Transcript

Through the seven sacraments of the Church, Jesus is present, ministering to His people, healing, nourishing, and anointing them.

These seven holy sacraments are not just symbols of Christ; they are encounters with Him.

This encounter with Christ begins with baptism.

The Greek verb baptizo is powerful; it means literally to plunge.

We speak of taking the plunge when we move from the ordinary to the extraordinary, and our lives change irrevocably.

The baptized person is changed by being immersed into the life of Christ, becoming a child of God.

Well, I am delighted to be talking to you about the sacraments of the Church today.

Just a really quick note as I begin: there will be just a few general remarks about the sacraments in general, then I'll just march through the seven sacraments.

But let me start, if I could, with a story.

I want to pay tribute to a former colleague of mine, a great Carmelite priest named Gorman Sullivan.

Gorman died many years ago, way too young.

Gorman taught sacramental theology at Mundelein Seminary, where I also taught.

So this was the end of the school year, and there were about three of us up in the faculty kitchen.

Gorman came in and he had in his hand one of the student evaluations.

So at the end of the year, the students write evaluations of the course, right?

So he said, I'd like you guys to hear this.

So we sat down, and Gorman read and said, You know, Father Gorman, it's great that you're so enthusiastic about this class, but you seem to think the sacraments are the most important things in the world.

Well, there was a three-second pause, and then all three of us said in unison, But they are the most important things in the world.

And I want that little vignette just to sort of hover in the air all this morning.

The sacraments are the most important things in the world.

How come?

Because the sacraments are the privileged ways that Christ continues to be present to His people and to give them His life.

Let me just say that again: the sacraments of the Church are the privileged ways in which Jesus continues to be present to His people and to share His life with them.

What could be more important than that?

Here’s a quote I love from Pope St. Leo the Great, one of the great Fathers of the Church.

He said, What was visible in our Savior has passed into His mysteries.

The word he uses there, mysteries, was an ancient term for sacraments.

So again, listen: what was visible in our Savior has now passed into the sacraments.

Now, what would a lecturer in theology be without a German word?

The Germans use the term Ur-Sakrament, which means fundamental sacrament, and they say the Ur-Sakrament, the fundamental sacrament, is the Church itself.

The seven sacraments now are the means by which the Church expresses its life.

The Church—everybody, the Church—is not a club.

It's not an organization that I can join or quit.

Oh, I'm happy with it now; I'm not happy with it.

It's a matter of my will.

You know, that's the Abe Lincoln Society.

The Church is not the Jesus Christ Society; rather, it is the mystical body of Jesus.

Fulton Sheen said this two thousand years ago: the second person of the Trinity took to Himself a human nature.

Now that same Word takes to Himself a mystical body.

How beautiful, as I see all of you out here!

It’s like a symbol of it, made up not just of members of a club, but rather the cells, molecules, and organs in this mystical body.

The Church is the oozament.

It’s the way Christ expresses His life in the world.

The seven sacraments specify that life.

Remember, of course, when the risen Jesus appears to Saul on the road to Damascus: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

It's extraordinary, isn't it?

I mean, Saul is persecuting the Christians in Damascus, but the Lord says, Why are you persecuting me?

That’s how intimate the connection is between Christ, the Head, and His mystical body.

Or the Lord Himself in Matthew 25: Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, you do it to me.

That’s the mystical body Jesus has taken to Himself; that’s the ur-sacrament of the Church.

The seven sacraments are now the means by which Christ continues to communicate His life to His people.

You know, one thing we talk about in the theology of the sacraments is the matter and form of the sacraments.

Now, the Church borrowed that language from Aristotle, but see, it's deeply incarnational.

It just means that every sacrament contains something material—some stuff.

It’s wine, or it’s water, or it’s bread; it’s wine, it's imposed hands.

But then that matter is accompanied by and specified by form, which means some words that clarify the meaning of the thing or the gesture: matter and form.

But see, that’s just incarnational, isn’t it?

The Word, the form, became flesh, became matter, which is why the sacraments are the prolongation of the Incarnation across space and time.

The Incarnation happened two thousand years ago, with Jesus walking the hills of Galilee, yes indeed, but now that Incarnation is prolonged across all of space and all of time through the seven sacraments, through the matter and form of these sacraments.

Okay, another important category when talking about the sacraments in general is the category of grace.

Grace, everybody, is one of my favorite words in the whole Christian vocabulary: grace, grazia in Latin.

It just means gift, doesn't it?

Georges Bernanos, the great French Catholic novelist, said, Tout est grâce—everything is grace.

You know, once you see the world through the eyes of Christ, you’re going to see it just that way: everything is grace, everything is gift.

There might be some in this room who remember the Baltimore Catechism.

Anybody?

Because in my generation, we were the first ones really not to get the Baltimore Catechism.

I know some Catholics old enough to have studied it.

There’s a beautiful little pithy definition of the sacraments in the Baltimore Catechism.

It says they are visible signs of an invisible grace.

It’s beautiful, pithy, to the point, and states the essential theology of the sacraments.

Visible signs are something material, physical, that show up in the world.

But visible signs of an invisible grace: what’s the invisible grace we’re talking about?

It’s the divine friendship; it’s the divine life that Jesus wants to share with us, the members of His mystical body.

The sacraments are visible signs of that life and that friendship.

Here’s a nice quote from Saint John Henry Newman: he says there’s a visible Church with rites and sacraments that are channels of invisible grace.

Same idea: there’s a visible Church—that’s the ur-sacrament—with rites and sacraments which are channels of an invisible grace.

Now, what would a lecture on sacraments be?

We’ve got a German word; now we need some Latin, don't we?

There’s a lovely phrase the Church uses: ex opere operato, which means from the work worked.

The idea here is that sacraments, by their very nature, objectively communicate to us grace, the divine friendship.

It doesn’t depend so much on our subjectivity; it doesn’t depend upon the moral integrity of the minister of the sacrament.

There’s something about the sacrament in itself that communicates grace.

May I say what good news that is?

You know, go back to the 4th century.

There was a great controversy because Christians in North Africa were being persecuted, and during the persecution, some priests caved in; they renounced their faith.

But then, when the persecution was over, they came back and said, Well, we’d like to function again as priests.

There was a man named Donatus who said, No, no, no, no, no!

You guys gave up; you guys caved in, and now you’re not worthy to dispense the sacraments.

Thank God the great St. Augustine opposed himself to Donatus, and Augustine said, No, no!

The efficacy of the sacraments depends not upon the moral integrity of the minister but ex opere operato— from the very work worked, from the very nature of the sacrament—God's grace is communicated.

Again, thank God for Augustine!

Can you imagine if the efficacy of the sacraments depended upon every priest and every bishop being a saint?

I mean, I wish we all were saints, but thank God there’s something objective about the sacraments that’s independent of the moral quality of the minister.

Here, by the way, is how Pope St. Martin V expressed the principle.

This is nicely put: Pope Martin said a bad priest who uses the correct matter and form and has the intention of doing what the Church does truly performs the Eucharist, truly absolves, truly baptizes, and truly confers the other sacraments.

Again, thank God, right?

Now, having said all that about the bracing objectivity of the sacraments, can I offer kind of a balancing perspective?

The Lord God, the Creator of all things, wants to express Himself through these visible signs, but yet the Lord God, Creator of the whole universe, is not constrained by the rites of the Catholic Church.

That’s to say, God, if He wants to, can operate outside of those normal and ordinary means.

Is grace offered in other ways?

Sure, it can be.

You know, someone could hear a Protestant sermon on TV and be very convicted by it and be brought closer to Christ.

Sure!

Or think of a famous example of J.R.R. Tolkien, right?

The great author of The Lord of the Rings.

He and C.S. Lewis, who were good friends, went for a walk one night in Oxford.

Lewis said at the beginning of that walk he was not a Christian; at the end of the walk, he was.

That conversation with Tolkien had changed his mind.

Was that an expression of grace?

Yeah, sure!

God can operate outside of the and the constrictions of the sacraments.

Sure, God is God!

How about a last little introductory remark?

And I’ll say a bit more about this as I go through all the sacraments.

There are three of the sacraments called character sacraments.

They give a permanent character, or mark, or configuration.

I'm talking about baptism, confirmation, and holy orders.

They so work themselves into the very nature of the person who receives them that that person is marked permanently in this life and the next.

That’s the character of the sacrament.

About ten years ago, I read about this: there was a fellow in England who was mad at the Church, and so he sent his baptismal certificate back to the bishops, and he said, I also want you to erase my name from the baptismal rolls.

Well, the bishop wrote back and said, Sure, I mean you can send me back the certificate, and yeah, I could erase your name from the baptismal record, but I can’t erase your baptism.

It just doesn’t work that way.

Your baptism belongs to you whether you like it or not.

What I like about that story is that it shows that bracing, wonderful objectivity: Jesus, through these visible signs, working His friendship with us into our very bones.

That’s why the sacraments are the most important things in the world.

So, everybody, with those little introductory remarks out of the way, let me turn now to the first of the seven sacraments.

And first, a word about how I’m going to structure the rest of these talks.

One way the Church understands the seven sacraments is like this: you’ve got three sacraments of initiation, or incorporation—three sacraments that draw you into the life of Christ: baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist.

Then you’ve got two sacraments of healing, when that relationship is broken and needs to be healed—now we have penance and we have the anointing of the sick.

And then finally, we’ve got two sacraments of mission or vocation—that’s matrimony and holy orders.

So, initiation, incorporation, healing, and finally mission.

So again, I’ll quote Fulton Sheen.

Fulton Sheen said, The whole of Christ's teaching and therefore the whole of Christian life can be expressed in two words: come and go.

What he meant was Jesus says a lot, Come!

Come to me, all you who are weary and heavily burdened, and I’ll give you rest.

Come and stay!

And they stayed with Him.

Come and follow me.

He first draws people in so that he can affect them and change them, configure them to Himself.

And then, once they’re drawn in, once they’ve been healed of sin, He then says, Go! You’re not meant to stay here.

You’re meant now to go out into the world.

Go and preach to all nations.

Go and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Go and express the life of the Kingdom.

You see how the sacraments have a similar kind of rhythm?

Baptism, confirmation, Eucharist—come, come; anointing of the sick, penance—be healed; and then matrimony, holy orders—go!

Now go out into the world, transfigure the world.

So the come and the go.

So, baptism: now the first of the initiation sacraments.

By this great sacrament, everybody, we are incorporated into Christ, becoming members of His mystical body, conformed to Him again at the deepest level of our being.

I love Thomas Aquinas' reference; he says baptism is the janua vitae spiritualis, which means it’s the door to the spiritual life.

Think about it: everything else that we do in the spiritual order—everything else, all forms of prayer and liturgy, and work with the poor, etc.—it

all flows from baptism.

Baptism kicks open the door to the wonders of the life of faith.

It’s the great sacrament of initiation and incorporation.

I had the privilege just a couple of weeks ago of baptizing my first grand-niece, so my brother’s first grandchild, which made me feel very old, I will confess to you.

Her name, by the way, is lovely: Ella Grace.

That’s my favorite theological word.

So I just baptized her a few days ago.

How are we baptized?

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

That great Trinitarian formula!

Now listen, everybody, it signals something of enormous moment.

When we’re baptized, we are grafted onto the Son; we are configured to Christ.

This means that automatically we are in relationship to the Father, and that means automatically we are in the Holy Spirit because the Spirit is the love that connects the Father and the Son.

Now, you see the point here: when somebody is baptized, he or she is drawn into the inner life of God.

We’re no longer outside of God, petitioning, asking, begging for mercy as if I’m here and God is out there somewhere.

No! Once I’m baptized, I’m in God.

I’m configured to the Son; therefore, I’m in relation to the Father, and therefore, I’m in the power of the Holy Spirit.

You see how beautifully now all the baptized—whenever we do this—we’re remembering our baptism: that we were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

We’re in God; we’re in the life of God.

Never think that we’re just outside, begging.

No, no!

We’re inside through God’s grace.

Don’t you love it?

It’s not you who’ve chosen me; it’s I who’ve chosen you.

Fellow baptized in this room, we need to think about that almost every day.

It’s not like, Oh, I chose you; I joined the Jesus Christ Society.

No, no, no!

That’s not it.

It’s Christ who has chosen you; He’s drawn you into the Trinitarian life for His purposes.

That’s what it means.

Now, three things follow from this.

From this configuration, if we’re configured to Christ, then we become priests, prophets, and kings.

Priests!

We’re all priests if we’re baptized.

A priest is someone who gives God right praise.

If you’ve been following my work at all over the years, you know that I write and talk a lot about this.

When I give God right praise—not money, and power, and pleasure, and honor, and country, or any of those things, or family—all good things, but I don’t give them the highest praise.

I give God the highest praise.

Then my own life, all the elements that make me up, fall into harmony.

Every baptized person has been given the privilege of giving praise to God.

You know, in a way, baptism is like a ticket of entry into the Mass.

It gives you the privilege, the prerogative, of coming to Mass and worshiping the Father in the Holy Spirit.

Every time you come to Mass, every time you pray, every time you make an act of sacrifice, you are acting out your priestly identity as a baptized person.

Here’s a good question: how come 75% of Catholics stay away from the Mass?

That means they’re not living out the greatest privilege and prerogative they have as baptized people.

Secondly, if you’re configured to Christ, you’re also a prophet.

Who’s a prophet?

A prophet is someone who speaks the divine truth.

Some people, like me—priests and bishops—do that, of course, but every baptized person is meant to be a prophet.

Now, some will do it in a very formal way, by being catechists, teachers, and professors.

But listen, every baptized person is called upon, in fact, given the privilege and prerogative of speaking the divine truth.

That means in your family, among your friends, in your place of work, in the way you vote, in your public life, and in your private life.

I don’t mean becoming obnoxious and overbearing, but I do mean boldly and publicly proclaiming your faith.

I know, I know it runs counter to the etiquette of our culture, which favors privatized religion.

You know, whisper it maybe among ourselves; that’s not a prophetic identity.

Here’s something, fellow baptized, that I’ll share with you that’s always bugged me: You look at the polls of our country, public opinion about the whole range of issues—whether it’s abortion, euthanasia, care for the poor, capital punishment—run through all the usual hot-button sort of issues.

Here’s what I find kind of disturbing: Catholics track pretty much with the general population.

There’s nothing really distinctive about the way Catholics present themselves publicly.

That’s a problem, it seems to me.

That means a lot of us are not living out our prophetic calling to proclaim and speak our faith.

Lastly, everyone configured to Christ is a king.

A king is somebody who is sent on mission to build up the Kingdom.

Now here’s, everybody, where Vatican II comes in so powerfully.

This is exactly what Vatican II meant by the universal call to holiness.

All the baptized are sent out into the world to be great Catholic writers, great Catholic entertainers, great Catholic business leaders, great Catholic politicians—in other words, Christifying the world.

That’s our kingly responsibility; that’s our kingly calling.

How are we doing?

I think it’s an honest question.

How are we doing?

If we look at our society, are we seeing—now, look, and if I include not just Catholics but all baptized Christians in our country—is it clear that baptized Christians are transfiguring the public space to make it look more and more like the Kingdom of God?

I’ll let you think about that one.

One last observation: I’ve been talking here about, if you want the positive side of it, that I’m configured to Christ to become a member of His mystical body—priest, prophet, king.

But if this is to be realized, something has to be...

Dealt with something has to be expelled if this Christ-life is to take root.

Here, we’re talking about baptism in relation to original sin.

Now, I know it can seem like a peculiar idea to a lot of people today—that this ancient sin committed by figures from long ago affects us.

Here’s a quick way to think about it: we human beings are a dysfunctional family.

Think of all the ages of hatred, violence, warfare, racism, division, and conflict.

What has that done but set up a sort of poisonous atmosphere in which all of us, willy-nilly, whether we like it or not, are born into this situation?

It works its way, again, whether we like it or not, into our minds, our wills, our emotions, even our bodies.

It’s like an addiction.

How are we liberated from this?

We can’t liberate ourselves.

Talk to anyone that’s wrestled with an addiction.

Can they do it themselves through their own willpower?

Come on!

What do we need?

Grace!

Grace, gift, Christ.

It’s not you who’ve chosen me; it’s I who’ve chosen you.

And by this great grace, Christ breaks into our lives, configures us to Himself, allows us to live within the Trinitarian relation, freeing us thereby from this original sin.

Everybody, that’s our dignity; that’s our sacred calling; that’s our grace-filled identity.

And it comes to us precisely from baptism.