Transcript

In this session, we're going to look at the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the sacrament that Christ uses to create leaders for his church; bishops, priests, and deacons.

We'll be drawing upon the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and later teachings from the Church's Magisterium As good Thomists, we start with created order.

God created beings and persons with a hierarchy, a chain of being, with certain creatures being higher or more sophisticated than others.

God uses these differences for the common good.

The differences glorify God's excellence and largess, his ability to create so much diversity.

Also, these differences ennoble us creatures.

God gives certain beings agency, and God works with these agents to bring about greater goods.

For instance, God has made certain human beings tall and athletic, and so certain basketball players can do a slam dunk.

Is that unjust to the little child?

No.

The basketball player can pick up the child, and then the child can do a slam dunk too.

Everyone wins, and God is glorified.

In the supernatural order also, God uses hierarchy for the common good.

Jesus Christ, because he is both God and man, is superior to us mere human beings.

Christ, in his sacred humanity, serves as a mediator between God and us.

Christ is thus a priest.

He offers worship to God, especially the act of sacrifice, the sacrifice of his life and his passion and death.

And he bestows the gift of grace from God to human beings.

Christ is the only true priest, for he is the only true mediator, the only person who saves as both God and man.

But through the sacraments, Christ gives the possibility to participate in his one priesthood.

Three sacraments configure us into a participation in Christ's priesthood.

Those sacraments are baptism, confirmation, and holy orders.

Their sacramental characters are participations in Christ's priesthood.

By baptismal character, the baptized participate in an initial way in Christ's priesthood.

Baptism makes a person a member of the lay faithful.

The baptized receive the holy power to receive further gifts from God, especially Christ's sacraments.

Those who receive the second sacrament, confirmation, receive the priestly power to witness maturely to Christ and his church.

Finally, the ordained, the clergy, receive the sacred power to bestow, in an active way, God's grace to others.

The clergy are Christ's most powerful class of human instruments.

So the Sacrament of Holy Orders creates sacred ministers whose role is to build up and sustain the Church in the life of grace.

The highest of clerical acts is to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

Why?

Because the Mass gives us Christ's real, full sacramental presence, the Eucharist.

The next highest work of the clergy are the other sacraments, especially those sacraments that forgive sins; baptism and penance.

The forgiveness of sins allows people to participate in that highest act, the Eucharist.

Lastly, the ordained ministers lead the church community by preaching, teaching, and pastoral governance.

The point there is, again, to bring people to the Eucharist.

For Aquinas, the high point of life is the Eucharist.

There are different ways that a man can be ordained.

These are called grades or ranks or orders.

The three grades are, from highest to lowest; bishop, presbyter, often called a priest, and deacon.

They have different powers and roles.

For St. Thomas, these differences entail different ways to support the Eucharistic life of the Church.

Both bishops and presbyters can offer the sacrifice of the Mass, forgive sins, bestow blessings, and preach and lead in the name of Jesus.

But only bishops have the fullness of holy orders.

Only they, for instance, can ordain another man.

Without that ability, we wouldn't have priests to celebrate Mass for us.

So bishops sustain the entire life of the Church.

Finally, deacons assist in distributing holy communion, and with the church's outreach to the poor and her care of material goods.

Remember the sacrament's tripartite structure from a few classes ago.

For holy orders, the first step, the sacramentum tantum, is the liturgical rite of ordination.

The minister of holy orders is a bishop.

The sacramental matter is the bishop's laying on of hands on the head of a baptized male.

That act signifies the conferral of sacred authority.

The sacramental form is an ordination prayer said by the bishop.

That speech specifies to which clerical grade the man is being ordained; episcopacy, the presbyterate, or the diaconate.

Only a baptized male can be ordained, because even in his physical gender, the ordained minister has to serve as an icon of Christ.

Similar to how it'd be weird if a male actor were to play a woman's role in a movie, so only a man can represent Christ to the Church.

Only a man can act the role of Christ in an official leadership capacity.

From that first step of holy orders, the liturgical rite, the man is boosted to a new level; the second step of the sacramental dynamic, the res et sacramentum.

Here we find the clergyman's sacramental character, that configuration to Christ in his priesthood.

Finally, the sacrament works through that second level to the third level, the res tantum, which is the sacramental grace conferred upon the man.

That grace helps the cleric to do a good, holy job acting in the person of Christ.

From that grace, the clergy serve the laity, the entire Church, indeed, the entire world.

The clergy exist to serve others and to help them serve God.

Through the ordained bishops, priests, and deacons, Christ acts to create saints.

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