Jesus. In many ways, we can look at the manna from heaven as provided by God during the Exodus as eucharistic an little doubt can be had about the wine and bread offered by the High Priest Melchizedek directly pointing to the Eucharist celebrated by Christ with his disciples. The Eucharist, just like your Baptism via water and your Baptism via the Spirit at Confirmation, is ordered to our lives by Christ himself. We need look no further than John 6 to gain a fuller understanding of this. In feasting upon the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ, “often” you are maintaining his presence in your life and as such you are participating with him, in him and through him in what will be your eternal life.
So, as I conclude this short little talk, I hope that you have come to understand that in each of the Sacraments, you have become participatory in the history of not only our savior but, also a history that proceeds from His Father since the beginning of creation. The Sacraments as we know them now were always in the process of becoming prior to the Word Incarnate and became fulfilled, exemplified and ordered to our lives through his birth, life, death and resurrection. Oddly enough, if you take the time to truly study the history leading up to Christ, you find them quietly in the background, again and again. Tonight, much of what I have presented to you with regard to the Sacraments was taken directly from the thoughts of Jean Danie Lou in his book, The Bible and the Liturgy. If you would like to explore his thoughts and the history of the Sacraments, I would highly encourage you to pick it up on Amazon.com. It is relatively easy read and far more eye opening with regard to the participatory nature of the Sacraments but also their historical origins as “Signs”. In days past and more specifically the days of some of the early Church Fathers, your Catechesis in the two weeks leading up to your Sacramental completion on Easter Day would have been far more significant, almost to the point of rigor but, hey times have changed. Therefore, I would like to propose to each of you a once a month “book club” study of Danie Lou moving forward, if you have any interest. Let me see how many of you by show of hands might be willing to give up an hour a month to go through the book chapter by chapter? Great, I think you will find it intellectually stimulating and also spiritually rewarding and for those of you seeking to work in the missions field someday, I think you will find the information handy.
Bouyer based Blog
As mature confirmed Catholic parents with many you having been raised Catholic, I want to pose a question to you about your faith. How much do you truly know about the Instituted Sacraments of the Church? Better yet, do you know what they are derived from?
What if I were to tell you that the Sacraments were already present at the moment of Creation? Does that sound too far-fetched to actually believe? Believe it or not, it is actually a Biblical Truth! Genesis tells us Christ and the Holy Spirit were present at creation and John 1 (which many of you will know as “the last Gospel” that the Priest recites at the conclusion of Mass) confirms it. (John 1 will be read at this time). So, here we are at the birth of Creation with all of the members of our Triune God contributing to creation and they (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) knew how the story was already going to playout. They/He knew Adam and Eve would “Fall” and be expelled from the Garden before God ever breathed life into Adam. The expulsion from the Garden though was much more than an exile from a material place, it was also an exile from the friendship they had shared with God in the Garden. This “Original Sin” separated not only the two of them from God but, had the effect of separating all subsequent generations as well. As Saint Augustine would refer to this status, a gulf would now exist between man and God and throughout the millennia of history, from the moment of the “fall” onward, man would now be seeking to find a way back to God. In his efforts, he would create symbols, idols and a mythos of a false Gods in an efforts to recapture what had been removed from him via original sin. Man had a longing for God built into him as a created being for the one whom had created him but, as a creation and not being equal to God despite his acquired knowledge of good and evil, he was incapable of reaching up to Him.
God eventually took pity on mankind and through a series of four Covenants, Noahtic, Abrahamic, Mosaic (to include “The Law”) and eventually the Davidic Covenant, God began to pave the road for man to reconcile with him. We know that road by the term of “revelation”. God began to slowly reveal himself via his chosen people, the Israelites through a series of Transcendent acts and also through divinely inspired prophets that He established to shepherd his people into a position for the ultimate revelation that would fulfill the Davidic Covenant (Discuss II Samuel 7 here). Although there were hints along the way via revelation that God/The Logos would become Incarnate as a vehicle to reconcile man back to God, the Jews more or less missed the boat when Christ arrived on the scene and began to preach about being sent by His Father to do His Father’s will (The entire Book of John is an excellent resource on the Judaic rejection of Jesus). Even so, remember, the Jews may have been God’s “Chosen People” but, it was the entirety of mankind that had fallen along Adam and Eve and because of that, we should not be surprised at all that alongside with his ministry amongst his Father’s Chosen that he would also begin a ministry to the Gentiles (Reference in John the Samaritan Woman at the Well and also the Roman Official) .
It is in Christ’s ministry to both that we find the foundations of the Sacramental practices of the Church. I would like for you to think about something here for a minute, something we will pick back upon in a bit. In the history of mankind, from creation forward, God had remained in heaven. He had sent Angels to earth, His Spirit had moved upon the waters during creation but, God had never in any form become Incarnate at any time before the arrival of Christ. This is the most historic event in the history of the world and the penultimate moment of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Christ/God setting foot upon the earth is more than simply being marvelous or even miraculous, the act itself is something that should be sacred to us. Even more sacred to us should be the sacrifice that he willingly made of himself as the ultimate gesture of reconciliation between His Father and mankind. It is in the recorded life and death (What we know as the 4 Gospels) of Jesus that we derive the Sacraments of the Church. And, for that reason, they are to be treated as both Holy and Sacred. However, mankind and even Catholic Parishioners have backslid from treating them as such in many, many cases. Sacraments, in our post-modern era of the 21st century have become little more than obligations rather than a moment of Holy Mystery where we are awed that a God would love us enough, as undeserving as we are, to reach down to us in those moments where a Sacrament is being performed. If you will, this is the whole point of the Mysterium Fidei (Mystery of Faith) proclamation after transubstantiation has taken place on the Altar (Mass Table, Potato/Potatoe) during the Eucharistic Sacrament. We need to relearn how to tremble in the presence of God and we need to drive these points home to our children as we teach them about the Sacraments. Considering, the current Pope has called for a Eucharistic Revival, we need to earnestly consider not just the miracle that happens in the Eucharist but, also the miracle that happens during Baptism of removing “original sin”, the miracle of the Holy Spirit at Confirmation and the list goes on. I beg you please, as your children go through Catechesis and the Sacrament of Confirmation as part of our curriculum, participate in the process with them and in doing so, relearn the awe and thankfulness that should accompany the Sacraments and in doing so be that example that will have a life time of impact upon your children’s faith and spirituality.
What if I were to tell you that the Sacraments were already present at the moment of Creation? Does that sound too far-fetched to actually believe? Believe it or not, it is actually a Biblical Truth! Genesis tells us Christ and the Holy Spirit were present at creation and John 1 (which many of you will know as “the last Gospel” that the Priest recites at the conclusion of Mass) confirms it. (John 1 will be read at this time). So, here we are at the birth of Creation with all of the members of our Triune God contributing to creation and they (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) knew how the story was already going to playout. They/He knew Adam and Eve would “Fall” and be expelled from the Garden before God ever breathed life into Adam. The expulsion from the Garden though was much more than an exile from a material place, it was also an exile from the friendship they had shared with God in the Garden. This “Original Sin” separated not only the two of them from God but, had the effect of separating all subsequent generations as well. As Saint Augustine would refer to this status, a gulf would now exist between man and God and throughout the millennia of history, from the moment of the “fall” onward, man would now be seeking to find a way back to God. In his efforts, he would create symbols, idols and a mythos of a false Gods in an efforts to recapture what had been removed from him via original sin. Man had a longing for God built into him as a created being for the one whom had created him but, as a creation and not being equal to God despite his acquired knowledge of good and evil, he was incapable of reaching up to Him.
God eventually took pity on mankind and through a series of four Covenants, Noahtic, Abrahamic, Mosaic (to include “The Law”) and eventually the Davidic Covenant, God began to pave the road for man to reconcile with him. We know that road by the term of “revelation”. God began to slowly reveal himself via his chosen people, the Israelites through a series of Transcendent acts and also through divinely inspired prophets that He established to shepherd his people into a position for the ultimate revelation that would fulfill the Davidic Covenant (Discuss II Samuel 7 here). Although there were hints along the way via revelation that God/The Logos would become Incarnate as a vehicle to reconcile man back to God, the Jews more or less missed the boat when Christ arrived on the scene and began to preach about being sent by His Father to do His Father’s will (The entire Book of John is an excellent resource on the Judaic rejection of Jesus). Even so, remember, the Jews may have been God’s “Chosen People” but, it was the entirety of mankind that had fallen along Adam and Eve and because of that, we should not be surprised at all that alongside with his ministry amongst his Father’s Chosen that he would also begin a ministry to the Gentiles (Reference in John the Samaritan Woman at the Well and also the Roman Official) .
It is in Christ’s ministry to both that we find the foundations of the Sacramental practices of the Church. I would like for you to think about something here for a minute, something we will pick back upon in a bit. In the history of mankind, from creation forward, God had remained in heaven. He had sent Angels to earth, His Spirit had moved upon the waters during creation but, God had never in any form become Incarnate at any time before the arrival of Christ. This is the most historic event in the history of the world and the penultimate moment of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Christ/God setting foot upon the earth is more than simply being marvelous or even miraculous, the act itself is something that should be sacred to us. Even more sacred to us should be the sacrifice that he willingly made of himself as the ultimate gesture of reconciliation between His Father and mankind. It is in the recorded life and death (What we know as the 4 Gospels) of Jesus that we derive the Sacraments of the Church. And, for that reason, they are to be treated as both Holy and Sacred. However, mankind and even Catholic Parishioners have backslid from treating them as such in many, many cases. Sacraments, in our post-modern era of the 21st century have become little more than obligations rather than a moment of Holy Mystery where we are awed that a God would love us enough, as undeserving as we are, to reach down to us in those moments where a Sacrament is being performed. If you will, this is the whole point of the Mysterium Fidei (Mystery of Faith) proclamation after transubstantiation has taken place on the Altar (Mass Table, Potato/Potatoe) during the Eucharistic Sacrament. We need to relearn how to tremble in the presence of God and we need to drive these points home to our children as we teach them about the Sacraments. Considering, the current Pope has called for a Eucharistic Revival, we need to earnestly consider not just the miracle that happens in the Eucharist but, also the miracle that happens during Baptism of removing “original sin”, the miracle of the Holy Spirit at Confirmation and the list goes on. I beg you please, as your children go through Catechesis and the Sacrament of Confirmation as part of our curriculum, participate in the process with them and in doing so, relearn the awe and thankfulness that should accompany the Sacraments and in doing so be that example that will have a life time of impact upon your children’s faith and spirituality.