September 10, 2023- Pastor Message
04/30/2024THE YEAR OF MISSION
THE SACRAMENTS (cont.)
“Jesus’ words and actions during his hidden life and public ministry were already salvific, for they anticipated the power of his Paschal Mystery. They announced and prepared what he was going to give the Church when all was accomplished. The mysteries of Christ’s life are the foundations of what he would henceforth dispense in the sacraments, through the ministers of his Church, for ‘what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1115).
The working definition of the sacraments that we have been reflecting on for the past few weeks is as follows: effective signs of God’s grace, instituted by Christ, celebrated by the Church, for the salvation of souls. We discussed them as “effective signs”, sensible realities that not only represent something else but make it present in our lives. Last week we reflected on what sacraments represent and make present, grace, which is God’s gift of his own love and life that gives us eternal life. This week we look at where the sacraments come from, namely Christ.
The sacraments are “instituted by Christ”. That means that Christ began them and gave them to us for our salvation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he did so in exactly the way we celebrate them today. It means that we find the roots of the sacraments we celebrate today in Christ’s life and ministry. Sometimes this is obvious, as in the case of baptism, which Jesus specifically commands his disciples to do: “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), or in the Eucharist, which he first celebrates with his disciples at the Last Supper and commands them to do “in memory of me” (Luke 22:19). But other times they are less obvious, like confirmation, which stems from his gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4), or matrimony, which has its roots in the first of his miracles at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-12).
The biblical evidence for the institution of the sacraments is obviously more extensive than this brief series of examples, but it is not as if Jesus simply handed his disciples a manual that read: “These are the seven sacraments and this is how you celebrate them.” The Church, drawing on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gradually came to understand the seven sacraments as we know them today and developed their celebration in response to the cultures she encountered. All the while, she remained faithful to the timeless truths contained in divine revelation and rooted in Christ’s life and ministry. And so, for example, Christ’s special ministry to the sick became the Church’s celebration of the anointing of the sick; Christ’s entrusting the forgiveness of sins to his disciples became the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, and so on. We will explore the Church’s role in the sacraments in next week’s column, but we must always remember that the sacraments all come from Christ.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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