Copyright 1962 by Hawthorn Books, Inc., 70 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.
The Scripture translations throughout are from The Holy Bible,
translated by Ronald Knox, copyright 1944, 1948, 1950 by Sheed and
Ward, Inc., New York.
Nihil Obstat: William F. Hogan, S.T.D., Censor Librorum
Imprimatur: James A. Hughes, J.C.D., LL.D., P.A., Vicar General,
Archdiocese of Newark
October 22, 1962
CONTENTS
The Sacraments
I. The Sacrament of Baptism
II. The Sacrament of Confirmation
III. The Sacrament of the Eucharist
IV. The Sacrament of Penance
V. The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick
VI. The Sacrament of Holy Orders
VII. The Sacrament of Matrimony
THE SACRAMENTS
A Divine Sense of Humor
No one can ever understand the sacraments unless he has what might be
called a "divine sense of humor." A person is said to have a sense of
humor if he can "see through" things; one lacks a sense of humor if he
cannot "see through" things. No one has ever laughed at a pun who did
not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world
is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is
just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and
saints, the world is transparent like a window pane--it tells of
something beyond; for example, a mountain tells of the Power of God,
the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
When the Lord Incarnate walked this earth, He brought to it what might
be called a "divine sense of humor." There is only one thing that He
took seriously, and that was the soul. He said: "What exchange shall a
man give for his soul?" Everything else was a tell-tale of something
else. Sheep and goats, wine bottles and patches on clothing, camels and
eyes of needles, the lightning flash and the red of the sunset sky, the
fisherman's nets and Caesar's coin, chalices and rich men's gates--all
of these were turned into parables and made to tell the story of the
Kingdom of God.
Our Lord had a divine sense of humor, because He revealed that the
universe was sacramental. A sacrament, in a very broad sense of the
term, combines two elements: one visible, the other invisible--one that
can be seen, or tasted, or touched, or heard; the other unseen to the
eyes of the flesh. There is, however, some kind of relation or
significance between the two. A spoken word is a kind of sacrament,
because there is something material or audible about it; there is also
something spiritual about it, namely, its meaning. A horse can hear a
funny story just as well as a man. It is conceivable that the horse may
hear the words better than the man and at the end of the story the man
may laugh, but the horse will never give a horse laugh. The reason is
that the horse gets only the material side of the "sacrament," namely,
the sound; but the man gets the invisible or the spiritual side,
namely, the meaning.
A handshake is a kind of sacrament, because there is something seen and
felt, namely, the clasping of hands; but there is something mysterious
and unseen, namely, the communication of friendship. A kiss is a kind
of sacrament: the physical side of it is present if one kisses one's
own hand, but the spiritual side of it is missing because there is no
sign of affection for another. One of the reasons why a stolen kiss is
often resented is that it is not sacramental; it has the carnal side
without a spiritual side; that is, the willingness to exchange a mark
of esteem or affection.
This book on the sacraments is written because men live in a world that
has become entirely too serious. Gold is gold, nuclear warfare is
nuclear warfare, dust is dust, money is money. No significance or
meaning is seen in the things that make a sound to the ear, or a sight
to the eye. In a world without a divine sense of humor, architecture
loses decoration and people lose courtesy in their relationships with
one another.
When civilization was permeated with a happier philosophy, when things
were seen as signs of outward expression of the unseen, architecture
was enhanced with a thousand decorations: a pelican feeding her young
from her own veins symbolized the sacrifice of Christ; the gargoyle
peering from behind a pillar in a cathedral reminded us that
temptations are to be found even in the most holy places. Our Lord, on
the occasion of His planned entrance into Jerusalem, said that if men
withheld their praise of Him, "the very stones would cry out," which
they did as, later, they burst into Gothic Cathedrals.
Now the stones are silent, for modern man no longer believes in another
world; they have no story to tell, no meaning to convey, no truth to
illustrate. When faith in the spiritual is lost, architecture has
nothing to symbolize; similarly when men lose the conviction of the
immortal soul, there is a decline in the respect for the human. Man
without a soul is a thing; something to be used, not something to be
reverenced. He becomes "functional" like a building, or a monkey
wrench, or a wheel. The courtesies, the amenities, the urbanities, the
gentility that one mortal ought to have for another are neglected once
man is no longer seen as bearing within himself the Divine Image.
Courtesy is not a condescension of a superior to an inferior, or a
patronizing interest in another's affairs; it is the homage of the
heart to the sacredness of human worth. Courtesy is born of holiness,
as ornamentation is born of the sense of the holy. Let us see if
ornamentation returns to architecture, if courtesy also returns to
human manners; for by one and the same stroke, men will have lost their
dull seriousness, and will begin to live in a sacramental universe with
a divine sense of humor.
Life is a vertical dimension expressed in the soaring spire, or in the
leaping fountain, both of which suggest that earth, history, and nature
must be left behind to seek union with the Eternal. Opposite to this is
an error which substitutes the horizontal for the vertical, the
prostrate form of death for the upright stature of life. It is the
disease of secularity and of naturalism. It insists on the ultimacy of
the seen and the temporal, and the meaninglessness of the spiritual and
the invisible.
Two errors can mar our understanding of the natural world: one is to
cut off entirely from Almighty God; the other is to confound it
substantially with Him. In the first instance, we have the clock
without the clock maker, the painting without the artist, the verse
without the poet. In the second instance, we have the forger and the
forged rolled into one, the melting and the fusing of the murderer and
the victim, the boiling of the cook and his dinner. Atheism cuts off
creation from its Creator; pantheism identifies nature with God. The
true notion is that the material universe is a sign or an indication of
what God is. We look at the purity of the snowflake and we see
something of the goodness of God. The world is full of poetry: it is
sin which turns it into prose.
The Bible Is A Sacramental
Coming closer to the meaning of sacrament, the Bible is a sacramental
in the sense that it has a foreground and a background. In the
foreground are the actors, the cult, the temple, the wars, the
sufferings, and the glories of men. In the background, however, is the
all-pervading presence of God as the Chief Actor, Who subjects nations
to judgment according to their obedience or disobedience to the moral
law, and Who uses incidents or historical facts as types, or symbols,
of something else that will happen. For example, take the brazen
serpent in the desert. When the Jewish people were bitten by poisonous
serpents, God commanded Moses to make a brazen serpent, and to hang it
over the crotch of a tree; all who would look upon that serpent of
brass would be healed of the serpent's sting. This apparently was a
rather ridiculous remedy for poison and not everyone looked on it. If
one could divine or guess their reason, it would probably be because
they concentrated on only one side of the symbol; namely, the lifeless,
shiny, brass thing hanging on a tree. But it proved to be a symbol of
faith: God used that material thing as a symbol of trust or faith in
Him.
The symbolism goes still further. The Old Testament is fulfilled in
Christ, Who reveals the full mystery of the brazen serpent. Our Lord
told Nicodemus that the brass serpent was lifted up in the desert, so
that He would have to be lifted up on a Cross. The meaning now became
clear: the brass serpent in the desert looked like the serpent that bit
the people; but though it seemed to be the same, it was actually
without any poison. Our Blessed Lord now says that He is like that
brazen serpent. He, too, would be lifted up on the crotch of a tree, a
Cross. He would look as if He Himself was filled with the poison of
sin, for His Body would bear the marks, and the stings, and the
piercing of sin; and yet as the brass serpent was without poison so He
would be without sin. As those who looked upon that brass serpent in
the desert in faith were healed of the bite of the serpent, so all who
would look upon Him on His Cross bearing the sins and poisons of the
world would also be healed of the poison of the serpent, Satan.
The word "sacrament" in Greek means "mystery," and Christ has been
called by St. Paul "the mystery hidden from the ages." In Him is
something divine, something human; something eternal, something
temporal; something invisible, something visible. The mystery of
Bethlehem was the Son of God taking upon Himself a human nature to
unite human nature and divine nature in one Person. He Who, in the
language of Scripture, could stop the turning about of the Arcturus,
had the prophecy of His birthplace determined, however unconsciously,
by a Caesar ordering an imperial census. He Who clothed the fields with
grass, Himself was clothed with swaddling bands. He from Whose hands
came planets and worlds had tiny arms that were not quite long enough
to touch the huge heads of the cattle. He Who trod the everlasting
hills was too weak to walk. The Eternal Word was dumb. The Bird that
built the nest of the world was hatched therein.
The human nature of Our Blessed Lord had no power to sanctify of and by
itself; that is to say, apart from its union with divinity. But because
of that union, the humanity of Christ became the efficient cause of our
justification and sanctification and will be until the end of the
world. Herein is hidden a hint of the sacraments. The humanity of
Christ was the bearer of divine life and the means of making men holy;
the sacraments were also to become the effective signs of the
sanctification purchased by His death. As Our Blessed Lord was the
sensible sign of God, so the sacraments were to become the sensible
signs of the grace which Our Lord had won for us.
If men were angels or pure spirits, there would have been no need of
Christ using human natures or material things for the communication of
the divine; but because man is composed of matter and spirit, body and
soul, man functions best when he sees the material as the revealer of
the spiritual. From the very beginning of man's life, his mother's
fondling is not merely to leave an impress upon his infant body, but
rather to communicate the sublimely beautiful and invisible love of the
mother. It is not the material thing which a man values, but rather
what is signified by the material thing. As Thomas a Kempis said,
"regard not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver." We
tear price tags from gifts so that there will be no material
relationship existing between the love that gave the thing and the
thing itself. If man had no soul or spiritual destiny, then communism
would satisfy. If man were only a biological organism, then he would be
content to eat and to sleep and to die like a cow.
What the Sacraments Bring to Man
The sacraments bring divine life or grace. Christ's reason for taking
upon Himself a human nature was to pay for sin by death on the cross
and to bring us a higher life: "I have come so that they may have life,
and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). But, it may be said, that
man already has life. Indeed he does; he has a biological,
physiological life. He once had a higher divine life which he lost.
Christ came to bring that life back to man. This higher life which is
divine, distinct from the human, is called grace, because it is gratis
or a free gift of God.
Two tadpoles at the bottom of a pond were one day discussing the prob-
lem of existence. One said to the other, "I think I will stick my head
out to see if there is anything else in the world." The other tadpole
said, "Don't be silly, do you think there is anything else in this
world besides water?" So those who live the natural life ignore the
beauty of the higher life of grace.
Man may live at three different levels: the sensate, the intellectual,
and the divine. These may be likened to a three-story house. The
sensate level, or the first floor, represents those who deny any other
reality except the pleasures that come from the flesh. Their house is
rather poorly furnished and is capable of giving intermittent thrills
which quickly dry up. The occupant of this first floor is not
interested in being told of higher levels of existence; in fact, he may
even deny their existence.
On the second floor, there is the intellectual level of existence, that
of the scientist, the historian, the journalist, the humanist; the man
who has brought to a peak all of the powers of human reason and human
will. This is a much more comfortable kind of existence, and far more
satisfying to the human spirit. Those on the second floor may think
their floor is "a closed universe," regarding as superstitious those
who desire a higher form of life.
But there is actually a third floor which is the floor of grace by
which the human heart is illumined by truths which reason cannot know;
by which the will is strengthened by a power quite beyond all
psychological aids, and the heart is entranced with the love which
never fails; which gives a peace that cannot be found on the two lower
levels.
There is light outside the window, but it is up to man to open the
blinds. The opening of the blinds does not constitute light; it is
rather the condition of its entrance. When God made us, He gave us
ourselves. When He gives us grace, He gives us Himself. When He created
us, He gave Himself to us in a way which makes us one with Him.
One often sees signs painted on roadways, "Jesus Saves." Now this in-
deed is true, but the important question is how does He save? What
relation have we in the twentieth century to Christ in the first? Do we
establish contact with Him only by reading about Him? If that be all,
our relationship is not much closer than that which we can have with
Plato. If Christ is only a memory of someone who lived centuries ago,
then it is rather difficult to see that His influence will be any
different than that of Socrates or Buddha.
The answer to the question of how Christ saves is to be found in the
sacraments. The divine life of Christ is communicated through His
Church or His Mystical Body in exactly the same way that His divine
life was communicated when He walked on earth. As He then used His
human nature as the instrument of divinity, and used material things as
signs and symbols of the conferring of His pardon, so He now uses other
human natures and material things as the instruments for the
communication of that same divine life.
In the earthly life of Our Lord, we read that there were two kinds of
contact. There was the visible contact with humanity by which His power
was communicated to the palsied man and to the blind, both of whom He
touched. But there was also the invisible contact, in which Our Blessed
Lord showed His power by working miracles at a distance, such as the
curing of the servant of the centurion of Nazareth. The second kind of
contact is an anticipation of the way that Christ, Who is now in
heaven, extends and communicates His power through the sacraments.
Seven Conditions of Life
The physical or the natural life requires seven conditions, five of
which refer to the person as an individual, and the other two as a
member of society. The five conditions of leading an individual life
are: (1) In order to live, one must obviously be born; (2) He must
nourish himself, for he who does not eat shall not live; (3) He must
grow to maturity, throwing away the things of the child, and assume the
responsibilities of adult life; (4) In case he is wounded, he must have
his wounds bound and healed; and (5) In case he has disease (for a
disease is very different from a wound), the traces of the disease must
be driven out. As a member of society two further conditions are
required: (1) He must live under government and justice in human
relationships, and (2) He is called to propagate the human species.
Over and above this human life, there is the divine Christ-life. The
seven conditions of leading a personal Christ-life are the following:
(1) We must be spiritually born to it, and that is the Sacrament of
Baptism; (2) We must nourish the divine life in the soul, which is the
Eucharist; (3) We must grow to spiritual maturity and assume full
responsibilities as members of the spiritual army of the Church, which
is Confirmation; (4) We must heal the wounds of sin, which is Penance;
(5) We must drive out the traces of the diseases of sin, which is the
Anointing of the Sick; (6) We must live under the spiritual government
of the Church, which is Holy Orders; (7) We must prolong and propagate
the Kingdom of God on earth, which is Matrimony.
Every sacrament has an outward or visible sign; for example, in Baptism
it is water, in the Eucharist it is bread and wine. But the sacrament
also has a form or formula, or words of spiritual significance given to
the matter when it is conferred. Three things then are absolutely
required for a sacrament: (1) Its institution by Christ; (2) An outward
sign; and (3) The power of conferring the grace or divine life
purchased for us by the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.
The Power and Efficacy of the Sacraments
The sacraments derive their power and efficacy from the Passion, Death,
and Resurrection of Our Lord. Why was a blood sacrifice required to
bring us the seven-fold sanctification? For several reasons: Life is in
the blood, but so also is sin. The sins of the alcoholic, the
libertine, and the pervert are often written on their faces; their
excesses are recorded in every cell of their body and every drop of
their blood. If, therefore, sin is to be done away with, there should
be some shedding of blood, as if to symbolize the emptying of sin. It
is often the death of soldiers that brings freedom to a nation; it is
the giving of one's blood to another which heals him of anemia. The
blood bank from which others may draw healing is hint of another blood
bank from which souls may be healed of the ravages of sin.
Furthermore, blood is the best symbol of sacrifice, because blood is
the life of man: when man gives up his blood, he gives up his life.
Hence, St. Peter writes:
"What was the ransom that freed you from the vain observances of
ancestral tradition? You know well enough that it was not paid in
earthly currency, silver or gold; it was paid in the precious Blood of
Christ; no lamb was ever so pure, so spotless a victim." (I Peter 1:18,
19)
The blood of Christ had infinite value because He is a divine person.
The life of a lamb is more precious than that of a fly, and the life of
a man is more precious than the life of a beast, and the life of the
God-Man is more precious than the life of any human being.
Our mind, our will and our conscience become completely sanctified
through the application of the merits of Christ:
"Shall not the Blood of Christ, Who offered Himself, through the Holy
Spirit, as a victim unblemished in God's sight, purify our consciences,
and set them free from lifeless observances, to serve the Living God?"
(Heb. 9:14)
The Application to the Sacraments
Calvary is like a reservoir of divine life or grace. From it, there
flow seven different kinds of sanctification for man in different
stages of his spiritual existence. Each of these seven channels is a
sacrament by which the power of the Risen Christ is bestowed on souls
by a spiritual and effective contact. This divine life pours into the
soul when we receive the sacraments, unless we put an obstacle in the
way, just as water will not flow out of a faucet if we put our hand in
front of the faucet. But a faucet in a house has no power to quench
thirst unless there is a reservoir and a pipeline. So the sacraments do
not confer grace as magical signs; they communicate it only because
they are in contact with the Risen Christ.
What makes the difference between the sacraments is how each is applied
to us. The Christ-life affects us in a different way when we are born
than when we are about to die; in a different way when we reach the age
of responsibility than when we enter into marriage; in a different way
when we wound ourselves than when we exercise government. The sunlight
is the same whether it shines on mud to harden it or on wax to soften
it. It shines on some flowers and makes them grow; it shines on a wound
and heals it. So too, the blood of Christ applied at different moments
of life results in a different kind of power.
A principle of philosophy states: "Whatever is received is received
according to the mode of the one receiving it." If you pour water into
a blue glass, it looks blue; if you pour it into a red glass, it looks
red. If you pour water into the parched earth, it is quite different
than water poured onto a carpet or into oil. So too, when the blood of
Christ and its merits flood in upon the soul, it depends upon the one
receiving it. Does the soul come for strengthening? For nourishment?
For healing? For a long journey? For induction into the spiritual army?
The effects will differ as to whether a person is spiritually dead or
spiritually living If a member of the Church is spiritually dead, then
it will revive him as does the Sacrament of Penance, or the Sacrament
of Baptism.
I. THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM
The sunshine, the carbons, and the rain could never share the life of
the plant unless they died to their lower existence and were assumed or
taken up into plant life Plants could never share the sensitive and
locomotive power of animals, unless they died to their lower existence
and were taken up by the animal. None of the things in lower creation
could live in man, and share his arts, his sciences, his thinking and
his loves unless they ceased to be what they were, submitting to the
death of knife and fire.
Now, since there is a life above the human, the Christ-life, man, or
the old Adam, cannot share in it unless he dies to himself. But here
there is no confiscation or violent appropriation as there is when the
cow eats grass. Christ will not take us up to Himself unless we freely
give ourselves to Him. This death to the life of sin, this sharing of
the divine life, is Baptism.
Water: The Material Sign of Baptism
Water is used for cleansing from dust and dirt; therefore, it may be
the symbol of a spiritual washing from original sin. But it can also
symbolize both death and life. One can plunge into water and be
submerged by it; then it is a symbol of death. After the plunge, one
may rise from the water; then it is a token of resurrection. A descent
into water has always been a description of penetration into deep and
mysterious fecundities; the Greeks believed that the whole living
universe came from water.
From another point of view, water is an excellent symbol of Baptism,
because it is an open sign of separation. Water very often is the
natural boundary between city and city, state and state, nation and
nation, continent and continent, tribe and tribe. Those who live on one
side of water are "separated" from those who live on the other. In the
early days, before rapid communication, it was a dramatic experience to
pass from one territory to another. This symbolism, therefore, was well
fitted for the Divine Master to indicate the separation of the
Christian from the world, as the water which was divided in the Red
Sea, was a symbol of the separation of Israel from the slavery of
Egypt.
Once the Jews had crossed the Red Sea, another symbol was used to
"separate" them as the people of God, and that was circumcision. Not
only was it a token of their covenant or testament with God, but it was
required of all Israelites who partook of the Passover. In the New
Testament, the same order is followed. Baptism, or incorporation into
the Church, is the condition of reception of the New Passover, the
Eucharist.
As ranchers brand their cattle, as ancient Romans branded their slaves,
so God branded His own, both in the Old Testament and in the New; with
circumcision of the flesh in the Old and circumcision of the spirit, or
Baptism, in the New.
It may be objected, what good does a little water do when poured upon
the head of a child? One might just as well ask what does a little
water do when poured into the boiler. The water in the boiler can do
nothing of and by itself, nor can the water on the head of a child. But
when the water in the boiler is united to the mind of an engineer, it
can drive an engine across a continent or a ship across the sea. So
too, when water is united to the power of God, it can do more than
change a crystal into life. It can take a creature and convert him into
a child of God.
Naaman in the Old Testament was something like those today who think of
the power of Baptism coming from water rather than from the Passion of
Christ. Naaman was the general of the king of Syria. A maid who came
from Samaria said that she wished that he had known the great prophet
of Israel, for he could have cured him. The king then bade Naaman to go
to Israel where he met the prophet, Eliseus. Eliseus said to him: "Go
and wash seven times in the Jordan, and thy flesh shalt recover health
and thou shalt be clean." Naaman was insulted because he was told to go
to that insignificant river Jordan to bathe:
"'Why', he said angrily, 'I thought he would come out to meet me, and
stand here invoking the name of his God; that he would touch the sore
with his hand and cure me. Has not Damascus its rivers, Abana and
Pharphar, such water as is not found in Israel?'" (IV Kings 5:11, 12)
His servants, however, bade him go wash and be made clean, and he went
down and washed seven times according to the word of the man of God,
and his flesh was restored and was made like the flesh of a little
child when he was made clean. Then he confessed that it was done by the
power of God: "I have learned, he said, past doubt, that there is no
God to be found in all the world, save here in Israel" (IV Kings 5:15).
Baptism and the Life of Christ
Under the Old Law people believed in, or yearned for, a Messias who was
to come. Abraham believed and his faith was accounted to him as
justice, and he received circumcision as a sign of faith.
What was the faith, therefore, that justified Abraham, who was the
father of the Jews? It was the faith in the Messias, or the Christ Who
was to come. There is no salutary faith except in Christ. The Jews
believed in the Christ Who was to come; we believe in Christ Who has
come. The times have changed, but the reality of faith has not changed.
There is only one faith. The faith that saves all men, making them pass
from carnal generation to spiritual birth.
The reason Our Lord was baptized was because it was part of the whole
process of emptying, of humiliation, of the Incarnation. How could He
be poor with us, if He did not in some way conform to our poverty? How
could He come among sinful men to redeem them, if He did not also
reveal the necessity of being purged from sin? There was no need of Our
Blessed Mother to submit to the rite of purification, as there was no
need of Our Lord to submit to the rite of Baptism by John. He had no
need personally of having sins remitted, but He assumed a nature which
was related to sinful humanity. Though He was without sin, He appeared
to all men as a sinner, as He did on the cross. That was why He walked
into the Jordan with all the rest of the sinners to demand the baptism
of penance "in remission of sins. '
In a very special way, Baptism is related to the death and Resurrection
of Christ. In order to be saved, we have to recapitulate in our own
lives the Death and the Resurrection of Christ. What He went through,
we have to go through. He is the pattern, and we have to be modeled
after Him. He is the die, we are the coins that have to be stamped with
His image. In all of the sacraments, the virtue of the Passion and
Resurrection of Christ is in some way applied to us. In Baptism, there
is a very close relationship between the burial and the resurrection.
The catechumen is plunged into the water as Christ was plunged into
death. We say plunged into death because of the words of Our Lord:
"There is a baptism I must needs be baptized with, and how impatient am
I for its accomplishment" (Luke 12:50). Baptism not only incorporates
us to the death of that which is evil in us, but also to the
Resurrection of Christ, and therefore, to a new life.
There was recently found an inscription on a baptistry erected in the
time of Constantine in the beginning of the fourth century, and it
reads: "The waters received an old man, but brought forth a new man."
St. Paul speaks of this: "It follows, in fact, that when a man becomes
a new creature in Christ, his old life has disappeared, everything has
become new about him (II Corinth. 5:17).
The Blessing of Baptismal Water
The water used in Baptism is blessed on Holy Saturday after the Litany
of Saints, whose intercession is invoked on all those who will receive
the sacrament. Then follows a prayer asking God to send forth "the
Spirit of adoption" on those who are to be baptized. God has one Son
Who exhausts the fullness of His glory, but baptism gives Him millions
of adopted sons because it makes them partakers of His divine nature.
The baptismal water is blessed by a prayer which recalls beautifully
all the events of salvation which were in any way connected with water,
from the beginning of the world when God's Spirit hovered over the
water, down to the commandment of Christ to baptize.
Throughout the Old Testament water is represented as a sinister ele-
ment, and is supposed to be the abode of demons. To confirm this idea,
the "Apocalypse" affirms that there will be no sea in the new earth
after the resurrection of the just. Water, because of its unholy
association, is exorcised on Holy Saturday that it may become "holy and
innocent." The priest then takes the water, divides it into four
quarters of the globe to symbolize the four waters that branched out of
Paradise and covered the earth. Next, he breathes upon the water three
times symbolizing the Holy Spirit, then dips the paschal candle (the
symbol of the risen Christ) into it three times. Here the consecration
formula uses the symbolism of human generation: "May the power of the
Holy Spirit descend into this brimming font, and make the whole
substance of this water fruitful in regenerative power." And again,
"Just as the Holy Spirit came down upon Mary and wrought in her the
birth of Christ, so may He descend upon the Church, and bring about in
her maternal womb (the font), the rebirth of God's children."
The baptismal font in a church is now generally placed as far from the
altar as possible. It often is a corner to the left of the entrance. In
the early Church, the baptistry was sometimes placed outside the
Church. The reason is that the person about to be baptized was not yet
a member of the Church and, therefore, was not allowed to participate
in its mysteries.
The baptismal font, if properly erected, has steps going down into it,
to indicate that it is a pool. Its shape was octagonal, because the
Resurrection took place on the eighth day, or the day after the Jewish
Sabbath.
In the Old Testament, circumcision was always performed on the eighth
day. The son that David had through his sin with Bethsabee died on the
seventh day. The first seven days were symbols of the bonds of sin;
hence, the eighth day represented the breaking of those bonds and the
liberation from them. In the New Testament, Easter is the eighth day
par excellence, and that was the reason why Baptism was administered on
Easter.
Baptism in the Early Church
Baptism was usually given the night before Easter Sunday, but the
baptismal ceremonies began with the opening of Lent. At that time all
of the candidates, converts, or catechumens had their names inscribed
by a priest in the Church. They were then brought before a bishop who
examined the candidates concerning their moral life. Generally, the
bishop would bring out the fact that the candidate for Baptism had
lived under Satan, but now he must abandon him This meant a conflict
and a battle. That is why we still have in the Church the Gospel of the
temptation of Christ for the first Sunday of Lent, because it was the
theme of the bishop to the catechumens at the beginning of their
instructions.
The ceremony of Baptism took place then in three places and in like
manner today: (1) Before the entrance to the Church, which in the early
Church was at the beginning of Lent; (2) Inside the Church and before
one comes to the baptistry, which happened in the middle of Lent in the
early Church; and (3) Finally, the baptistry itself on Holy Saturday
night, or Easter morning.
In the baptismal ritual, the stole of the priest at the beginning of
the Baptism is violet in color; this is because in the early Church,
the first part of the ceremony of Baptism was during Lent. Toward the
end of the ceremony, the priest changes his stole to white, following
again the tradition of the early Church, when Baptism was administered
on Easter Sunday.
Outside the Church
The Dialogue
The Baptism begins with a dialogue. The ceremony begins with: "What do
you ask of the Church of God?" The answer is: "Faith." The priest asks:
"What does faith offer you?" The candidate or his sponsors answer:
"Eternal life." Note the close connection between faith and Baptism.
After His Resurrection, Our Lord said to His Apostles: "Go out all over
the world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation; he who
believes and is baptized will be saved; he who refuses belief will be
condemned" (Mark 16:15, 16).
Our Blessed Lord first put belief before being baptized. In order to be
saved, one must believe and be baptized. One can be saved by faith
without the sacramental sign of baptism; that is, through desire or by
martyrdom, but he who refuses to believe will be condemned: "For the
man who believes in him, there is no rejection; the man who does not
believe is already rejected; he has not found faith in the name of
God's only-begotten Son" (John 3:18).
The dialogue begins with "What do you ask of the Church of God?" Why
the Church? Because the Church precedes the individual, not the
individual the Church. When a person is baptized, he is not to be
thought of as another brick that is added to an edifice, but rather as
another cell united to the Christ-life. The Church expands from the
inside out, not from the outside in. The foundation cell of the Church
is Christ, and through Baptism, there is a multiplication of the cells
of His body until there is a differentiation of functions and the
building up of the whole Church. As a child is formed in the womb of
the mother, so the Church, as a spiritual mother, forms and gives birth
to the children of God. The Christian life resulting from Baptism is
not an individual and solitary experience. It is a life in the Church
and by the Church. As St. Paul expresses it: "Through faith in Christ
Jesus you are all now God's sons" (I Corinth. 12:4).
Baptism does not first of all establish an individual relationship with
Christ, and then accidentally make one a member of His body, the
Church. It is the other way around. The baptized person is first made a
member of the Church, and thus he is incorporated into Christ. Baptism
is social by nature. We are made members of Christ's body before being
established in our individual relationship with Christ:
"We, too, all of us have been baptized into a single body by the power
of a single Spirit, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free men alike; we have
all been given drink at a single source, the one Spirit." (I Corinth.
12:13)
Sponsors
In Baptism, infants are incorporated into Christ, not through an act of
their own will, but through an act of the sponsor who represents the
Church and assumes responsibility for the spiritual education of the
infant. The parents, of course, must consent to the baptism; the Church
refuses to baptize anyone against his or her will, or even to baptize
an infant unless there is some guarantee that the child will be raised
in the faith. The sponsors are representatives of the Church, not
representatives of the parents. They witness the incorporation of the
infant into the fellowship of Christ.
It may be asked why should a child be baptized when he has nothing to
say about it? Well, why should a child be fed? Is he asked his advice
before he is given the family name? If he receives the name of the
family, the fortune of the family, the rank of the family, the
inheritance of the family, why should he not also receive the religion
of the family? In our own country we do not wait until children are
twenty-one and then allow them to decide whether or not they want to
become American citizens, or whether they want to speak the English
language. They are born Americans; so we in Baptism are born members of
the Mystical Body of Christ. If one waits until he is twenty-one before
learning something about his relation to the Lord Who redeemed him, he
will have already learned another catechism, the catechism of his
passions, his concupiscences, and his lusts.
Exorcisms
Though the Hebrews had passed through the Red Sea, they were,
nevertheless, followed by the Egyptians; so too, though a person is
baptized, he is still followed by Satan throughout his life. That is
why the baptized person is asked to renounce Satan and all of his
seductions. This renouncing of Satan has as its parallel the attachment
to Christ or the transfer from one master to another. In Baptism today,
the ceremonies of exorcism follow rapidly upon one another, and thereby
have lost the significance which they had in the early Church when they
were separated by several weeks. This evil that the baptized are
invited to combat, is not just a moral force or a vague kind of
paganism; it is a cosmic reality, for the devil is, as Our Lord said,
the prince of this world. That is why even before the Church begins the
baptism of a person, it blesses water, oil, and salt, in some instances
even with exorcisms, in order to snatch them out of the power of Satan.
There is a triple renouncing of Satan which corresponds to the
threefold profession of faith:
Question: Do you renounce Satan?
Answer: I do renounce him.
Question: And all his works?
Answer: I do renounce them.
Question: And all his allurements?
Answer: I do renounce them.
This question has reference to the words of St. Paul to the Romans:
"Let us abandon the ways of darkness, and put on the armor of light"
(Rom. 13:12).
Thus the triple profession of faith accompanies the triple renouncing
of Satan, and is bound to a gesture; namely, the anointing with the oil
of catechumens. The one who baptizes dips his thumb in oil, and then
traces a cross on the breast and between the shoulders of the one to be
baptized. Formerly the oil was rubbed all over the body. This was also
done on athletes who were engaging in some sport in the arena, but here
the signification is spiritual, for it is the beginning of a spiritual
competition (I Corinth. 9: 24-27).
The exorcisms look both to the future, as well as to the past, to
remind the catechumen that the struggle against the forces of Satan is
a confrontation of God and the devil, the devil seeking to dispute the
souls which Our Lord won, as he tempted Our Lord in the desert.
In the early Church, the renouncing of Satan was done facing the west.
This is because the west is where the light of the sun disappears;
therefore, it was regarded even by the ancient Greeks as the place of
the gates of Hades; also, because Christ on the Last Day said He would
come from the east to the west: "When the Son of Man comes, it will be
like the lightning that springs up from the east and flashes across to
the west" (Matt. 24:27). The baptismal liturgy of Milan reads: "Ye were
turned to the east for he who renounced the demon turns himself to
Christ. He sees Him face to face."
In the exorcism, the priest says: "I exorcise you, unclean spirit, in
the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Come forth,
from this servant of God [name] for He commands you, spirit accursed
and damned, He Who walked upon the sea and extended His right hand to
Peter as he was sinking. Therefore, cursed devil, acknowledge your con-
demnation and pay homage to the true and living God; pay homage to
Jesus Christ, His Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and depart from the
servant of God [name], for Jesus Christ, Our Lord and our God, has
called him [her] to His holy grace and blessing, and to the font of
Baptism."
When the priest signs the forehead with his thumb in the form of a
cross, he says: "Then never dare, cursed devil, to violate the sign of
the cross which we are making upon his [her] forehead through Christ
Our Lord."
The various exorcisms, the laying on of hands, breathings, and sign of
the cross are done in the vestibule of the Church. The second act of
the ceremonies takes place at the entrance of the baptistry. The evil
spirit has no authority in the holy place; that is why the final
exorcism of the devil is at the entrance.
The Body in Baptism
Because the body is to become by Baptism the temple of God, because God
dwells in it, it is fitting that it have an important role in the
sacrament. Each of the senses are spiritualized in the sacraments:
hearing, taste, touch, smell, and sight.
The ears of the baptized person are touched with the words, "Be thou
opened." The Hebrew word Our Lord used in opening the ears of the deaf
man was "Ephpheta." The assumption is that the person up to this moment
has been deaf to the hearing of the word of God. Now his ears are
opened, so that he can understand the word of God, and the confidences
which God exchanges with him about the Kingdom of Heaven.
Tasting is testing. Before food goes into the stomach, it passes
through the laboratory of the mouth for either approval or disapproval.
In the spiritual order, the taste is not for body-food, but soul-food;
the material element here used as a symbol for tasting Divine Wisdom
and the Eucharist is salt. Placing salt on the tongue of the candidate
for Baptism, the Church says: "Satisfy him [her] with the Bread of
Heaven that he [she] may be forever fervent in spirit, joyful in hope,
zealous in your service." Scripture bids us: "How gracious the Lord is.
Taste and prove it" (Psa. 33:9).
The symbolism is that the truths of faith infused at Baptism will be
preserved from error; that the person may reflect the savor of Christ
in his life, and this taste of salt may be converted into a yearning
for the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, which is the end of all the
sacraments. When the faith is gone, everything is gone, as Our Lord
warned:
"You are the salt of the earth; if salt loses its taste, what is there
left to give taste to it? There is no more to be done with it, but
throw it out of doors for men to tread it under foot." (Matt. 5:13)
The body, during the ceremony, is touched in three places with oil: on
the breast, between the shoulders, and on the head. The first two
anointing are with the oil of catechumens, the last with chrism. The
sign of the cross is made on the breast with oil to indicate that the
heart must love God; between the shoulders to remind us that we are to
carry the Cross of Christ; on the head, as a sign of eternal election
in Christ Our Lord.
The "Apocalypse," describing the end of the world, says the destroying
angel was "to attack men, such as did not bear God's mark on their
foreheads" (Apoc. 9:4). The elect will be known, because they have
already been signed and have lived up to all the Cross commits them to
in this life.
The last anointing with chrism, which takes place after Baptism, is the
symbol of the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, oil was poured upon
the head of the priest (Ex. 29:7), and upon kings (I Kings 10:1), to
render them holy unto the Lord. Pulled out of the powers of darkness by
Baptism, the Christian is now transported into the light of God and
into His kingdom; that is why he becomes royal. St. Leo bade the
faithful: "Recognize, O Christian, thy dignity."
We associate goodness with sweet odors and badness with foul odors. We
have a "nose" for detecting the healthy and the unhealthy. This sense
of smell is spiritualized in Baptism, and is made to symbolize sanctity
or holiness.
The Church speaks of saints as dying in "the odor of sanctity." Some-
times their bodies after death give forth a sweet odor. The saintly
Cure of Ars would walk along a line of several hundred persons waiting
to go to confession. He would pick out one here and there and put them
first in line. When asked how he could do it, he answered: "I can smell
sin." As the Church signs the nostrils of the catechumen, she says: "I
sign you on the nostrils that you may perceive the sweet fragrance of
Christ."
The eyes of the candidate are anointed, as the Church says: "I sign you
on the eyes that you may see God's glory." By this is symbolized a new
kind of vision: the things of God in addition to the things of earth:
"Fix (your) eyes on what is unseen, not on what we can see. What we can
see lasts but for a moment; what is unseen is eternal" (II Corinth.
4:18). Our Blessed Lord spoke of some who had eyes and yet were blind,
because they had no faith: "Have you eyes that cannot see?" (Mark
8:18).
As a further example of the role of vision, a lighted candle is given
to the one baptized. He is bidden to receive this burning light, and
keep the grace of his baptism without blame. This refers to the words
of Our Lord: "Your light must shine so brightly before men that they
can see your good works, and glorify your Father Who is in Heaven"
(Matt 5:16).
We have the same eyes at night as during the daytime, but we cannot see
at night because we lack the light of the sun. So there is a difference
in persons looking upon the same reality, such as life, birth, death,
the world. The baptized person has a light which the others do not
have. Sometimes the person with the light of faith will regard the
other person as ignorant or stupid, but actually he is only blind. On
the other hand, the one who is baptized must not believe that his
superior insights are due to his own reason, or his own merits. They
are solely due to the light that has come to him through Christ.
There are various lights in the world: the light of the sun which illu-
mines our senses; the light of reason which illumines science and
culture; and the light of faith which illumines Christ and eternal
verities.
The Baptism Itself
The actual moment of Baptism comes when the priest pours water on the
head of a person, saying: "I baptize thee, in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit." The personal pronoun "I" refers not only
to the priest, but to Christ Who speaks through the tongue given Him by
the Church as He spoke through the tongue given Him by Mary. As the
portals of the flesh once opened to the life of the human, now the womb
of the Church opens and exults: "A child is born."
St. Augustine said this is a greater act than the creation of the
world, for it blots out our debt of sin to God, original sin if it be
an infant, original and personal sins if it be an adult. The full
effects of this act will be mentioned later.
The Lighted Candle and Baptism
Because the Sacrament of Baptism opened the eyes of the soul to see, it
was called the sacrament of illumination: "Remember those early days,
when the light first came to you" (Heb. 10:32). Once asleep to the
wonders of Redemption, eyes are now awake to receive Christ, the light
of the world (John 1:19) and to become sons of light (I Thess. 5:5).
Because Baptism is the sacrament of faith, it is the sacrament of
light. This baptismal candle in the early Church was always kept by the
person baptized, and was lighted on the anniversary of one's baptism
and on feast days, and brought to the church for the Easter vigil and
the renewal of baptismal vows. Then later, if the person was married,
the candle was lighted at his wedding. If he was ordained, it was
lighted at his ordination, and when he died, it was lighted again as he
went to his Judge.
The White Robe of Baptism
That the body is now the temple of God is further indicated by putting
on a white robe after the Baptism itself. Today this is often only a
small white cloth, but its symbolism still remains: "The body is for
the Lord."
In the Transfiguration, Our Blessed Lord's garment was white (Matt.
17:2) as a symbol of holiness and purity. White was the color of the
vestments in the Old Testament. It was the color of the veil which
divided the sanctuary. It was the attire of the high priest. It was the
color of festivity (Eccles. 9:8), and of triumph (Apoc. 6:2), and a
symbol of glory and majesty (Matt. 28:3). The prayer that is said at
Baptism is a petition that this garment be kept without stain: "Receive
this white garment. Never let it become stained, so that when you stand
before the judgment seat of Our Lord you may have life everlasting."
Dante, in his practical knowledge of human nature, knowing that many do
not keep it sinless, described purgatory as a "place where we go to
wash our baptismal robes."
The white robe further symbolizes the recovery of the vestment of light
which was man's before the Fall. As Gregory of Nyssa said: "Thou hast
driven us out of paradise and called us back; Thou hast taken away the
fig leaves, that garment of our misery, and clothed us once more with
the robe of glory."
Because Baptism in the early Church was by immersion, there was an
additional symbolism attached to the new garment that was put on,
namely, to signify the entirely new life that came to one after one was
"buried with Christ in His Death" (Rom. 6:4). The neophyte did not
resume the clothing he had taken off. He put on a new white garment,
which he wore at all services during the entire Easter octave. A week
later, in the early Church, there was "the sabbath of the removal of
white robes." These were solemnly taken off and deposited in the
treasury of the baptismal Church.
Effects of Baptism
The first effect of Baptism is the restoration to friendship with God
which was lost by original sin. The baptized person is made a partaker
of the divine nature and, therefore, a sharer in divine life. There is
more difference between a soul in the state of grace which begins in
Baptism and a soul not in the state of grace than there is between a
baptized person in the state of grace on this earth and a soul in glory
in heaven. The relation of the first two is the relationship between a
crystal and an elephant: one cannot beget the other. The second
relationship is that of an acorn and an oak. The acorn has the
potential of becoming an oak; the baptized person in grace has the
potential to enjoy the glory of God. That is why Baptism is said to
make the person a new creature: "In fact, when a man becomes a new
creature in Christ, his old life has disappeared, everything has become
new about him" (II Corinth. 5:17).
This sharing of the divine nature makes us the adopted sons of the
eternal Father. Just as Christ is the Divine Son Incarnate; so we
become adopted children, as distinct from the natural Son:
"But all those who did welcome him, He empowered to become the children
of God." (John 1:12)
"Those who follow the leading of God's Spirit are all God's sons."
(Rom. 8:14)
The Dauphin, the father of Louis XVI, gave a lesson on the effect of
Baptism to his two sons. They had been baptized as infants but in
emergency. It was only years later, when they had reached the age of
reason, that the ceremonies were performed. Immediately after Baptism,
it was noted that the names of the two children were registered after a
common laborer about the palace. The royal father said:
"See, my children, in the eyes of God, men of all conditions are equal.
In His sight, faith and virtue are all that matters. One day you will
be greater than this child in the eyes of the world; but if he is more
virtuous than you, then he will be greater than you in the sight of
God."
This likeness to God or the unlikeness will be the determinant of our
future state. A mother knows her daughter is her own because that child
shares her nature; a mother also knows the child next door is not her
own because of the diversity of nature and parentage. So it will be
with Christ on the last day. He will look into a soul and see His
divine resemblance and say: "Come, ye blessed of My Father. I am the
Natural Son and you are the adopted children"; but to those who have
not that likeness, Christ will say: "I know you not"--and it is a
terrible thing not to be known by God.
Another effect is incorporation in the Mystical Body of Christ. Baptism
is not just a bond existing between the person and Christ: to be united
to Christ is to be united with the Church, for the Church is His body.
The Church is not an organization, but an organism. As circumcision was
an incorporation into the spiritual body of Israel, so Baptism is
incorporation into the spiritual body of the Church. A physical body is
made up of millions of cells, and all of these coordinate and cooperate
into a unity, thanks to the soul which organizes them, the invisible
mind which guides them, and the visible head which directs them. So
too, all the baptized are incorporated into the Mystical Body, thanks
to the Holy Spirit which vivifies it; thanks to the invisible head,
Christ, Who rules the organism of the Church; and thanks to the visible
head, its Vicar of Christ, who directs it on earth.
The two most common errors concerning the Church are these: (1) the
belief that Christians came first and then the Church; and (2) that to
justify the Church one must go to the New Testament--which antedated
the Church.
In regard to the first error, the Christians did not come before the
Church. The physical body of Christ was the beginning of the Church,
and the Apostles constituted its first prolongation. The Church, or the
body of Christ, was not composed of the will of individual Christians;
the latter were not first brought to Our Lord and then inducted in some
way into the Church. The Church has its origin not in the will of man,
nor in the flesh of man, but in the will of Christ, Our Lord. The
Apostles were the ministers of the Lord Himself. The world is called
into the Church, but the world does not make the Church by sending men
into it.
Regarding the second error, the Church was in existence throughout the
entire Roman Empire, before a single book of the New Testament was
written. Long before St. Paul wrote any of his epistles, he said that
he had "persecuted the Church." The Church was in existence before he
wrote about it so beautifully. The Gospel came out of the Church; the
Church did not come out of the Gospel.
Because Baptism makes us a cell in the body of Christ, it is called the
door of the Church. Each new generation of baptized Christians is taken
up into that already existing unity. St. Peter, changing the analogy,
describes those who are inducted into the Church as living stones:
"Draw near to Him; He is the living antitype of that stone which men
rejected, which God has chosen and prized; you too must be built up on
Him, stones that live and breathe, into a spiritual fabric." (I Peter
2:4, 5)
The very fact that the ceremony of Baptism begins outside of the
Church, or at the door of the Church, and that the adult to be baptized
is led in by a stole, confirms the fact that the unbaptized is not yet
a member of the Church.
The Infusion of Virtues
Another effect is the infusion of virtues. A virtue is something like a
habit. There are two kinds of habits: infused habits, such as the
infused habit of swimming which a duck has when it is born; and
acquired habits, such as playing the violin or speaking a foreign
language.
Baptism infuses seven virtues into the soul, the first three of which
relate to God Himself, namely, faith, hope, and charity. We are thus
enabled to believe in Him, hope in Him, and love Him. But four other
virtues, called moral virtues, are related to the means of attaining
God; these are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. By the
right use of things for God's sake, by paying our debts to God, by
being brave about witnessing our faith and temperate about even the
legitimate pleasures of life, we reach God more quickly.
One of the reasons there is little difficulty in convincing children of
the existence of God and the divinity of the Church is that they
already have the gift of faith infused in their souls at the moment of
Baptism. This faith, however, requires practice and intellectual
fortification. If one woke up suddenly and became endowed with the gift
of playing the organ, he would still have to practice to retain the
gift. So, even though the gift of faith is infused, it nevertheless
requires practice. In the adult, Baptism demands faith, but faith
supposes that one has already received the word of God:
"Only, how are they to call upon him until they have learned to believe
in him? And how are they to believe in him, until they listen to him?"
(Rom. 10:14)
It may be asked why adults who already have the faith are said to need
Baptism. If the adult is already justified by faith, Baptism is
necessary in order that he may be incorporated visibly and
sacramentally to Christ in His Church. Furthermore, they receive, in
virtue of Baptism, a fuller grace. In the case of children, the habit
of virtue becomes a conscious act later on. The faith is not just a
profession of doctrine, but is the commitment to Our Lord and Savior.
Another effect, which is closely bound up with grace, is the indwelling
of the Trinity in our souls, from which arises a triple relationship
with the Godhead. First is the relationship with God the Father. The
baptized may now say "Our Father." By nature, we are only creatures of
God; by Baptism, we are sons:
"The spirit you have now received is not, as of old, a spirit of
slavery, to govern you by fear; it is the spirit of adoption, which
makes us cry out, Abba, Father." (Rom. 8:15)
We also have relationship with the Son of God, Who is "the firstborn of
many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). The baptized person will, therefore, try to
reproduce in his soul the image of Christ. As it is put in "Imitation
of Christ":
"Who will give me, Lord, to find You and You alone, and to offer You my
whole heart...You in me, and I in You, and therefore together, evermore
to dwell."
Finally, there is union with the Holy Spirit. At the moment of Baptism
the priest says, "Depart, unclean spirit, and give place to the Holy
Spirit." St. John writes: "This is our proof that we are dwelling in
Him and He in us; He has given us a share of His own Spirit" (I John
4:13). The Spirit within us is a moving Spirit, illumining the mind and
strengthening the will to sanctify ourselves and others:
"Nor does this hope delude us; the love of God has been poured out in
our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom we have received." (Rom. 5:4)
The world, therefore, is divided into the "once born" and the "twice
born": between the sons of the old Adam, and the sons of the new Adam,
Christ; between the unregenerate and the regenerate. There is a real
inequality in the world. There are "superior" and "inferior" peoples,
but the basis of distinction is not color, race, nationality, or
wealth. The superior people of the earth are the supermen, the Godmen;
the inferior people are those who have been called to that superior
state but, as yet, have not embraced it. But the reborn must follow the
laws of divine life, for which the Lord has prepared other sacraments.
I I. THE SACRAMENT OF CONFIRMATION
In the biological order, a creature must first be born, then it must
grow. In the supernatural order of grace, divine life is born in the
soul by Baptism; then it must grow "in age and grace and wisdom before
God and men." The soul who receives the sacraments of Baptism and
Confirmation is born spiritually and matures spiritually. It receives
citizenship in the Kingdom of God and is inducted into God's spiritual
army and the lay priesthood of believers. This soul is "born of the
Virgin Mary"--the Church--and begins its apostolate as Our Lord began
his preaching after the descent of the Holy Spirit at His baptism in
the Jordan.
Confirmation, like every other sacrament, is modeled upon Christ, and
reaffirms some aid or gesture in His life. It is bound up with Our
Lord's Baptism in the Jordan when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in
the form of a dove.
Our Lord had a double priestly anointing corresponding to two aspects
of His life: the first, the Incarnation, made Him capable of becoming a
victim for our sins, because He then had a body with which He could
suffer. As God He could not suffer; as Man He could. This first aspect
culminated in the Passion and Resurrection, which one participates in
by Baptism.
But the sacrament of Confirmation is particularly a participation in
the second anointing of Our Lord, that of the coming of the Spirit in
the Jordan, which ordained Him to the mission of preaching the
apostolate. This reached its culmination on Pentecost, when He filled
His Church--His Mystical Body--with His Spirit. Pentecost is to the New
Testament what the gift of the law is to the Old Testament, only it is
more perfect.
The descent of the Holy Spirit on Christ in the Jordan had a double
effect on Our Lord. It prepared Him for combat:
"Jesus returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit, and by the
Spirit He was led on into the wilderness, where He remained forty days,
tempted by the devil." (Luke 4:1)
It prepared Him for preaching the Kingdom of God:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; He has anointed me, and sent me out
to preach the gospel to the poor, to restore the brokenhearted; to bid
the prisoners go free, and the blind to have sight; to set the
oppressed at liberty, to proclaim a year when men may find acceptance
with the Lord." (Luke 4:18, 19)
About three years later, at the Last Supper, Our Blessed Lord promised
to send the Spirit to His Apostles, disciples, and followers, which He
did fifty days after the Resurrection on Pentecost. It would seem
better if Our Lord had remained on earth, so that all ages might have
heard His voice and thrilled to the majesty of His person; but He said
it was better that He leave, otherwise the Spirit would not come. If He
remained on earth, He would have been only an example to be copied, but
if He sent the Holy Spirit, He would be a life to be lived.
Though Our Lord knew on Holy Thursday that His Apostles were distressed
because He spoke of His approaching death, He consoled them with the
advantages of His leaving this earth and yet remaining in it, in
another way:
"So full are your hearts with sorrow at My telling you this. And yet I
can say truly that it is better for you I should go away; he who is to
befriend you will not come to you unless I do go, but if only I make my
way there, I will send him to you." (John 16:6, 7)
His perpetual presence, even in His glorified state, would have limited
His moral and spiritual influence. He might have become to man the type
of Christ that Hollywood presents--a celebrity. Instead of being in our
hearts, He would only have been in our senses.
Would men ever have thought of spiritual fellowship with Christ, when
physical fellowship might be had; when good and bad would have had
equal perception of Him; when He would be external to the soul of man,
not internal? Where would faith be, if we saw? And would not the world
have tried to recrucify Him, though that would have been impossible
after His Resurrection?
These questions are in vain; Divine Wisdom said it was better that He
depart from the globe for, once in glory, He would send His Spirit,
"the Truth-giving Spirit to guide you in all Truth." Great men
influence the earth only from their funeral urns; but He, Who gave the
earth the only serious wound it ever received--the empty tomb--would
rule it at the right hand of the Father through His Spirit.
This Spirit He sent upon the Church on Pentecost, like a soul entering
a fetus; chemicals which are disparate and disconnected became a living
thing. So the Apostles, with their individual whims and ignorances,
were, under the pentecostal fires, fused into the visible, living,
Mystical Body of Christ. It is not to the point in a book on the
sacraments to describe this; but it is to the point to say that
Confirmation is a kind of Pentecost to a baptized soul. Christ dwelling
in the flesh would normally be in one place only at one time, but His
Spirit, unbound by fleshy bonds, could cover the earth, working on a
million hearts at once. Nor would such hearts be without comfort at His
physical absence, for the Spirit He called "another Comforter."
It is the Son, Christ Our Lord, Who reveals the Heavenly Father. We
would never know the mercy and love of the Father, if He had not sent
His Son to walk this earth and pay our debt for sin. But who reveals
the Son? It is the Holy Spirit.
We know what goes on in other minds because we, too, have minds or
souls; we know what goes on in the mind of Christ because we are given
His Spirit. The natural or unbaptized man cannot perceive the things of
God, for they are spiritually discerned. As the scientist knows nature,
so the Christian, thanks to the Spirit, knows Christ:
"He will not utter a message of His own; he will utter the message that
has been given to Him; and He will make plain to you what is still to
come. And He will bring honor to me, because it is from me that He will
derive what He makes plain to you. I say that He will derive from me
what He makes plain to you, because all that belongs to the Father
belongs to me." (John 16:13-15)
It is through the Spirit received in Confirmation that Christ walks the
earth again in each obedient Christian; it is through the Spirit that
we are sanctified, comforted, and taught to pray.
These and other words of Our Lord about sending the Spirit of Truth who
will enlarge our knowledge of Him, prove that the whole truth is not
available to us in written records. Pentecost was not the descent of a
book, but of living tongues of fire. Confirmation gives the lie to
those who say that "the sermon on the mount is enough for them." Our
Lord's teaching, as recorded in the Gospels, was implemented,
complemented, and revealed in its deeper meaning through the spirit of
truth He gave to His Church. We indeed know Christ by reading the
Gospels, but we see the deeper meaning of the words, and we know Christ
more completely when we have His Spirit. It is only through the Spirit
that we know He is the divine Son of God and Redeemer of humanity:
"Those who live the life of nature cannot be acceptable to God; but you
live the life of the spirit, not the life of nature; that is, if the
Spirit of God dwells in you. A man cannot belong to Christ unless he
has the Spirit of Christ." (Rom. 8:8, 9)
Because an added measure of the Spirit is given in Confirmation, it was
administered, even in the early Church, not by disciples but by
Apostles or by the bishops who had the fullness of the priesthood.
The deacon Philip went to a city of Samaria and preached Christ to
them. He converted and baptized many. But, in order to "lay hands on
them" or confirm them, it was necessary for the Church in Jerusalem to
send Peter and John (Acts 8:5-17). Later on we read about Confirmation
at Ephesus by the Apostle Paul: "When Paul laid his hands on them, the
Holy Spirit came upon them" (Acts 19:6).
Administration of the Sacrament
The candidates kneel with hands joined before the bishop, who, ex-
tending his hands over the ones to be confirmed, says:
"Almighty, everlasting God, Who has deigned to beget new life in these
thy servants by water and the Holy Spirit, and has granted them
remission of all their sins, send forth from heaven upon them Thy Holy
Spirit, with His sevenfold gifts: The spirit of wisdom and
understanding. Amen. The spirit of counsel and fortitude. Amen. The
spirit of knowledge and piety. Amen. Fill them with the spirit of fear
of the Lord, and seal them with the sign of Christ's cross, plenteous
in mercy unto life everlasting. Through the selfsame Jesus Christ, Thy
Son, Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the
Holy Spirit, God eternally. Amen."
Dipping his thumb in holy chrism, he confirms the person saying:
"[Name] I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation. In the name of the
Father [making the sign of the cross] and of the Son [making the sign
of the cross] and of the Holy Spirit [making the sign of the cross]."
Then he gives the one confirmed a slight blow on the cheek, saying,
"Peace be to you."
Other prayers and a penance follow, all of which are destined to make
the Christian a witness, a teacher to an unbelieving world, and even a
martyr, if need be, for the Church. Two of the effects and obligations
of the Church deserve special consideration, and this follows.
The Sacrament of Combat
Every sacrament is related to the death of Christ, but Confirmation
intensifies that resemblance. Baptism gives the Christian a treasure;
Confirmation urges him to fight to preserve it against the three great
enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The military character of the sacrament is evidenced in the following
four symbols or acts:
(1) The forehead is anointed with chrism in the sign of the cross. The
cross, by its nature, evokes opposition. The more one crucifies his
passions and rejects the false teachings of the world, the more he is
slandered and attacked. Calvary united not only the friends of Our
Lord; it also united His enemies. Those who were opposed to one another
merged their lesser conflicts for the sake of the greater hate. Judas
and the Sanhedrin, Pharisees and Publicans, religious courts and Roman
overlords--though they despised one another, nevertheless they rained
common blows of hammer and nails on the hands and feet of Christ:
"It is because you do not belong to the world, because I have singled
you out from the midst of the world, that the world hates you. (John
15:18, 19)
When the Little Flower, St. Therese, prepared herself for Confirmation,
she saw that it implied crucifixion:
"I went into retreat for Confirmation. I carefully prepared myself for
the coming of the Holy Spirit. I cannot understand why so little
attention is paid to the sacrament of love. Like the Apostles, I
happily awaited the promised Comforter. I rejoiced that soon I should
be a perfect Christian, and have eternally marked upon my forehead the
mysterious Cross of this ineffable sacrament. On that day I received
the strength to suffer, a strength which I much needed, for the
martyrdom of my soul was about to begin."
(2) The interior grace of the sacrament gives fortitude and other gifts
destined for the battle of the Spirit. The Apostles on Pentecost were
made witnesses to the Resurrection of Christ, and the word "witness" in
Greek means "martyr." So, in Confirmation, the Christian is marked with
power and boldness on the forehead, so that neither fear nor false
modesty will deter him from the public confession of Christ. Cattle are
often branded with the owner's name; and slaves or soldiers in the
emperor's service were tattooed so that they could be easily recognized
if they ever deserted the service. Plutarch states it was a custom to
brand cattle that were destined for sacrifice, as a sign that they were
set apart for something sacred. Herodotus tells of a temple in Egypt in
which a fugitive might take the right of sanctuary: once he did so, he
was stamped, marked, or tattooed as an indication that he was the
property of God and, therefore, was inviolable and sacrosanct.
The spiritual significance of marking is anticipated: "...all alike
destroy till none is left, save only where you see the cross marked
upon them" (Ezechial 9:6). On the last day, the elect will be sealed on
their foreheads in the name of the Lamb and of His Father, to protect
them from destruction (Apoc. 7:3). Confirmation, then, is the sealing
of a person in the army of the Lord. St. Paul says: "Do not distress
God's Holy Spirit, whose seal you bear until the day of your redemption
comes" (Eph. 4:30).
(3) A slight blow on the cheek is given the person confirmed to remind
him that, as a soldier of Christ, he must be prepared to suffer all
things for His sake. To deny one's faith for a passing carnal pleasure,
or to surrender it under ridicule, is far more serious in the eyes of
God than a soldier deserting his duty. Peguy, bemoaning a want of
spiritual bravery, writes:
"Shame upon those who are ashamed. It is not a question of believing or
not believing; it is a question of knowing what is the most frequent
cause of loss of faith. No cause can be more shameful than shame--and
fear. And of all the fears the most shameful is certainly the fear of
ridicule; the fear of being taken for a fool. One may believe, or one
may not believe. But shame upon him who would deny his God to avoid
being made a mark for witticisms. I have in mind the poor, timorous
wretch who looks fearfully on every side to be sure that there is not
some high personage who has laughed at him, at his faith, at his God.
Shame upon the ashamed. Shame implies a cowardice that has nothing to
fall back upon. Shame upon those who are ashamed."
(4) The combative character of Confirmation is further shown by the
fact that its ordinary minister is the bishop, who is, as it were, a
general in the military of the Church. Because Confirmation gives an
increase of the Holy Spirit over Baptism, it is fittingly administered
by the one who has the fullness of the priesthood. When the bishop
extends his arms over those confirmed, as a successor of the Apostles,
he imitates Peter and John who laid hands on new converts of Samaria,
so that "they received the Holy Spirit" (Acts 8:1). He also imitates
Paul at Ephesus: "When Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit
came upon them" (Acts 19:6). The bishop is not a hoarder of his
authority; he is a dispenser of it, as was Our Blessed Lord Who told
His Apostles that they were to make disciples of all nations (Matt.
18:19-20).
The bishop, as the authority in the Church, incorporates the one con-
firmed into adult responsibilities. From now on, the one confirmed does
not lead an individual Christian life: he becomes commissioned in the
army. Confirmation is, therefore, the first great manifestation of the
relation established between the authority of the Church and Christian
personality.
Confirmation Both Personal and Social
Every sacrament has been set as a kind of balance between the in-
dividual and the community. The individual is baptized, but his Baptism
incorporates him into the community of believers--the Church. The grace
descends into the soul of the individual, but the grace is for the
perfection of the Mystical Body. This is true also of the sacrament of
Confirmation for, even more than Baptism, it orients us toward the
community or fellowship of believers. Love is a union by which one
escapes from egotism. When one reaches spiritual adulthood, one is open
for a wider love. Children live for themselves; adults cease to live
exclusively for themselves, particularly those who reach the "perfect
age" in the spirit. The combat of Baptism was, we said, a "personal"
combat: in Confirmation, the combat is "ex officio" military, and under
the orders of the chief. Baptism is principally the battle against
invisible enemies: in Confirmation, it is the battle against social
enemies, such as the persecutors of the Church.
The mystical death one undergoes in Baptism is individual: in
Confirmation, the mystical death is communal. We are prepared to die,
to be a martyr, or a witness to Christ for the sake of the "body which
is the Church." Confirmation then relates us to the community; that is
why the Spirit was given on Pentecost when all the Apostles were
assembled together with Mary in their midst.
Confirmation makes us soldiers of Christ. Soldiers do not come together
of and by themselves to constitute an army. Rather, it is the political
authority of government which summons the soldiers and constitutes them
as an army. So it is in Confirmation. The Church does not have a
spiritual military because her members volunteer for service. It is
rather that the Church makes them grow spiritually to a point where
they can carry spiritual arms and be authorized as her combatants
bearing the "breastplate of justice fitted on...the shield of
faith...the helmet of salvation...and the sword of the spirit" (Eph.
6:14, 16, 17).
The Sacrament of the Lay Apostolate
The laity are summoned by Confirmation to share in the apostolate of
the Church, to be witnesses to Christ before those who know Him not, to
be prophets or teachers in an unbelieving world and, together with the
priesthood, to offer their bodies as a reasonable sacrifice to the
Heavenly Father:
"You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a
people God means to have for Himself; it is yours to proclaim the
exploits of the God Who has called you out of darkness into His
marvelous light." (I Peter 2:9)
The laity share in the general priesthood of the Church because all are
members of Jesus the priest; but they do not share in the ministerial
or hierarchical priesthood which comes with Holy Orders, in which there
is a personal representation of Christ, such as offering the
eucharistic sacrifice and absolving sins.
The laity have a double consecration through Baptism and Confirmation,
which gives them a certain participation in the priesthood of Christ.
The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood, however, has the third and
specific consecration from Holy Orders. There are thus two sorts of
priesthood: the first is external and reserved for the hierarchical
priesthood; the second is internal and common to all the faithful.
The person who is confirmed always has a personal and, in some in-
stances, a canonical mission. He has a personal mission inasmuch as,
through his own personal contact, he must help bring other souls to
Christ--just as Andrew brought Peter, Philip brought Nathaniel, the
Samaritan woman brought her townspeople, and Philip converted the
eunuch of the Ethiopian court.
But the mission given by Confirmation requires a wider outlook than the
personal work of witnessing and converting. It is not only individual
souls, but also the milieu, the environment--the whole social order in
all its political, scientific, journalistic, medical, legal,
recreational, and economic structures which also has to be
Christianized.
This canonical mission of spiritualizing the world in an organized way
is dependent on the hierarchy and the teaching authority of the Church.
There is some communication of this teaching office in the ceremony of
the imposition of hands. The laity do not participate in the hierarchy,
but they participate in the apostolate of the hierarchy. The Apostles
and their successors have a divine mission to teach; the laity receive
from the hierarchy a canonical mission to teach.
What makes Catholic Action is not the fact that Catholics are organ-
ized, but that they have received a mission to bear witness to Christ
over and above their own personal witnessing to Christ in the holiness
of their lives. The laity are not just the Church taught; they
participate in the Church teaching. As Leo XIII said, the laity cannot
arrogate to themselves this authority, but when circumstances demand
it, they have the right to communicate to others, as echoes of the
magisterium of the Church, that which they themselves have learned. And
Pope Pius XII addressed a new group of cardinals as follows:
"The laity must have an ever clearer consciousness, not only of
belonging to the Church, but of being the Church; that is, of being the
community of the faithful on earth under the guidance of their common
leader, the Pope, and the bishops in communion with him. They are the
Church."
"The Acts of Apostles" twice shows that when the disciples were
scattered by persecution, the laity immediately began to preach God's
word and increase the Church (Acts 8:4, Acts 9:19), something that is
happening today in persecuted lands. Aquilla and his wife, Priscilla,
completed the instructions of Apollos (Acts 18:26), and later on became
the trusted helpers of St. Paul (Rom. 16:3). Apollos, who never seems
to have received any ministerial consecration, was a vigorous preacher
of Christ (Acts 18:27, 28).
There have even been laymen who taught theology. For example, John
d'Andrea was professor of canon law at Bologna from 1302 to 1348.
Wilfred G. Ward was professor of dogmatic theology at St. Edmund's
Seminary of London, England, from 1851 to 1858.
More and more, the Church is emphasizing the teaching mission conferred
by Confirmation. In mission lands, catechists number tens of thousands.
Abroad and at home, the canonical mission of teaching is conferred
implicitly on teachers when the bishops appoint them to parochial
schools.
III. THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST
A young wife, who had been taking instructions for a year, told the
writer she could believe everything in the faith except the Eucharist.
Upon inquiring about her husband, it was learned that he was in the
Pacific on military duty. In answer to further questions, she admitted
that she corresponded with him every two days and that she had his
photograph before her in the house.
We argued there was nothing wanting for perfect happiness. What more
could she want than the constant memory of him through the photograph
and a written communication in which heart poured out to heart. But she
protested that she could never be truly happy except through union with
her husband.
But, it was retorted, if human love craves oneness, shall not divine
love? If husband and wife seek to be one in the flesh, shall not the
Christian and Christ crave for that oneness with one another? The
memory of the Christ who lived twenty centuries ago, the recalling of
His mercy and miracles through memory, the correspondence with Him by
reading the Scriptures--all these are satisfying, but they do not
satisfy love. There must be, on the level of grace, something unitive
with divine love. Every heart seeks a happiness outside it, and since
perfect love is God, then the heart of man and the heart of Christ
must, in some way, fuse. In human friendship the other person is loved
as another self, or the other half of one's soul. Divine friendship
must have its mutual "indwelling": "He who dwells in love dwells in God
and God in him" (I John 4:17). This aspiration of the soul for its
ecstasy is fulfilled in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
The Eucharist: Sacrifice and Sacrament
The Sacrament of the Eucharist has two sides: it is both a sacrifice
and a sacrament. Inasmuch as biological life is nothing but a
reflection, a dim echo, and a shadow of the divine life, one can find
analogies in the natural order for the beauties of the divine. Does not
nature itself have a double aspect: a sacrifice and a sacrament? The
vegetables which are served at table, the meat which is presented on
the platter, are the natural sacraments of the body of man. By them he
lives. If they were endowed with speech, they would say: "Unless you
have communion with me, you will not live."
But if one inquires as to how the lower creation of chemicals,
vegetables or meats came to be the sacrament or the communion of man,
one is immediately introduced to the idea of sacrifice. Did not the
vegetables have to be pulled up by their roots from the earth,
submitted to the law of death, and then pass through the ordeal of fire
before they could become the sacrament of physical life, or have
communion with the body? Was not the meat on the platter once a living
thing, and was it not submitted to the knife, its blood shed on the
soil of a natural Gethsemane and Calvary before it was fit to be
presented to man?
Nature, therefore, suggests that a sacrifice must precede a sacrament;
death is the prelude to a communion. In some way, unless the thing
dies, it does not begin to live in a higher kingdom. To have, for
example, a communion service without a sacrifice would be, in the
natural order, like eating our vegetables uncooked, and our meat in the
raw. When we come face to face with the realities of life, we see that
we live by what we slay. Elevating this to the supernatural order, we
still live by what we slay. It was our sins that slew Christ on
Calvary, and yet by the power of God risen from the dead and reigning
gloriously in Heaven, He now becomes our life and has communion with us
and we with Him. In the divine order, there must be the Sacrifice or
the Consecration of the Mass before there can be the sacrament or the
Communion of the soul and God.
Relation of Baptism and the Eucharist
Baptism is the initiation to the Christian life, and corresponds in the
biological order to the beginning of life. But the birth to Divine Life
comes only through a death; that is to say, an immersion under water
which mystically symbolizes dying and being buried with Christ. The
Eucharist is a sacrifice; it also incorporates us to the Death of
Christ. Baptism, however, is a more passive representation of that
death, particularly in an infant, where the will of the infant does not
submit to it, except through the sponsors. The Eucharist is a much more
active representation of the death of Christ because the Mass is an
unbloody presentation of the sacrificial death of Christ outside the
walls of Jerusalem.
The Fathers of the Church were constantly struck by the relationship
between Baptism and the Eucharist; the blood and the water which flowed
from the side of Christ on the Cross had deep significance. Water was
the symbol of our regeneration and, therefore, betokened Baptism;
blood, the price of our Redemption, was the sign of the Eucharist.
This brings up the question, if there is a relationship to the death of
Christ in both sacraments, what is the difference between them? One of
the differences is that in Baptism and the other sacraments, except the
Eucharist, we are united to Christ simply by a participation of His
grace, but in the Eucharist, Christ exists substantially, and is really
and truly present--Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. In the Eucharist,
man realizes more fully his incorporation to the Death and Resurrection
of Christ than in Baptism. In the physical order, birth always gives
resemblance to parents; but when a mother nourishes her child, there is
a new bond established between the child and the mother. So in Baptism,
there is a resemblance to the Divine nature created, inasmuch as we are
made "other Christs"; but in the Eucharist, we receive the very
substance of Christ Himself. Because of the close relationship between
the two sacraments, the Council of Mayence in 1549 directed pastors to
administer Baptism in the morning during the course of the Mass, or at
least as soon after Mass as possible.
There is somewhat the same relationship existing between Baptism and
the Eucharist, as there is between faith and charity or perfect love.
Baptism is the sacrament of faith, because it is the foundation of the
spiritual life. The Eucharist is the sacrament of charity or love
because it is the re-enactment of the perfect act of love of Christ;
namely, His death on the Cross and the giving of Himself to us in Holy
Communion.
The Old Testament and the Eucharist
It would take pages to reveal the prefigurement of the Sacrament of the
Eucharist in the Old Testament. Melchisedech offering bread and wine
was a figure of Christ Himself, Who chose bread and wine the night of
the Last Supper as the elements for both the sacrifice and the
sacrament. The manna that fell in the desert was also a symbol of the
Eucharist, which Our Blessed Lord said was Himself: "I myself am the
living bread that has come down from heaven" (John 5:51). St. Paul,
picking up the analogy, said that what the Jews ate in the desert was a
figure of our spiritual food: "They all ate the same prophetic food....
It is we that were foreshadowed in these events (I Corinth. 10:3, 6).
The blood of the paschal lamb, sprinkled on doorposts to preserve the
Jews from destruction, was a sign not yet of a reality, but a figure of
the blood of Christ sprinkled on our souls, which would save us from
evil. Because the paschal lamb was a figure of Christ, it was on the
feast of the Passover that Our Blessed Lord gave to His Church the
Eucharist which He had promised over a year before at Capharnaum.
The Eucharist as a Sacrifice, or the Mass
The Mass has three important parts: the Offertory, the Consecration,
and the Communion. In the order of human love, these correspond to
engagement, the marriage ceremony, and the consummation of the mar-
riage. When a man becomes engaged to a woman, he generally brings her
the gift of a precious ring; it is not of tin or straw, because these
represent no sacrifice. Regardless of how much he might pay for the
ring, he would still tear off the price tag, in order that his beloved
might never establish any correspondence between the price of the gift
and his love. No matter how much he gave her, the gift to him would
seem inadequate. The ring is round in order to express the eternity of
his love which has neither beginning nor end; it is precious, because
it is a symbol of the total readiness to give his whole personality to
the beloved.
The Mass, too, has an engagement which corresponds to the Offertory of
the Mass, in which the faithful bring gifts of bread and wine, or its
equivalent, that which buys bread and wine. As the ring is a symbol of
the lover offering himself to the beloved, so too, the bread and wine
are the symbols of a person offering himself to Christ. This is
apparent in several ways: first, since bread and wine have
traditionally nourished man and given him life, in bringing that which
was the substance of his life, he is equivalently giving himself.
Second, the readiness to sacrifice himself for the beloved is revealed
in the bread and wine; no two substances have to undergo more to become
what they are than do wheat and grapes. One passes through the
Gethsemane of a mill, the other through the Calvary of the winepress
before they can be presented to the Beloved on the altar. In the
Offertory, therefore, under the appearance of bread and wine, the
faithful are offering themselves to Christ.
After the engagement comes the marriage ceremony in which the lover
sacrifices himself for the beloved, and the beloved surrenders
devotedly to the lover. The groom practically says, "My greatest
freedom is to be your slave. I give up my individuality in order to
serve you." The joining of hands in the marriage ceremony is a symbol
of the transfer of self to another self: "I am yours and you are mine.
I want to die to myself, in order to live in you, my beloved. I cannot
live unto you, unless I give up myself. So I say to you, 'This is My
Body; this is My Blood'."
In the Mass, the faithful are already present on the altar under the
appearance of bread and wine. At the moment of the Consecration of the
Mass, when the priest as Christ pronounces the words "This is My Body"
and "This is My Blood," the substance of the bread becomes the
substance of the body of Christ, and the substance of the wine becomes
the substance of the blood of Christ. At that moment, the faithful are
saying in a secondary sense with the priest: "This is my body; this is
my blood. Take it! I no longer want it for myself. The very substance
of my being, my intellect, and my will--change! Transubstantiate!--so
that my ego is lost in Thee, so that my intellect is one with Thy
Truth, and my will is one with Thy desires! I care not if the species
or appearances of my life remain; that is to say, my duties, my
avocation, my appointments in time and space. But what I am
substantially, I give to Thee."
In the human order, after the engagement and the marriage is the
consummation of the marriage. All love craves unity. Correspondence by
letter, or by speech, cannot satisfy that instinctive yearning of two
hearts to be lost in one another. There must, therefore, come some
great ecstatic moment in which love becomes too deep for words; this is
the communion of body and blood with body and blood in the oneness
which lasts not long, but is a foretaste of Heaven.
The marital act is nothing but a fragile and shadowy image of Communion
in which, after having offered ourselves under the appearance of bread
and wine and having died to our lower self, we now begin to enjoy that
ecstatic union with Christ in Holy Communion--a oneness which is, in
the language of Thompson, "a passionless passion, a wild tranquility."
This is the moment when the hungry heart communes with the Bread of
Life; this is the rapture in which is fulfilled that "love we fall just
short of in all love," and that rapture that leaves all other raptures
pain.
The Sacrifice of the Mass may be presented under another analogy.
Picture a house which had two large windows on opposite sides. One
window looks down into a valley, the other to a towering mountain. The
owner could gaze on both and somehow see that they were related: the
valley is the mountain humbled; the mountain is the valley exalted.
The Sacrifice of the Mass is something like that. Every church, in a
way, looks down on a valley, but the valley of death and humiliation in
which we see a cross. But it also looks up to a mountain, an eternal
mountain, the mountain of heaven where Christ reigns gloriously. As the
valley and the mountain are related as humiliation and exaltation, so
the Sacrifice of the Mass is related to Calvary in the valley, and to
Christ in heaven and the eternal hills.
All three, Calvary, the Mass, and the glorified Christ in heaven are
different levels of the great eternal act of love. The Christ Who
appeared in heaven as the lamb slain from the beginning of the world,
at a certain moment in time, came to this earth and offered His Life in
Redemption for the sins of men. Then He ascended into heaven where that
same eternal act of love continues, as He intercedes for humanity,
showing the scars of His Love to His heavenly Father. True, agony and
crucifixion are passing things, but the obedience and the love which
inspired them are not. In the Father's eyes, the Son-made-Man loves
always unto death. The patriot who regretted that he had only one life
to give to his country, would have loved to have made his sacrifice
eternal. Being man, he could not do it. But Christ, being God and man,
could.
The Mass, therefore, looks backward and forward. Because we live in
time and can use only earthly symbols, we see successively that which
is but one eternal movement of love. If a motion picture reel were
endowed with consciousness, it would see and understand the story at
once; but we do not grasp it until we see it unfolded upon the screen.
So it is with the love by which Christ prepared for His coming in the
Old Testament, offered Himself on Calvary, and now re-presents it in
Sacrifice in the Mass. The Mass, therefore, is not another immolation
but a new presentation of the eternal Victim and its application to us.
To assist at Mass is the same as to assist at Calvary. But there are
differences.
On the Cross, Our Lord offered Himself for all mankind; in the Mass we
make application of that death to ourselves, and unite our sacrifice
with His. The disadvantage of not having lived at the time of Christ is
nullified by the Mass. On the Cross, He potentially redeemed all
humanity; in the Mass we actualize that Redemption. Calvary happened at
a definite moment in time and on a particular hill in space. The Mass
temporalizes and spatializes that eternal act of love.
The Sacrifice of Calvary was offered up in a bloody manner by the
separation of His blood from His body. In the Mass, this death is
mystically and sacramentally presented in an unbloody manner, by the
separate consecration of bread and wine. The two are not consecrated
together by such words as "This is My Body and My Blood"; rather,
following the words of Our Lord: "This is My Body" is said over the
bread; then, "This is My Blood" is said over the wine. The separate
consecration is a kind of mystical sword dividing body and blood, which
is the way Our Lord died on Calvary.
Suppose there was an eternal broadcasting station that sent out eternal
waves of wisdom and enlightenment. People who lived in different ages
would tune in to that wisdom, assimilate it, and apply it to
themselves. Christ's eternal act of love is something to which we tune
in, as we appear in successive ages of history through the Mass. The
Mass, therefore, borrows its reality and its efficacy from Calvary and
has no meaning apart from it. He who assists at Mass lifts the Cross of
Christ out of the soil of Calvary and plants it in the center of his
own heart.
This is the only perfect act of love, sacrifice, thanksgiving, and
obedience which we can ever pay to God; namely, that which is offered
by His Divine Son Incarnate. Of and by ourselves, we cannot touch the
ceiling because we are not tall enough. Of and by ourselves, we cannot
touch God. We need a Mediator, someone who is both God and Man, Who is
Christ. No human prayer, no human act of self-denial, no human
sacrifice is sufficient to pierce Heaven. It is only the Sacrifice of
the Cross that can do so, and this is done in the Mass. As we offer it,
we hang, as it were, onto His robes, we tug at His feet at the
Ascension, we cling to His pierced hands in offering Himself to the
Heavenly Father. Being hidden in Him, our prayers and sacrifices have
His value. In the Mass we are once more at Calvary, rubbing shoulders
with Mary Magdalen and John, while mournfully looking over our
shoulders at executioners who still shake dice for the garments of the
Lord.
The priest who offers the Sacrifice merely lends to Christ his voice
and his fingers. It is Christ Who is the Priest; it is Christ Who is
the Victim. In all pagan sacrifices and in the Jewish sacrifices, the
victim was always separate from the priest. It might have been a goat,
a lamb, or a bullock. But when Christ came, He the Priest offered
Himself as the Victim. In the Mass, it is Christ Who still offers
Himself and Who is the Victim to Whom we become united. The altar,
therefore, is not related to the congregation as the stage to an
audience in the theatre. The communion rail is not the same as
footlights, which divide the drama from the onlooker. All the members
of the Church have a kind of priesthood, inasmuch as they offer up with
the Eternal Priest this eternal act of love. The laity participate in
the life and power of Christ, for "Thou hast made us a royal race of
priests to serve God" (Apoc. 5:10).
The expression, sometimes used by Catholics "to hear Mass," is an
indication of how little is understood of their active participation,
not only with Christ, but also with all of the saints and members of
the Church until the end of time. This corporate action of the Church
is indicated in certain prayers of the Mass. For example, immediately
before the Consecration, God is asked to receive the offering which "we
Thy servants and Thy whole household make unto Thee"; and after the
Consecration the faithful again say, "We Thy servants, as also Thy holy
people, do offer unto Thy most excellent majesty of Thine own gifts
bestowed on us." All participate, but the closer we are to the mystery,
the more we become one with Christ.
No man can ever come to the real fullness of his personality by
reflection or contemplation; he has to act it out. That is why through
all ages man laid his hand on the best of the herd and destroyed it in
order to indicate the offering and surrender of himself. By laying his
hands on the animal, he identified himself with it. Then he consumed
it, in order to gain some identification with the one to whom it was
offered. In the Mass, all the ancient dim foreshadowings of the supreme
sacrifice are fulfilled. Man immolates himself with Christ, bidding Him
to take his body and his blood. Through this destruction of the ego,
there is a void and an emptiness created, which makes it possible for
Divinity to fill up the vacuum and to make the offerer holy. Man dies
to the past, in order that he may live in the future. He chooses to be
united with his Divine King in some form of death, that he may share in
His Resurrection and glory. Thus dying he lives; chastened he is not
killed; sorrowful he always rejoices; giving up time, he finds
eternity. Nothingness is exchanged for everything. Poverty turns into
riches, and having nothing, he begins to possess all things.
The Eucharist as a Sacrament, or Holy Communion
Running through the universe is the law that nothing lives unless it
consumes. Plant life, obedient to this law, goes down to the earth,
eats and drinks from it its waters, phosphates, and carbonates, and
circulates them through its organism. The animal, because endowed with
a higher life than that of the plant, is in still greater need of
nourishment. It needs not only the nourishment of the mineral order,
the air, the sunlight and the like, but also the nourishment of plant
life. The instinct of the animal is to seek food. The animal roaming in
the field, the fish swimming in the water, the eagle soaring in the
air, all are in search of daily bread, for without knowing it, they
acknowledge that life is impossible without nourishment, that life
grows only by life, and that the joy of living comes from communion
with another kind of life.
Because men, as well as animals, have bodies, they are under the neces-
sity of feeding these bodies. The food for which they clamor is more
delicate because the human body is more delicate. The body is not
content, as the plant, to take its food from the ground, raw, uncooked,
and unseasoned. It seeks the refinement that comes with a higher
creature but in doing so, acknowledges the law that every living thing
must nourish itself.
Man has a soul, as well as a body. The spiritual part of him demands a
food which is above the material and the physical and the biological.
Some would call a halt to the law, that all life must nourish itself,
and assert that the soul can find its satisfying food here below
without any appeal to a higher life. But the broken minds and tortured
hearts testify to the fact that nothing can satisfy the soul hunger of
man, except a nourishment suited to his soul and its aspirations for
the perfect. A canary does not consume the same kind of food as a boa
constrictor, because its nature is different. Man's soul being
spiritual demands a spiritual food. In the order of grace, this divine
food is the Eucharist, or the communion of man with Christ and Christ
with man.
This is not something contrary to the natural law, for if the chemical
could speak, it would say to the plant: "Unless you eat me, you shall
not have life in you." If the plant could speak, it would say to the
animal: "Unless you eat me, you shall not have life in you." If the
animal, plant, and air could speak, they would say to man: "Unless you
eat me, you shall not have life in you." With the same logic, but
speaking from above and now below, because the soul is spiritual, Our
Blessed Lord actually says to the soul: "Except you eat the Flesh of
the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you shall not have life in you."
The law of transformation works consistently through nature and grace.
The lower transforms itself into the higher, the plant transforms
itself into the animal when taken as food; man is transformed by grace
into Christ when he takes Christ into his soul, for it is a quality of
love to transform itself into the object that is loved.
Why should we be surprised that He gives Himself to us as food? After
all, if He furnishes food for the birds and the beasts in the natural
order, why should He not furnish it for man in the supernatural order?
If the plant nourishes its seed before it is ripe, and if the bird
brings food to its young before they can fly, shall we deny to Him that
which we allow to a creature? To every infant at the breast, the mother
virtually says: "Take, eat and drink; this is my body and blood." The
mother would be untrue to nature if she said, "This represents my
body," knowing that it is her body. So too, the Lord would be untrue to
fact if He said: "This is not My Body and Blood. It is only a
representation or a symbol of it." The analogy with the mother,
however, breaks completely down, because here a nourishment is on the
same level, that of the human with the human. But in the Eucharist, the
nourishment is on two different levels: The divine and the human.
Union with the Life of Christ
If Christianity were only the memory of someone who lived over nineteen
hundred years ago, it would not be worth preserving. If He Who came to
this earth is not God, as well as Man, then we are dealing merely with
the fallible and the human. But even granting that He is God in the
flesh, how do we contact Him? Certainly, not by reading books about
Him, although they are edifying and instructive; obviously not by
singing hymns, though these do help us emotionally. The human heart
craves contact with the beloved. If we can have contact with nature
through the food we eat; if lower creation winds up somehow inside of
my body, why should not means be provided in order that there might be
communion of the soul? This is one of the first effects of Holy
Communion: we receive from Christ what we gave to Him. We gave to him
our human nature--when, in the name of all humanity, Mary gave Him
manhood, like unto us in all things save sin. He divinized that human
nature because it was made substantially one with His Divine Person. In
Communion, He gives it back to us, purified, regenerated, ennobled, a
promise and a pledge of what our nature is to be on the Last Day in the
resurrection of the just. Our Blessed Lord made it so clear, it is
almost difficult to understand how one misses it:
"As I live because of the Father, the Living Father who has sent me, so
he who eats me will live, in his turn, because of me." (John 6:58)
"...That they may all be one; that they too may be one in us, as thou
Father, art in me, and I in thee; so that the world may come to believe
that it is thou who has sent me. And I have given them the privilege
which thou gavest to me, that they should all be one as we are one."
(John 17:21, 22)
In the natural order, a living thing assimilates its food and
incorporates it into its own substance. In the Eucharist, the roles are
reversed. The Eucharist is food for our soul, but the power of
assimilation here belongs to Christ, and it is He Who, feeding us,
unites us and incorporates us with His life. It is not Christ Who is
changed into us, as is the food we eat; it is we who are incorporated
in Him. With John the Baptist we say: "He must become more and more; I
must become less and less."
The moment of communion is that special intimacy reserved to real
lovers. There are three intimacies in life: hearing, speaking, and
touching. Our first contact with anyone who loves us is to hear his
voice, our second is to see him, the third--and this is reserved only
for intimates--is the privilege of touch. We hear of Christ in the
Scriptures, we see Him by the eyes of faith, but we touch Him in the
Eucharist. He only asks that we should purge our consciences of sin and
come to Him, ready to receive what He wants to give us for He knows
that we need Him.
Second Effect: Union with the Death of Christ
Holy Communion is incorporation not only to the life of Christ, but
also to His death. This second aspect is sometimes forgotten. St. Paul
mentions it: "So it is the Lord's death that you are heralding,
whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, until he comes" (I
Corinth. 11:26). In another place, St. Paul tells us that we are to
fill up in our own body that which is wanting to the Passion of Christ.
To save our souls, the life of Christ must be duplicated in our own
life. What He did in His birth, at Calvary, in His Resurrection, and
Ascension, we must do. But we cannot enter into those heavenly
blessings except through the touch of the Cross, namely, through
penance, mortification, and self-denial, and a death to our egotism.
Hence, the Church insists that we be in the state of grace in order to
receive Our Lord in the Eucharist. As a corpse cannot receive
nourishment, so neither may one without the divine life in his soul
receive the divine nourishment. In addition to this, the Church demands
a certain amount of fasting before Communion. This is to remind us that
the Eucharist is not only a sacrament of life, but also the sacrament
of mortification. Only when we are stamped with the sign of the Cross
will we be stamped with the glory of His Resurrection. From the moment
of His death on Calvary until the end of time when He comes in glory,
the dying Christ is continually at work representing His death on the
altar, and urging us to represent it in our detachment from the seven
pallbearers of the soul--the seven capital sins.
We are the wax and He is the seal. He wants to see something of His
victimhood in us; and it is up to every Christian, therefore, to lead a
dying life: to be more humble when we are thwarted, more patient when
things go wrong, dying a little to the world and to our selfishness,
being ever happy to "herald His death in our body until He comes."
Third Effect: Communion with the Mystical Body of Christ
No one was ever so wrong as the professor who said: "Religion is what a
man does with his solitariness." If man is solitary, he is like a cell
that is isolated from the body. The body can live without an individual
cell, but the cell cannot live without the body. No man can live the
divine life without some incorporation either in fact, or in desire,
with the Mystical Body of Christ which is the Church. But the Mystical
Body of Christ can live without an individual member. Our Blessed Lord
described our union with Himself the night He gave the Eucharist, as
that of the "vine and the branches." St. Paul speaks of us, too, as
being many and yet one because we all eat the one bread. There is no
autonomic individualism in the Scriptures or in humanity. The whole
historical existence is transformed; that is to say, both humanity and
the visible creation. The first was transformed through the
Incarnation; the second, through the sacraments and its symbols which
animate personality.
As there is a lymph which passes through the human body, each cell
drinking of that life; so too, the Eucharist is the Divine lymph of the
Mystical Body of Christ on which every member feeds. The members of the
Church are not little spiritual islands each cherishing its own
isolation. What blood plasma is to the physical body, the Eucharist is
to the Mystical Body--the bond of its unity: "The one bread makes us
one body, though we are many in number" (I Corinth. 10:17).
The Tabernacle
The Blessed Sacrament is present in the Tabernacle day and night. There
Christ dwells, body, blood, soul, and divinity, under the sacramental
appearances of bread. How do we know it? Because Christ told us so! Is
there any other fundamental evidence? None other than that; but is
there any other reason in the world as strong as the word of God
Himself? Hence, the Eucharist is above all other sacraments--it is the
sacrament of faith.
The faithful believe that Christ is as really and truly present sacra-
mentally in the Tabernacle as you are present while you read this book.
It is this that makes the Church different from any other building. Not
a pulpit, not an organ, not a choir, but Christ is the center. As the
tabernacle was the center of worship in the Old Testament, so the
tabernacle and the altar are the center of worship in the New
Testament. Visitors to the Church say they "feel the difference,"
though they know nothing about the Eucharist, as they might feel heat
and know not the nature of fire. But to the faithful members of
Christ's Mystical Body, here is Christ! Before His Eucharistic
presence, the downcast eyes of sin find wealth of purging tears; here
the heart wounded by betraying loves breaks its silence to the
invitation of the Living Savior: "Child, give Me thy heart." Here the
knee is humbled in genuflection and the heart exalted in adoration;
here priests make their "Holy Hour" in answer to the invitation of
their Lord in the Garden. Here is the trysting place of love, for this
is the "bread which is come down from heaven" (John 6:41-2) and will
remain with us "unto the consummation of the world" (Matt. 28:20). Here
Emmaus lives again as His disciples recognize Him in the breaking of
the bread.
IV. THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE
The Sacrament of Penance is for spiritual wounds received after
Baptism. Original sin was washed from the infant in Baptism, and in the
case of the adult, personal sins as well. But the Lord is "practical."
He knows that the white robe given in Baptism is not always kept
immaculate; that the "just man falleth seven times a day," and that the
offenses against us should be forgiven "seventy times seven."
Therefore, in His mercy, He instituted a sacrament which is a tribunal
of mercy for spiritual healing.
There have been those who say that there is no difference between the
Sacrament of Penance and psychoanalysis because, in both, the human
mind, when disturbed, seeks to throw off its burden. True it is that as
the hand will go to the eye to provide relief from a speck, so the
tongue will come to the aid of the heart to secure relief. As
Shakespeare put it: "My tongue will tell the anger of my heart; Or else
my heart, concealing it, will break." We are not here criticizing the
psychoanalytic method, but only the error of saying that there is no
difference between it and the Sacrament of Penance. But the differences
between psychoanalysis and confession are enormous.
Contrast of Psychoanalysis and Confession
Psychoanalysis is the avowal of an attitude of mind; confession is an
avowal of guilt. The first comes from the subconsciousness, the other
from conscience. A person can be proud of his state of mind; some are
proud of being atheists, or immoral, or gangsters. Many a patient will
tell a psychiatrist, "Have you ever heard a case like mine, Doctor?" On
the contrary, no one is ever proud of his guilt. Even in isolation, the
sinner is ashamed. It takes no courage to admit that one is "mental"
but guiltless; but it takes a tremendous amount of heroism, of which
few are capable, to take the burden of one's own guilt to Calvary and
lay one's hands at the feet of the Crucified and say: "I am responsible
for this."
Psychoanalysis proceeds according to a theory, and not always one
theory. Confession, however, is based upon conformity or non-conformity
to the absolute standard of the law of God. Psychoanalysis does not
agree on a particular theory by which a mental state is to be judged.
There are three main theories: one attributes mental disturbances to
sex (Freud); another to an inferiority complex (Adler); and the third
to a drive toward security (Jung). The analyst, because he is guided by
a theory, is never required to have any moral fitness for his task; his
personal ethical right to receive confidences is never raised. He may
be living with his sixth wife, and yet advise people how to be happy in
marriage.
But in confession, it is different. The deliverances of the penitent
are always on the moral plane--not on the psychological. The penitent
knows that he is before a judgment, not a theory, and that the
confessor who hears his sins stands in the place of God. Because the
priest is the mediator between God and man, the Church always asks that
the priest who absolves the penitent be himself in the state of grace;
that is to say, a participant in divine life. The avowal of guilt,
therefore, on the part of the penitent is not subject to the individual
whims, theories, idiosyncrasies, and kinks of the one who hears it, but
to the divine law, and to the order and the moral standards of Christ
Who taught that one must be holy to make holy.
A third difference is that in psychoanalysis, there is the probing by
an alien or outside mind; in confession, it is the penitent himself who
is his own prosecuting attorney and even his own judge. In analysis,
there is often a seeking out of attitudes to bolster up a theory; but
in a spontaneous confession, the penitent analyzes his own faults and
confesses them without having them wander and riot in "free
association" and then be submitted to "private interpretation of the
subconscious" which took the place of private interpretation of the
Bible. Man naturally accords pardon to others who have done injury by a
simple avowal of faults, without someone else dragging them out. One
indispensable condition of receiving pardon in the sacrament is this
open avowal of guilt, such as the prodigal son made when he returned
again to the father's house.
Another difference is that what is told in the confessional is
absolutely secret, and may never be divulged, or made part of a book,
or turned into a case history, such as is often done with the material
that is brought out in a psychoanalytic examination. The offenses man
commits against God do not belong to any man; hence, he may not make
use of them. The material of confession belongs to God, and sins may
never be revealed by the confessor until God does so on the Day of
Judgment. The confessor's ears are God's ears, and his tongue may never
speak what God has heard through his ears.
Another difference is in the attitude that a person assumes in confes-
sion and psychoanalysis. In one instance, the mentally disturbed person
is on a couch; in confession, he is on his knees. There is a passivity
about the admission of a mental state on a couch; but there is a humble
activity on the part of one who admits moral guilt while on his knees.
In the psychological examination, there is never any such thing as
contrition or satisfaction. In confession, sorrow and the making up for
our sins are integral parts of the sacrament. When one sees a string of
confessional boxes in a large church, with feet protruding from under
the curtains like wiggling worms, one realizes that man has reduced
himself almost to the humble state of the worm, in order that he might
rise again, restored to the glorious friendship of the Christ Who died
for him.
A final and important difference between psychoanalysis and confession
is this: in psychoanalysis, the admission of mental states comes from
ourselves; in confession, the impetus or the desire to confess our sins
is from the Holy Spirit. The night of the Last Supper, Our Blessed Lord
said that He would send His Spirit to convict the world of sin (John
16:8). It is only through the Spirit of Christ that we know we are
sinners, as we see our lives in relationship to the Cross. The Holy
Spirit summons the soul to find its way back to the shelter of the
Father's arms. When a person is in sin, he is in exile from home, a
dweller in a foreign land who looks forward to the joy of return. It is
an urge to share in the joy of the Good Shepherd as he carries back the
lost sheep and the straying lamb to the sheepfold of the Church.
The reason this summons must come from God is that we are captives of
sin. Just as a prisoner cannot release himself from the chafing bars or
chains, so neither can the sinner without the power of the Spirit. To
God alone belongs the initiative in this sacrament. It is His voice
which calls us to repentance. We may make our confessions because our
conscience urges us to do so, but the voice that speaks to us is the
voice of the Holy Spirit telling us of God's mercy and love and
righteousness. Under the impetus of the Holy Spirit, the soul feels
like Lazarus risen from the dead.
Two Basic Requirements for the Sacrament
In order that there might be a Sacrament of Penance, two things are
required, both of which are, from a human point of view, almost
impossible to find. First, one must create the penitent and, secondly,
one must create a confessor. To create a penitent, one must take a man
in his pride, enveloped in a glacial silence, which refuses to unburden
its guilt, and say to him: "Thou shalt come to a man and kneel before
him--a man who is perhaps no better than you are--and you shall tell
him what you hide from yourself and your children. You shall tell him
that which makes you blush; and you shall do all of this on your
knees."
However difficult it may be to create a penitent who will confess
everything with a firm purpose of amendment, it is even more difficult
to create the confessor. Where find one empowered by God with authority
to forgive sins? How train the human heart to heal the wounds of
others, and then seal his lips forever that what he has learned as
God's representative be never revealed to men?
Only God could bring these two creations together, for outside of His
power and mercy, we would say: "Humanity is too proud, you will never
have penitents"; "Humanity is too indiscreet, you will never have con-
fessors." And yet the sacrament exists. There are penitents because
there are confessors, and there are penitents and confessors because
Christ is God.
The Sacrament Deals with Sins
When a baby is born, it is generally healthy; but as time goes on, it
becomes subject to diseases and organic troubles which oppress and tor-
ment life. In the spiritual order, too, though the soul is made clean
and free from all sin by Baptism, it nevertheless contracts stains and
spiritual diseases during life. These are known as sins. If the sin is
serious enough to rupture the divine life within, then it is called
"mortal" because it brings death to the life of Christ in the soul. If
the wrong done does not destroy the divine life, but only injures it,
it is called "venial."
A serious sin always produces in the soul a three-fold effect. The
first is self-estrangement. A sinner feels in his inmost being like a
battlefield where a civil war rages. He no longer is a unit but a
duality in which two forces within him struggle for mastery.
Serious sin estranges the sinner from his fellow man, because a man who
is not at peace with himself will not be at peace with his neighbor.
World wars are nothing but the projection, into great areas of the
earth's surface, of the psychic wars waging inside of muddled souls. If
there were no battles going on inside of hearts, there would be no
battlefields in the world. It was after Cain's murder of Abel that he
asked the anti-social question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
The most serious effect of sin is not alienation from self and from
fellow man; it is the estrangement from God. Inasmuch as grace is the
divine life within the soul, it follows that a serious sin is the
destruction of that divine life. That is why the "Epistle to the
Hebrews" asks: "Would they crucify the Son of God a second time, hold
Him up to mockery a second time, for their own ends?" (Heb. 6:6) Sin,
therefore, is a second death. The merits we gained are lost; but those
merits can be regained, thanks to the mercy of God, in the Sacrament of
Penance.
Instituted by Christ
The Sacrament of Penance was instituted by Christ in the form of a
judgment, for the remission, through sacramental absolution, of sins
committed after Baptism and granted to a contrite person confessing his
sins.
All through the Old Testament there was a preparation for this
sacrament, inasmuch as God strove to induce men to acknowledge their
sins before Him. To elicit a confession, God said to Adam: "Hast thou
eaten of the tree?" God said to the first murderer: "Where is thy
brother?" In Mosaic legislation, a sinner brought a sin offering, which
was burned in a public place, to show that the sinner was not afraid to
admit his guilt. The prophet, Nathan, heard David's confession after
his sin with Bethsabee, and assigned to him a penance. John the Baptist
heard the confession of those who came to hear him preach. These were
only types and figures of the sacrament that was to come, because
forgiveness became possible only through the merits of Our Lord's
Passion.
No one questions the fact that Our Blessed Lord had the power to
forgive sins. The Gospels record the miraculous cure of the paralytic
at Capharnaum. Our Lord first told the paralytic that his sins were
forgiven him, whereupon those round about laughed at Him. In response
the Savior told them that it was just as easy to cure the man as it was
to forgive his sins; so He cured the paralytic: "To convince you that
the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins while He is on earth"
(Mark 2:10).
Our Blessed Lord was saying that God in the form of Man had the power
to forgive sins; that is to say, through the instrumentality of the
human nature, which He received from Mary, He was forgiving sins. Here
is an anticipation of the fact that it is through humanity that He will
continue to forgive sins; i.e., through those who are endowed with
sacramental power to do so. Man cannot forgive sins, but God can
forgive sins through man.
Our Lord promised to confer this power of forgiveness, first of all, to
Peter whom He made the rock of the Church. He told Peter that He would
ratify in heaven the decisions which Peter took on earth. These
decisions were explained in two metaphors of "binding" and "loosing."
The power of jurisdiction was given to the one who had the keys of the
kingdom. This promise made to Peter was followed up a little later on
by one made to the Apostles. The second promise did not bestow the
primacy, for that was reserved to Peter. Our Lord told the Apostles:
"I came upon an errand from my Father, and now I am sending you out in
my turn. With that, he breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the
Holy Spirit; when you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven, when you
hold them bound, they are held bound." (John 20:21-23)
Our Divine Redeemer here says that He was sent by the Father; now He
sends them with the power to forgive or not forgive. These words imply
"hearing confessions," because how would the priests of the Church know
which sins to forgive and which sins not to forgive if they did not
hear them?
One can be very sure that this sacrament is not of human institution,
for if the Church had invented any of the sacraments, there is one that
it certainly would have done away with, and that is the Sacrament of
Penance. This because of the trials that it imposes upon those who have
to hear confessions, sitting in the confessional box for long hours
while listening to the terrific monotony of fallen human nature.
Because it is a divine institution--what a beautiful opportunity it is
to restore peace to sinners and to make them saints!
It may be asked, why did Our Lord demand a telling of sins? Why not
bury one's head in one's handkerchief, and tell God that one is sorry?
Well, if this method of being sorry is not effective when we are caught
by a traffic policeman, why should it be effective with God? Shedding
tears in one's handkerchief is no test of sorrow, because we are then
the judges. Who would ever be sentenced to prison, if every man were
his own judge? How easy it would be for murderers and thieves to escape
justice and judgment simply by having a handkerchief ready!
Because sin is pride, it demands a humiliation, and there is no greater
humiliation than unburdening one's soul to a fellow man. Such self-
revelation cures us of many a moral illness. Hurtful things often hurt
more if they are shut up. A boil can be cured, if lanced to release the
pus; so too is a soul on the pathway to the Father's House when it
admits to its own sin and seeks forgiveness. All nature suggests an
unburdening of oneself. If the stomach takes a foreign substance into
it which it cannot assimilate, it throws it off; so it is with the
soul. It seeks deliverance from that which troubles it, namely the
unbearable repartee within.
Furthermore, when a sin is avowed and admitted, it loses its tenacity.
Sin is seen in all its horror when viewed in relationship to the
Crucifixion. Suppress a sin, and it becomes buried, and later on will
come out in complexes. It is very much like keeping the cap on a tube
of toothpaste. If one submits it to great pressure, the toothpaste will
come out somewhere; one does not know where. The normal place for it to
come out is through the top. So too, if we suppress our guilt or deny
it, we put our mind under pressure and it creates abnormalities. The
guilt does not come out where it ought to be, namely, in the sacrament.
Thus it was that Lady Macbeth's guilt came out in the washing of hands.
It should have been her soul that was washed, and not her hands.
Confession to a Priest
It may be asked, why confess one's sins to a priest? Maybe he is not as
holy as the penitent. That indeed could be. But though he is not holier
in his person, he is holier in his powers, because Christ gave this
power to His Church--only the Church claims it, and only the Church
exercises it. The mayor of a town may not be as good as some of the
citizens, but he has the power which the citizens do not; so it is with
the priest.
Furthermore, it is not the priest who absolves: he is only the
instrument of Christ. Can man of and by himself forgive sins? No! Can
man united to God forgive sins? Yes! That is the way Christ the Son of
God forgave sins through His human nature. That is the way He forgave
the sins of Magdalen; that was the way He forgave the sins of the
paralytic, that was the way He forgave the sins of the thief on the
right. That power He gave to His Church.
Because the priest acts in Christ's name, he is bound by the seal of
confession. Not even under the penalty of death may he reveal sins that
are confided to him in confession. As a person, he has not heard any
sins. They are not a part of his knowledge. It was Christ Who heard the
sin and He alone has knowledge of it. Suppose a murderer came into a
rectory and confessed to a priest. On leaving the priest, the murderer
shook hands with him. After the murderer left, the police entered,
found blood on the priest's hands and accused him of the murder. The
priest could not say: "It was the man who just went out. I did not do
it." He may not make any defense of himself, nor may a priest outside
the confessional ever speak to that person about his sins. For example,
he may not say to a penitent whom he meets on the street, "Oh, did you
ever pay back the hundred dollars you stole?" If someone stole money
from a drawer in my desk, and then came and confessed the stealing of
money; I could order the money returned, but I would not be permitted
to lock the drawer, because that was information which I gained in
God's sacrament.
Another reason for confessing sins to a priest is that no one sin is
individual. We are members of the Mystical Body of Christ. If one
member is unhealthy, the whole body is unhealthy. If we have an
earache, the whole body suffers. Now, every personal sin has a social
effect: all the other cells of the body of the Church are affected
because of the defect in this one cell. Every sinner is blameworthy,
not only in regard to himself, but also in regard to the Church, and
first and foremost to God. If he is ever to recover, it can only be by
the intervention of the Church, and by an intervention of God.
No medicine will act on a member of the body, unless the body co-
operates in some way with the medicine. Because every sin is against
God and the Church, it follows that a representative of God and His
Mystical Body must restore the sinner again to fellowship. The priest,
acting as the representative of the Church, welcomes back the penitent
to the community of believers. When Our Blessed Lord found the lost
sheep, He immediately integrated them again into His flock:
"Jesus was to die for the sake of the nation; and not only for that
nation s sake, but so as to bring together into one all God's children,
scattered far and wide." (John 11:52)
The priest re-establishes the sinner in grace; he restores the sinner
to his rights as a son of the Eternal Father; he reconciles him not
only to God, but also to God's society of the Church.
The social nature of Penance is seen further in the fact that the
penitent recognizes the right of the Mystical Body to judge him, since
it is through the Mystical Body he is in relation with God. Forgiveness
of sin, then, is not just a matter between God and our individual
souls. It is the Church which has been injured by transgressions.
Therefore, our sins are not just our concern, they are the concern of
the whole Church--the Church Militant on earth and the Church
Triumphant in heaven.
The Examination of Conscience
Before the penitent goes into the confessional box, there is the
examination of conscience. This used to be a daily practice of
Christians, and still is among many. It was not even unknown to the
pagans. The Stoics, for example, recommended it. The examination of
conscience centers not only on the wrong we have done, but also on the
motivations. Our Blessed Lord, examining the conscience of the
Pharisees, called them "whited sepulchres, clean on the outside, but on
the inside full of dead men's bones." He pierced beneath the
pretensions and hypocrisies of their prayers, their almsgivings, and
their philanthropies, saying they did these things to be seen by men
and to have a human reward--and that is the only reward they will ever
receive. So in the examination of conscience, all the thoughts, words,
and deeds of the soul are brought to the surface, examined, and
considered in conformity with the law of God.
One of the differences between psychoanalytic examination and exam-
ination of conscience is that in the former one stands in one's own
light; in the examination of conscience, one stands in the light of
God. That is why Scripture says, "Search my soul, O my God." The divine
light looks into the mind, takes the mind off itself and its own false
judgments, and makes things appear as they really are; at the end, one
does not say, "Oh, what a fool I've been," but rather, "God, be
merciful to me, a sinner."
A day comes when the abused conscience will turn with fury and harass
its victim, tormenting his waking life and making his dreams a poison
and his darkness a nightmare. When night gives inner vision scope, the
guilty conscience lies awake fearful of being known in its ugliness.
There is nothing that so much arouses an unhealthy fear as a hidden
guilt. As the cock crowed when Peter denied Our Lord, so our nature
rises in revolt against us when we have denied the Lord of conscience.
Sins have a way of finding us out. Just as a refusal to study in
childhood begets an ignorance in mature life, so too, sins which we
rationalize away are thrust down into unconsciousness, but somehow they
make themselves felt in our health, our mental attitudes and our
general outlook on life.
Alongside every human being there are three pools, each of which gives
a different reflection. We look into one pool and we are pleased with
ourselves, because in that pool we see ourselves as we think we are. In
the second pool, we see ourselves as our neighbor sees us, or as our
press clippings reveal us. In the third pool, we see ourselves as God
sees us, and as we really are. It is into this third pool that
examination of conscience takes us, bringing to the surface the hidden
faults of the day, discovering the weeds that are choking the growth of
God's grace, our sins of omission and commission, the good deeds left
undone, the failure to aid a needy neighbor, the refusal to offer a
word of consolation to one burdened with sorrow, and malicious remarks,
lies, acts of dishonesty, and the seven sins which are the enemy of
peace: self-love, inordinate love of money, illicit sex, hate,
over-indulgence, jealousy, and laziness.
Examination of conscience also embraces what is called our predominant
passion. Every person has one sin which he commits more than another.
Examination of conscience roots out all our self-deception, for every
person has a little corner in his heart he never wants anyone to
venture into, even with a candle. We say we are following our
consciences, when actually what we mean is that we are making our
consciences, and then following what we made. It is this kind of deceit
that is unveiled in the examination and, by curing us of
self-deception, it cures us of depression. Depression comes not from
having faults, but from refusing to face them. What else is self-pity
but a total unconcern with the interests of others?
It must not be thought that in the examination of conscience one con-
centrates on his own wounds; rather he concentrates on the mercy of
God. A sick person thinks less of his own sickness than the physician
who will heal him. The examination of conscience develops no complex,
because it is done in the light of God's justice. The self is not the
standard, nor is it the source of hope. All human frailty and human
weakness are seen in the light of God's infinite goodness. Sorrow is
aroused, not because a code has been violated, but because love has
been wounded. As an empty pantry drives the housewife to the bakery, so
the empty soul is driven to the bread of life. Examination of
conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, becomes an occasion of joy.
There are two ways of knowing how good God is: one is never to lose Him
through the preservation of innocence; the other is to find Him again
after He has been lost. There is no self-loathing, there is only a
God-loving character about the examination of conscience. We put
ourselves in God's hand as we would put a broken watch in the hand of a
watch maker, certain that he will not ruin it, but will make it
function well.
The closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting
reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it
as a daub. It is true that we do find ourselves quite unlovable in the
examination of conscience, but it is this that makes us want to love
God because He is the only One Who loves the unlovable.
When one has finished the examination of conscience, there may be a
load to drag into the confessional, which is sometimes called the
"box." If it is a "box," it is not Pandora's for at the bottom of it is
hope. Then we realize that we are bringing it to Christ Himself. It is
wonderful to know that there is one place where we can taste the
freedom of heaven, where a man can be spared the hypocrisy of
maintaining a pose. There comes the joy of knowing that neither the
penitent nor the priest ever recalls the sin confessed. A shutter
drops. Something is put into a well, and a cover is laid on it forever.
In the early Church, sins which were committed publicly were confessed
publicly. This survives in the "Roman Pontifical," in a ceremony called
"The Expulsion of Public Penitents on Ash Wednesday"; another ceremony
is called, "The Reconciliation of Penitents on Maundy Thursday"; and
still another special rite is used for the absolution of those who have
been publicly excommunicated. Though public sins in the early Church
were confessed publicly, secret sins were confessed secretly and under
the seal.
Sorrow for Sin: Contrition
The other sacraments demand that the subject has proper dispositions,
but they do not constitute the matter of the sacrament. In Penance,
sorrow is not only a condition, it is the matter itself; for without
the sorrow for sin, forgiveness is not granted.
The priest gives absolution from sins in the sacrament provided there
is sufficient sorrow of mind, or contrition, which is a hatred of the
sin committed with the resolution not to sin again. The word contrition
is taken from the Latin word which means to grind or pulverize; in an
applied sense, it means being bruised in heart. Contrition is a sorrow
of mind, not an emotional outburst or psychological remorse.
The prodigal son had gone through many emotional stages of remorse,
particularly when he was feeding the swine, or realizing how much
better the servants in his father's house were. But the real sorrow did
not come until it penetrated his soul with the resolution: "I will
arise and go to my father."
Sometimes it is said that all a Catholic has to do is go to Confession
and admit his sins, and he will come out white as snow and then
continue committing the same sins. This is a libel upon the sacrament
for, where there is no purpose of amendment, there is no sorrow. The
sins of such a penitent are not forgiven. The sorrow for sin
necessarily includes a resolution not to sin again; this is not merely
a wish which has no relationship to practice. Part of the act of
contrition contains this amendment: "And I firmly resolve with the help
of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and amend my life.
Amen." It means that here and now we take the resolution not to sin; we
resolve to take all the means necessary for avoiding sin in the future,
such as prayer and staying away from the occasions of sin. The
absolution will not be efficacious if there is not in the sorrow this
essential element, a purpose of amendment.
This does not imply an absolute certitude that no one will ever sin
again, for that would be presumption. There are two ways to verify a
firm purpose: one is to make up for the sin as soon as possible; for
example, if one is guilty of sarcastic remarks against a neighbor, to
seek the neighbor's pardon or, if one has stolen, to return what has
been stolen. The second is to avoid the occasions of sin, such as bad
reading, evil companions, drinking parties, or any act that previously
led us into sin.
There are two kinds of contrition: perfect and imperfect. Both are
implied in the Act of Contrition which the penitent says in the confes-
sional:
"And I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the
pains of Hell," [imperfect sorrow]; "but most of all because they
offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love"
[perfect sorrow].
Two kinds of fear serve as the basis of distinction between the two
kinds of contrition or sorrow: one is a servile fear, the other is a
filial fear. A servile fear is a fear of punishment, which we justly
deserve from a master whom we disobeyed. Filial fear is the fear that a
devoted son might have for a loving father; namely, the fear of
injuring him. Applying this to contrition, servile fear draws us toward
God because of the dread of a punishment for sin, namely, hell. Filial
fear is a dread of being separated from God, or of offending Him Whom
we love.
Imagine twins who had disobeyed a mother in exactly the same way. One
of the twins runs to the mother and says: "Oh, Mommy, I am sorry I
disobeyed. Now I can't go to the picnic, can I?" The other one throws
her arms around the mother's neck and weeps: "I'll never hurt you
again." The first has imperfect contrition, the second perfect
contrition.
Which kind of contrition, perfect or imperfect, is sufficient in sacra-
mental Confession? Imperfect contrition is sufficient, though it is our
belief that most penitents are sorry not because of the punishment
their sins deserve from God, but rather because they heartily are sorry
for having recrucified Christ in their hearts.
Suppose, however, that a person is in a state of mortal sin and is
unable to go to confession; for example, a soldier who is ordered into
battle. Would imperfect contrition then suffice for the forgiveness of
sins? No, but perfect contrition would, if he had the resolution to
receive sacramental confession at the earliest opportunity.
That makes a word about perfect contrition more imperative. The usual
attitude of penitents is to make a personal equation between their own
sins and the Crucifixion. Each one says in his heart as he receives the
sacrament: "If I had been less proud, the crown of thorns would have
been less piercing. If I had been less avaricious and greedy, His hands
would have been dug less by the steel. If I had been less sensual, His
flesh would not be hanging from Him like purple rags. If I had not
wandered away like a lost sheep, in the perversity of my egotism, His
feet would have been less driven with nails. I am sorry, not just
because I broke a law: I am sorry because I wounded Him Who died out of
love for me."
Our Lord had to die on the Cross before the abysmal dimensions of sin
could be appreciated. We do not see the horror of sin in the crimes
paraded in the press, nor in the great crises of history, nor in the
wholesale violence of persecutors. We see what evil is only when we see
Goodness nailed to the Cross. If any of us says in our heart, "I am not
as bad as those who crucified Him," we are forgetting that they did not
crucify Our Lord; sin did. They were our representatives, our
ambassadors, that day at the court of Satan. We empowered them with the
right to crucify.
One look at the crucifix, therefore, is a double revelation! A
revelation of the horror of sin and the love of God. The worst thing
that sin can do is not to kill children or bomb cities in nuclear
warfare; the worst thing that sin can do is to crucify divine love. And
the most beautiful thing that Love can do, at the moment of
crucifixion, is to extend to us forgiveness in the priestly prayer to
His heavenly Father: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
In perfect contrition, we become tremendously impressed with the
infinite endurance of Our Lord to suffer the worst that evil can
inflict, and then pardon his enemies. He certainly did not teach us to
be indifferent to sin, because He took its full consequences upon
Himself. He paid for it, but on the other hand, there was mercy with
that justice. He offered forgiveness in the hope that we would repent
out of gratitude for His payment of the debt which our sins created.
Satisfaction
Satisfaction for sins, or what is sometimes called "penance," is
distinct from sorrow. Few dwell sufficiently on the difference between
being forgiven and atoning for the sin which was forgiven.
Suppose I stole your purse in the course of a conversation, and then I
said to myself: "What a scandal I am to this person. I am supposed to
bring justice and the love of God, and here I violate God's law of
justice, impugn His mercy, and nail Him to the Cross by stealing the
purse." So I say to you, "Will you forgive me?" In your kindness, you
would certainly say: "I forgive you." But you would also say something
else, would you not? Would you not say, "Give me back my purse?" Could
I really say that I was sorry unless I returned the purse?
There is a story told, which is sheer imagination with no basis in
fact, about a man who came to confession to a priest. During the course
of the confession, he stole the priest's watch. At the end of the
confession, he said to the priest: "Oh, Father, I forgot to tell you. I
stole a watch." The priest, emphasizing the necessity of satisfaction,
said: "You must return the watch to the owner." The penitent said:
"I'll give it to you, Father." The priest said: "No, I don't want it.
Return it to the owner." The penitent said: "The owner doesn't want
it." The priest said to him: "Well, in that case, you can keep it."
Immediately one can see some of the fallacies. First, there was no real
sorrow in confession; otherwise, he would not have added a sin while
confessing others. Second, there was deceit in his satisfaction. There
must always be satisfaction for sin, because every sin disturbs the
order of God. Sin upsets a balance. It is to no purpose to say, "Don't
cry over spilled milk," just because we happen to have spilled someone
else's milk. If we cannot gather up the spilled milk, we can at least
pay for the bottle, or buy some more milk.
At the end of the confession, the priest gives to the penitent what is
called a "penance," a certain number of prayers to say, or fasting, or
the giving of alms, or acts of mortification, or a way of the Cross, or
a rosary. All of these are to "make up" for the sin, and to prove that
the sorrow was sincere. This is what Catholics call "saying my penance"
or "doing my penance."
God does not ask us to make an exact reparation for our sins, but
rather to do it in a proportional manner. This is because the Sacrament
of Penance is less a tribunal of strict justice than a reconciliation
between friends. The priest, representing Christ, is not a judge
sentencing a criminal to prison. The penitent is not an enemy. He is a
reconciled friend, and the reparation, penance, or satisfaction is the
work of friendship between members of Christ's Mystical Body. The
penance also has a medicinal value, that of healing the wounds of the
soul, which is why it has to be performed in a state of grace. Our Lord
forgave our sins on the Cross, but He paid for them in justice. Our
Lord forgave the thief on the right, but He did not stop his
crucifixion. The pain the thief endured was a reparation for his evil
life. Penance is a sign that we are applying Christ's death on Calvary
to ourselves.
Here the Sacrament of Penance differs from the Sacrament of Baptism. In
Baptism, the merits of Christ's Passion are applied to ourselves
without any action on our part; but in the Sacrament of Penance, we
make some satisfaction. Power and efficacy are given to our acts,
because they are united with the Passion of Christ. There are two debts
to be paid for sin. One is the eternal debt, which is hell; and the
other is the temporal debt, or atoning in our lifetime for our
imperfections and our want of charity, after our sin has been forgiven.
The eternal debt of hell is completely remitted in the sacrament. The
temporal debt for sin remains.
In Scripture, we find records of people being forgiven, for whom a
temporal punishment remains. Adam and Eve were restored to grace, but
they were made subject to death. Miriam, the sister of Moses, gained
forgiveness for her sin, but she was shut out from the camp for seven
days and afflicted with leprosy. Moses was forgiven, but was punished
for his lack of trust in God by being excluded from the Land of
Promise. David's sin with Bethsabee was forgiven, but he had to suffer
misfortunes for it, and the child died as a punishment.
That is why St. Paul urges us to take on voluntary penances that we may
"help to pay off the debt which the afflictions of Christ still leave
to be paid, for the sake of His Body, the Church." Daniel consoled
Nabuchodonosor with the words: "Deign my lord king, to be advised by
me; with almsgiving, with mercy to the poor, for fault and wrong-doing
of thine, make amends; it may be that he will condone thy guilt"
(Daniel 4:24). And Joel writes: "Time now, the Lord says, to turn the
whole bent of your hearts back to me, with fasting and mourners' tears"
(Joel 2:12). Did not Our Lord say of certain cities that they would be
condemned because in them "were done most of His miracles, but for that
they had not done penance (Matt. 9:20).
Penances given after confession are generally light. Some say they are
too light. But we must not forget indulgences. To understand them, we
should recall that we are members of Christ's Mystical Body. When we do
evil, or commit sin, we affect every member of the Church in some way.
This is even done in our most secret sins. It is evident that we do it
in stealing, murder, and adultery; but we do it even in our solitary
sins, even in our evil thoughts. How? By diminishing in some way the
content of charity and love within the whole Mystical Body. Just as a
pain in the eye affects the whole organism and makes us hurt all over
so, if I love Christ less, do I impair the spiritual well-being of the
Church.
But because I can harm the Church by my sin, so can I be helped by the
Church when I am in debt. St. Paul applied to the Mystical Body the
lesson of the physical body: "All the different parts of it [the body]
were to make each other's welfare their common care" (I Corinth.
12:25).
Religion is not individual, it is social; it is organic. Look to the
natural order, and see how many benefits I receive from my fellow man.
There are a million ways in which they are indulgent to me. I did not
raise the cow that furnished the leather that went into my shoes. I did
not raise the chicken I eat at dinner--but that is a bad example; I do
not like chicken! So let us say, the chicken you eat. Somebody's work
or labor allowed you to indulge in this luxury. We might almost say
that we are surrounded by social "indulgences," because we share in the
merits, talents, arts, crafts, sciences, techniques, needlework, and
genius of society.
Now, in the society of Christ's people, His Mystical Body, it is
possible to share in the merits and the good works, the prayers, the
sacrifices, the self-denials, and the martyrdoms of others. If there be
an economic "indulgence," so that I can ride in a plane someone else
built, why should there not also be a spiritual indulgence, so that I
can be carried to Christ more quickly through the bounty of some
members of the Mystical Body.
Go back now to the distinction between forgiveness of guilt and satis-
faction for guilt. Every sin has either an eternal or a temporal
punishment. Even though our sins were forgiven, there still remained
some satisfaction to be made in time; or else in Purgatory after death,
provided we die in the state of grace. An indulgence refers not to sin,
but to the temporal punishment. Before the indulgences can apply, there
must have been forgiveness of the guilt.
Actually, there are several ways of making up for the punishment due
after the guilt of sin has been forgiven. Three are personal, one is
social: (1) The saying or doing of the penance given in the
confessional box at the end of confession; (2) Any works of
mortification which are freely undertaken during life, such as helping
the poor and the missions, fasting, and other acts of self-denial; (3)
The patient imitation of Our Lord's sufferings on the Cross by enduring
the trials of life; and (4) The social remedy of applying the
superabundant merits of the Mystical Body to our souls. As we depend on
intellectual society to make up for our ignorance, so we depend on a
spiritual society to make up for our spiritual bankruptcy.
It may be asked where the Church gets power to remit temporal pun-
ishment due to sin? Well, the Church happens to be very rich
spiritually, just as some men are very rich financially. In a village
there lived a rich banker who set up a trust fund in a bank; he bade
all of the sick, infirm, and unemployed to draw from that reserve. The
banker told them: "Have no fears that this fund will ever run out, for
I am rich enough to care for all of you." If the banker paid part of
the hospital bills, that would be a partial indulgence of the debts of
the sick; if he paid all of their bills, that would be a plenary
indulgence of their expenses and costs.
The Church is a spiritual banker. It has all the merits of the Passion
of Our Lord and the Blessed Mother, the merits of the martyrs, saints,
and confessors, and the patient endurance of persecution in the present
time; all of these merits are far greater than those needed for
salvation of these saintly and good people. The Church takes that
surplus, puts it into her treasury, and bids all her weak and wounded,
who cannot pay all the debts they owe for their sins, to draw on those
reserves. The Church lays down certain conditions for making use of
this treasure, just as the banker did. The users have to be deserving,
they have to be in the state of grace, they have to fulfill certain
conditions; e.g., a prayer, a pilgrimage, or any one of a thousand
little things.
When the debt of temporal punishment due to sin is liquidated only in
part by an indulgence, it is called a partial indulgence. But if all
the debts of temporal punishment are paid for by fulfilling the
conditions, it is called a plenary indulgence.
Suppose I am standing in the center of the room, that you have a right
to command me, and that I am bound in conscience to obey you. You order
me to take three steps to my right. I disobey, and take three steps to
my left. When I take the three steps to my left, I say to you, "I am
very sorry. I have disobeyed you. Will you forgive me?" You say: "Yes,
I will forgive you." But look where I am! I am actually six steps from
where I ought to be, and I am three steps from being in neutral ground.
Since I have taken three steps in disobedience, I must put my foot down
three times humbly and in penance, in order to get back to "neutral"
before I can begin doing right. Those three steps, taken penitentially,
represent the payment of the temporal punishment due to sin.
Now suppose that I just took two steps and someone carried me the other
one, I would then have an indulgence of one step. If someone carried me
two steps, I would then have the indulgence of two steps. If someone
carried me the three steps, that would be a plenary indulgence.
That brings up the question of "days." One often hears of the
indulgence of "forty days," "one hundred days," or "forty years." The
Church has to have some standard of measurement, and "days" and "years"
are merely approximations. In the first several centuries of the
Church, penances were very severe for certain public sins. One might
have to dress himself in sackcloth and ashes and beg at a church door
for forty days, or three years, or seven years, or sometimes ten years
in the case of atrocious crimes. Because these sins gave grave scandal
to the public, the penitent would be permitted to assist at the Mass at
the door or in a special part of the Church.
Later on, there began to be intercessions of persons of high merit,
that they be given more or less extended remission of the temporal
punishment due to their sins; these became known as indulgences. The
Church then took, as a standard of measurement, the severe penances of
the early days and applies them today to indulgences. For example, for
saying certain prayers, one receives an indulgence which is the
equivalent of "forty days" penance in the early Church, or the
equivalent of "one hundred days" penance in the early Church, or a
"year," as the case may be.
There is no exact statistical relation between the sin and its
expiation, as there is none between the money you pay for a suit of
clothes, and the cooperation of the sheep herder, the wool-gatherers,
and the suit manufacturer.
What a beautiful doctrine and how consoling is this sacrament! See how
it combines the poor sinner who is in debt, the Mystical Body to which
he is restored by absolution in the confessional, and the mercy of
Christ, the Head of His Mystical Body Who gave this power to His
Church: "Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth is loosed also in
heaven."
My prayer is only a drop but, when it is joined to the other cells of
the Mystical Body, when it becomes a bead in a rosary which unites the
Church Militant on earth with the Church Triumphant in heaven and
Church Suffering in purgatory, when it fuses into the tears of Christ
on the Cross and with the sword in Mary's heart at the foot of the
Cross, then it makes its way to the sea which is God where we all meet.
Thus, thanks to my little drop of a prayer, I have the right to say,
"I, too, am the ocean."
One feels like singing for joy, for here is a greater thrill than the
bath that cleanses the body. Regular confession prevents sins, worries,
and anxieties from seeping down into the unconscious and degenerating
into melancholy fears and neuroses. The boil is lanced before the pus
can spread into unconsciousness. Our Lord knew what was in man so He
instituted this sacrament, not for His needs but for ours. It was His
way of giving man a happy heart. It is not easy, indeed, for a man to
make his way to the Cross and to admit that he has been wrong. It is
very hard; but the penitent knows that it was harder to hang on that
Cross! We are never made worse by admitting we are broken-hearted, for
unless our hearts are broken, how can God get in?
V. THE SACRAMENT OF THE ANOINTING OF THE SICK
There are two sacraments of "healing": one for spiritual illness, which
is the Sacrament of Penance; the other for physical illness, which is
the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. An older term for it was
"Extreme Unction," which some interpreted as meaning that it was admin-
istered only when death was inevitable. For that reason, the sacrament
was sometimes postponed until there was no hope of recovery, so as not
to frighten the recipient or unduly sadden the relatives and friends.
This is a misinterpretation of the sacrament which is directed to the
uncertainty which sickness implies; the sacrament looks to sickness as
such. Two extremes are to be avoided, one which would say it was
destined only for death; the other, that it is solely a grace of
healing. It is rather a sacrament for the time of serious sickness;
that is why it may not be given to those who are facing death for any
reason other than illness. If it were a sacrament destined solely for
those who are about to die, it would be given to a criminal on a
scaffold. But the sacrament may not be given in such a case. It may be
given immediately after electrocution or hanging, or any violent death,
but not before. In those under sentence of death there is no hope of
recovery, which this sacrament implies.
It is not a sacrament exclusively for those at the point of death. In
the liturgy of the sacrament, the priest does not mention death, but
prays for a return to health of body and soul:
"Heal, O Redeemer, the infirmities of the sick person; heal his wounds
and forgive him his sins. Make all the infirmities of his body and soul
disappear, and by Thy Mercy, give him full spiritual and corporal
health, that re-established by the effect of Your goodness, he can
resume the fulfillment of his duties.... Grant that Thy servant, freed
from sickness and restored to health, may be re-established by Thy Name
and given back to Thy Holy Church."
Two other prayers follow in which the restoration to health is
emphasized:
"We implore Thee, O Lord, look with kindness on Thy servant [name] who
is growing weak as his [her] body fails. Cherish and revive the soul
which Thou didst create, so that, purified and made whole by his [her]
sufferings, he [she] may find himself [herself] restored by Thy healing
through Christ Our Lord. Amen."
"O Lord, Father Almighty,...free Thy servant from sickness. Restore to
him [her] his [her] health. Raise him [her] up by Thy right hand,
strengthen him [her] by Thy power, protect him [her] by Thy might, and
give him [her] back to Thy Holy Church with all that is needed for his
[her] welfare through Christ Our Lord. Amen."
The oil of the sick, which is consecrated at the Pontifical Mass on
Holy Thursday, contains no allusions to death or the dying. The words
of the bishop are:
"Pray that this oil may serve to give renewed strength to God's
temple...that all who are anointed with the heavenly remedy of this oil
may find it a medicine for body and soul, quick to remove all suffering
and to drive away all sickness and infirmity of soul and body."
The official teaching of the Church condemns those who deny that it is
a sacrament of healing. The Council of Trent stated:
"If anyone says that the anointing of the sick neither confers any
grace nor remits sins, nor comforts the sick, but that it has already
ceased, as if it had been a healing grace only in the olden days, let
him be anathema."
When the salvation of the person, under providence, calls for the post-
ponement of death, the sacrament will bring about this recovery. The
writer recalls giving the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick to a
woman who was given to a life of sin. She had been poisoned. As the
poison infected the brain, she had the impression of losing each of the
external senses. She would reach for her eye and say to her mother:
"Mother, here is my eye. You keep it when I am gone." She would reach
for her ear and say to me, "Here, you keep this when I am gone." The
Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick was administered and immediately
she was restored to health. The next day she came to the rectory and
began leading an apostolic life which continued for many years, until
her death. The anointing was for her death, but it happened to be for a
postponed death.
St. James, in describing the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick,
puts the emphasis on the healing:
"Is one of you sick? Let him send for the presbyters of the church, and
let them pray over him, anointing him with oil and the Lord's name.
Prayer offered in faith will restore the sick man, and the Lord will
give him relief; if he is guilty of sins, they will be pardoned."
(JAMES 5:14, 15)
Here it is to be noted that the people who are to benefit are not
necessarily those at death's door, but the sick. The sick man is
described as one able to call in the priests of the Church. St. James
says also that the prayer of faith shall save the sick man, which is
the physical side of the sacrament; the forgiveness of sins being the
spiritual side.
The purpose of the sacrament is clear from the fact that the person is
sick--not the body alone, nor the soul alone. All the sacraments are
aimed at a single whole, made up of matter and spirit. Even the
Eucharist pertains to the body, as well as the soul, for Our Lord said
that He would "raise up on the Last Day" those who would receive it.
Sickness has spiritual repercussions: no person can be sick in body
without having his soul disturbed. The Anointing of the Sick,
therefore, is to some extent psychosomatic.
Sickness and the Soul
A serious illness cuts us off from the occasion of sin. The will to sin
is weakened by the physical inability to sin. It is true that many a
man believes he has left the passions behind, when it is really that
the passions have left him behind. This moment of enforced detachment
from the allurements of the world is always an opportunity for the
reception of grace.
The approach to death emphasizes the uniqueness of personality. During
life we lose ourselves in the mob, in the anonymous "they," in the
masses, in "togetherness." But the nearness of death confronts self
with self: "I am I--unique--responsible for every thought, word, and
deed of life." The soul begins to see itself as it really is, and God
in His mercy prepares a sacrament for this dread moment when
personality is confronted with its load of sin.
Sickness breaks the spell that pleasure is everything, or that we ought
to go on building bigger and bigger barns, or that life is worthless
unless it has a thrill. Sickness enables us to adjust our sense of
values, as an actual grace illumines the futility and emptiness of many
ambitions: "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and
lose his soul?"
There is a world of difference between the Christian in serious illness
and the pagan. As Franz Werfel wrote:
"The skeptic believes in nothing more than death; the believer believes
in nothing less. Since the world to him is a creation of spirit and
love, he cannot be threatened by eternal destruction in his essential
being, as a creature of the world."
A man who in life never prepares for death, uses every means to conceal
it, to render it unobtrusive, to disguise it, even feels awkward in the
presence of death and knows not how to console those who are bereaved.
The pagan fears the loss of the body; the Christian fears the loss of
the soul, knowing that the destiny of the body will be the destiny of
the soul. To a pagan, this world is everything and death deprives him
of all there is; to the Christian, this world is only a scaffolding
through which souls climb to the Kingdom of God. When the last soul
shall have climbed up through the scaffolding, then it shall be torn
down and burned with fervent fire, not because it is base, but simply
because it has done its work--it has brought us back again to God.
Hence, to the Christian, his whole being is never threatened by death.
All during life, the pagan is moving toward death; but the Christian is
moving backward. He starts with the fact that he must die and render an
account of his stewardship; knowing that he will die, he plans his life
accordingly.
The Christian, having been signed with the sign of death, the sign of
the Cross at Baptism, is committed to leading a life of mortification,
which means a dying to the ego, in order that the Christ-life may be
more manifest.
The Church is, therefore, constantly recommending a daily rehearsal for
the great event, or tiny little deaths in preparation for the final
one. No masterpiece is ever created in a day, and death itself is a
masterpiece. The sculptor who wishes to carve a figure out of a block
of marble uses his chisel; first cutting away great chunks of marble,
then smaller pieces; finally he reaches a point where only a brush of
the hand is needed to reveal the figure. In the same way, the soul at
first has to undergo tremendous mortifications, then more refined
detachments and little deaths until finally the divine image is
revealed. Because mortification is recognized as a practice of death,
it was fittingly described on the tomb of Duns Scotus: "Bis mortuus;
semel sepultus"--He died twice, but was buried only once.
As evidence of how seriously the Church takes grace or divine life in
the soul, in contrast to physical life, its liturgy calls the day on
which saints die, their "birthday," or natalitia. The world celebrates
a birthday on the day a person was born to physical life; the Church
celebrates it when a person is born to eternal life. There are three
exceptions to this in the liturgy of the Church, and for very good
reasons. The only physical birthdays in the liturgy are those of Our
Divine Lord (December 25th), the Blessed Mother (September 8th), and
John the Baptist (June 24th). This is because each of these births
marked a special infusion of divine life into the world: Our Lord is
Eternal Life; the Blessed Mother, through her Immaculate Conception,
participated in that eternal life from the first moment of her
conception; and St. John the Baptist was sanctified in his mother's
womb, when he was visited by his Lord, still tabernacled within the
Blessed Mother.
This does not mean, even for the Christian, that death has no terrors.
There is still something very frightening about it. If death were
merely a physical must, we would not fear it; our fear comes from the
moral fact that we know we ought not to die. We fear death because we
realize it was not part of the original plan. The dying Christian knows
that the personal judgment at the moment of his death will be a
revelation of the meaning of his personal life, just as the cosmic
judgment at the end of time will be a revelation of how he lived in
society.
Death is not just a mere emancipation of the soul from the limitations
and burdens of the body, and a passage into a purely spiritual state,
such as Plato conceived. This would completely forget the resurrection
of the body. The body has had a share in the virtues or the vices of
the soul; therefore, it will take on a quality after death
corresponding to the quality of the soul. If a green liquid is poured
into a glass, the glass looks green. If the liquid poured in is red,
the glass looks red. So too, when evil is poured into the soul, the
body takes on the quality of evil, and is in a state of incorruptible
"corruption," whereas the body of the person who dies in the state of
grace shares in the glory of the soul.
What this glorified body will be like we do not know, except that it
will correspond with the "new heaven" and the "new earth" of which the
"Apocalypse" speaks. When the soul leaves the body at death, it does
not leave the body's sphere altogether. The soul still has a tendency
to be reunited with the body. We put our hand on warm wax and we leave
the imprint of the hand. So too, the imprint of the soul is in some way
in the body, and the soul to some extent bears the body within itself.
In the resurrection of the dead, God will give the soul its
body-forming power, and the opportunity to build up the body will be
entrusted to it, as it was meant to be.
To understand the sacrament, one must never lose hold of the fact that
there is a double life: biological and spiritual. So there is a double
death, death of body and death of the soul. St. John states: "Thou dost
pass for a living man, and all the while art a corpse" (Apoc. 3:1). A
body may be physically alive but the soul spiritually dead. Such would
be a person in the state of serious sin and alienation from God. We see
corpses walking on the street every day; biological life is in them,
but not spiritual life.
The real reason man dies in his flesh is because his soul, having
turned away from God, has lost the dominion it once exercised over the
body. One of the penalties of original sin was that the body should
die. When the sinful soul is restored to the state of grace, it has its
power returned potentially to effect the quickening of the flesh and
the restoration of the body, but the actual rejuvenation is deferred
until the last day.
In its present state, the body often depresses the soul; it restrains
it in its upward flight. It is almost a cage which prevents the soul,
as a dove, from flying to God. A sickness accentuates this weight,
producing sometimes a lethargy in the soul. Herein is the purpose of
the Anointing of the Sick: to enable the soul to be free in this life,
either through the healing of the body, or else to be eventually free
from the body in death, with all the traces of sin blotted out.
How the Sacrament Is Administered
In speaking of the sacrament, St. James said that the priests of the
Church were to be called in--not merely the priest. Though it is one
person who is sick and one organism that is disordered, nevertheless,
sickness is not considered a private affair any more than sin is a
private affair. Just as one sin in a soul diminishes the sum or the
content of charity in the Mystical Body, so the sickness of any one of
the members of the Church, grieves in some way the fellowship of the
saints. The Church, representing Our Lord, responds to this sickness in
any one of her members, by sharing her own corporate wealth with the
one who is ill. Her prayer is that the sick person be cured of his
weakness, and if it be God's will, be restored to the life of the
Mystical Body.
The unction of the sick is a kind of a prolongation both of Baptism and
of Penance, in the sense that it is a remedy for sin. It is not to be
thought that the sacrament operates in the sick in the nature of a
miracle, or takes the place of medical science, any more than Baptism
takes the place of birth, or Holy Communion takes the place of eating.
The Council of Trent said that the Anointing of the Sick was a
consummation not only of Penance, but of the whole Christian life which
ought to be a continual penance. The Anointing of the Sick is a
sacrament of the living and, therefore, normally presupposes the state
of grace, just as medicine is given only to the living, and holy oil is
a medicine.
As was pointed out above, physical life may have either wounds or
diseases. There is a difference between having a finger cut by a knife
and a body suffering from smallpox or cancer. Penance looks more to the
wounds of the soul; Anointing of the Sick more to the sickness of the
body, but never apart from the soul.
The administration of the sacrament starts with the basic psychological
fact that we cannot think of a single sin that ever got into our soul
that did not come through our body. The sin of envy, for example, comes
through the eyes; we may have seen how much more the Joneses have. The
sin of pride, in like manner, often comes from the eyes, as one makes a
comparison between how much richer, smarter, or more beautiful one
person is than another. Drunkenness, adultery, robbery, blasphemy--we
often walk into these occasions of sin. Even the nose contributes to
sin and to vanity, either through the smell of good food leading to
gluttony, or through perfumes which, according to advertisements, are
allurements to sin.
Just as physical diseases leave certain marks on the body--tuberculosis
leaves spots on the lungs, smallpox marks on the face, leprosy scars--
so too, sin leaves behind some traces in the senses and in the body.
The spiritual scar of every sin is evident from the fact that one feels
weaker after the sin than before, and less resistant to wrong. Other
diseases or viruses leave little "tails"--not speaking scientifically--
or traces of their existence in the body. Just as sewers become clogged
and chimneys sooted and ships contract barnacles, so too, the germs of
sin leave little "tails" behind, which are remnants or relics of the
rebellion which ravished the soul and the body. Though an alcoholic may
give up his alcohol and repent for his sin, alcoholism may remain in
the body in marred and ruined organs.
The Church now comes along in a serious illness, not only to blot out
the sin, which is done primarily in the Sacrament of Penance (also here
if Penance cannot be received), but also to cleanse away the remains of
sin. Because sin came into the soul through the eyes, ears and
nostrils, mouth, hands and feet, the Church lays hold of these senses
and organs which in some way cooperated with the soul in sinning. It
prepares the soul either for the restoration to the Mystical Body of
Christ or for a passage to God. The poor member of the Church is
covered with the dust of action and the spatterings of life, with the
mire and dregs of half-fought battles, with the weakness of swords
half-drawn; with one eye toward the world and the other toward Christ.
That is why the Church prays: "Remember not, then, his old sins, nor
the excesses to which anger or the fervor of an evil will has led him.
For, though he has sinned, yet he has not denied Thee, O God."
When the eyes are anointed, the priest says: "By this holy anointing
and with His holy loving Mercy, may the Lord forgive you whatever wrong
you may have done by the use of your sight. Amen."
When the ears are anointed, the priest says: "By this holy anointing
and His most loving Mercy may the Lord forgive you whatever wrong you
have done by the sense of hearing. Amen."
When the nose is anointed, the priest says: "By this holy anointing and
His most loving Mercy, may the Lord forgive you whatever wrong you have
done by your use of the sense of smell. Amen."
When the mouth with closed lips is anointed, the priest says: "By this
holy anointing and His most loving Mercy, may the Lord forgive you
whatever wrong you may have done by the use of the sense of taste and
the power of speech. Amen."
When the hands are anointed, the priest says: "By this holy anointing
and His most loving Mercy, may the Lord forgive you whatever wrong you
may have done by the use of the sense of touch. Amen." The priest on
dying is anointed on the back of his hands, his palms having been
anointed in Holy Orders. The lay person is always anointed on the
palms.
When the feet are anointed, the priest says: "By this holy anointing
and His most loving Mercy, may the Lord forgive you whatever wrong you
may have done by the use of your power of walking. Amen."
In the following prayer which the Church recites, there is no mention
of death:
"Cure, we beseech Thee, our Redeemer, by the grace of the Holy
Sacrament, the ailments of this sick man [woman]; heal his wounds and
forgive his sins. Deliver him from all miseries of body and mind;
mercifully restore him to perfect health inwardly and outwardly, that
having recovered by an act of kindness, he may be able to take up his
former duties. Thou, Who with Father and the Holy Spirit, liveth and
reigneth God world without end. Amen."
If the illness is to last for some time, the sacrament gives to the
sick person the necessary grace to endure his sickness in the spirit of
holiness; it also remits to some extent the temporal punishment that is
due to sin. There have not been wanting some theologians in the past
who have held that, if received with great faith, it remits all
temporal punishment due to sin, and in case of death, prepares the soul
for heaven.
In this sacrament, sins are not remitted in virtue of an act of
jurisdiction or by judicial sentence, as they are in the Sacrament of
Penance. Why? Because with serious illness there is the possibility of
passing into another community; that is, from the Church Militant to
the Church Suffering or the Church Triumphant. The soul particularly in
danger of death is about to go before the throne of the Eternal Judge
and, therefore, to Him alone is reserved the jurisdiction or the
judgment of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. That too is
why, in the administration of this sacrament, there is more of the
imprecatory form of prayer than in Penance. The priest puts the prayer
in the form of a petition because he is exercising his power only as a
delegate of the Church Militant. In the Sacrament of Penance, the
priest said: "I absolve you from your sins"; in the Sacrament of the
Anointing of the Sick, "May the Lord forgive you any sins, etc." The
measure of the distribution of grace here is left entirely to the
merciful Love of God.
Because oil is used in the sacrament, it must not be forgotten that oil
has a double purpose--strengthening and illumination or enlightenment.
The aspect of strengthening has already been mentioned, but enlighten-
ment also comes with this sacrament: it sheds a new outlook on the
meaning of death. Many who receive this sacrament have the fear of
death taken away from them, and may even desire it, as St. Paul said:
"I desire to be dissolved and be with Christ."
This comes from a higher wisdom of the soul, because it has been puri-
fied of the remains of sin. Just as we see what is outside a window
more clearly when the window has been washed, so too, our soul more
clearly sees the purpose of life once the senses and soul have been
purified. Saints very often undergo in life, through a great penance,
what is called a "dark night of the soul." Thanks to this dark night,
they then arrive at a kind of mystical union with God, or even a
mystical espousal. Thanks to the anointing of this sacrament, one may
also pass through a dark night of the soul, but in a much shorter
period of time, and one looks forward to mystical union with Christ.
Therefore, there can take place in the soul, in a very short space of
time, both the purgative and illuminative way at the last moments of
life: a cleansing of the soul and a greater vision of the glory and
beauty of God.
The spiritual life would be terrible if the Good Lord had not
instituted this sacrament for an illness, which is a rehearsal for the
final battle of life. Thanks to it, the Church takes us in her maternal
arms and shows us heaven saying:
"My children, here is your fatherland. Come with me. If it be God's
Will, we will cross over this arid desert of life together, and we will
confide you to the angels who will carry you through to your eternal
repose."
The Viaticum
The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is not the sacrament of the
dying or, in the strict sense of the term, the "last sacrament." In the
Liturgy of the Church, the Sacrament of the Anointing is given before
the Eucharist; when the latter is administered to the dying it becomes
the "last sacrament." This is very fitting, for the Sacrament of the
Eucharist has reference to the body as well as to the soul. Our Blessed
Lord said that those who received Him in the Eucharist would be assured
of the resurrection of the body. Furthermore, in the Mass there is a
prayer immediately before Communion, which begs that the Eucharist "may
be to me a safeguard for body and soul, and a remedy."
When given to those who are dying, the Eucharist is called Viaticum,
which means "going with you" on the way to eternity. The Eucharist
deposits in our body "a seed of immortality." It is a provision for the
journey to eternity, when one is at the door of death. The Church makes
its reception at this moment a matter of grave obligation, even more
strict than the anointing of the sick.
The Viaticum received in danger of death, just as the Eucharist
received in life, is social in its implications. There is not merely
the union of Christ and the soul, but there is also the union of the
sick with the whole Church. The dying person, if he is in a state of
grace, is leaving the Church Militant on earth for either the Church
Triumphant in heaven or the Church Suffering in purgatory. Hence, when
a priest places the Eucharist on the tongue of the recipient, he says:
"Receive, brother, [or sister] the Viaticum of Our Lord Jesus Christ
that He may preserve thee from the malignant enemy and bring thee to
everlasting life." The reference to "brother" or "sister" refers to the
family and the fellowship of the Church and the saints. There should
even be a solemnity about the last Communion, as there is about the
First Communion. The family should gather about the one who receives
the Viaticum, and its solemnity is increased when administered by the
pastor himself who is the head of the parochial community.
The Catholic who is dying is never lonely because there is another rite
connected with the Viaticum; namely, the commending of the soul to God.
The priest gives him a crucifix to kiss while an invocation is said to
the Cross: "We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy
Holy Cross Thou has redeemed the world." As the moment of death
approaches there is the official discharge to the dying:
"Go forth, Christian soul, out of this world, in the Name of God, the
Father Almighty, Who created thee; in the Name of Jesus Christ, the Son
of the Living God, Who suffered for thee; in the Name of the Holy
Spirit, Who has poured forth upon thee.... May thy place be this day in
peace and thy abode in holy Sion."
Then the Church calls on the angels and the saints:
"May the Angels lead thee into Paradise. At thy coming, may the Martyrs
receive thee and lead thee into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the choir
of Angels receive thee, and with Lazarus, who was once poor, mayst thou
have eternal rest."
Death is one of the penalties for sin but, when accepted, it becomes an
atonement also for sin. Every Christian knows that it is not just a
happy life that one must seek for, but also a happy death. Hence, he
prays that he may be fortified by the sacraments, and that he may be
fully conscious when he receives the last rites, in order that he may,
as it were, peer through the door of heaven to his eternal reward.
VI. THE SACRAMENT OF HOLY ORDERS
Because man lives in a society of free men, there must be some
government and order to make justice prevail. Since there is the order
of grace above creature, it too must have degrees, order, hierarchy,
and government; this Christ supplied in the Sacrament of Holy Orders
with its three ascending levels of deaconship, priesthood, and
episcopacy.
Our Blessed Lord is the Mediator between God and Man, being both God
and man. But in order to meditate His redemption, He desires human
instruments between Himself and the world, each of whom will be "the
minister and dispenser of the Mysteries of God" (I Corinth. 4:1). And
so, some men are appointed by God to deliver the sacraments to others,
just as in human societies one group serves and ministers to another:
"The purpose for which any high priest is chosen from among his fellow-
men, and made a representative of men in their dealings with God, is to
offer gifts and sacrifices in expiation of their sins. (Heb. 5:11)
The Call from God
In the fifth chapter of Hebrews, verse four, there is written: "His
vocation comes from God, as Aaron's did; nobody can take on himself
such a privilege as this." When a priest receives the call from God,
something happens to his soul, like that which happened to Peter in his
barque one dark night when Christ entered it. The young man with a
vocation reacts as did Peter: "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a
sinful man." There is a double tension: one of attraction to the
divine, the other, subtraction, because of one's own unworthiness; a
desire to approach the All-Holy, and a shrinking because of one's own
sense of inadequacy.
Then begins a minimum of six years of difficult study and moral and
spiritual discipline, as one asks himself a thousand times if he is
worthy. Either with the crucifix that hangs on the wall of his simple
room, or to the crucifix on his desk, he carries on a constant
dialogue.
The seminarian knows how human he is, and yet, like Christ on the
Cross, suspended between heaven and earth, abandoned by one and re-
jected by the other, the world expects him to be more than human.
Called to be as pure and as holy as an angel, he is conscious of his
own weakness, bearing about as he does the rich treasure in a frail
vessel. And yet he must fulfill the words of his Master: "Thou hast
sent me into the world on thy errand, and I have sent them into the
world on my errand" (John 17:18). From now on, he no longer takes the
short breaths of the world; he must draw in strength from the world of
the spirit.
The Priest and Celibacy
Our Lord wished to have a group of men who would have the freedom to
give full time to His service; hence He ordained in order that they who
served the altar were to live by the altar. Celibacy in the Latin Rite
stresses this quality of total dedication. The priest is a celibate in
order that he might not have the cares of family and, therefore, not be
afraid to minister to people in plague or to give the last rites to
soldiers dying in battle. St. Paul, speaking of celibacy as a spur to
undivided service, writes: "And I would have you free from concern. He
who is unmarried is concerned with God's claim, asking how he is to
please God" (I Corinth. 7:32).
Chastity, however, is not something cold or negative. It is, as Francis
Thompson called it, "a passionless passion, a wild tranquillity." A man
cannot live without love, though he can live without romantic love or
the Eros. The divine command, "increase and multiply" (Gen. 1:28) may
be verified not only with reference to the body, but also to the soul.
There can be increase of man in the cultural, moral, and religious
spheres. The priest is called a "father," because he begets souls in
Christ. As St. Paul wrote to the Galatians: "My little children, I am
in travail over you afresh, until I can see Christ's image formed in
you" (Gal. 4:19). The purer the mirror of his humanity is, the better
he reflects the image of Christ.
Though a priest is called a father, nevertheless, he is also a "mother"
of children. Our Blessed Lord used two analogies to describe His
attitude toward the city that He loved, and also to all humanity. He
said that He loved Jerusalem as a hen who gathers her chickens, but the
city refused His love. The night of the Last Supper, He used the
similitude of a mother about to bring forth a child, implying that He
would be in labor in His Crucifixion, but would bring forth new life in
His Resurrection.
The Ordination of the Priest
The dress of the priest takes one back to the classical days of Greece
and Rome, when the Church became the spiritual Israel. The early clergy
wore no distinctive dress, but rather clothed themselves in the garb of
the ordinary people. Later on when the classical Roman dress began to
be superseded by the dress of the barbarians, the conservativeness of
religion asserted itself and, in consequence, the priest wore vestments
which were no longer in secular use.
When the deacons enter the cathedral to be vested, they wear an amice,
which was originally a white linen kerchief worn about the neck and the
shoulders. When he put it on his head and shoulders, he said the
prayer: "Place, O Lord, the helmet of salvation on my head to the
defeat of diabolical invasion." Over the amice, he wears the alb, which
was the original Roman tunic with long sleeves, around the waist of
which he ties the cincture which is the symbol of chastity.
Over the alb is worn a maniple, which in the early days of the Greeks
and Romans was a kind of handkerchief worn on the left forearm, used at
meals for wiping mouth and hands. The consul during the Roman Empire
used it as a sign to start the races in the circus. The Church first
used it to wipe communion vessels and hands in the celebration of the
Mass. The symbolism of the maniple is to remind the priest of the bonds
which once held the hands of the Savior. This is signified in the
prayer which is offered when the maniple is put on, begging that the
cares and sorrows of earthly life should be borne with patience in view
of heavenly reward.
Now we come to two vestments which are worn by deacons when they come
to the altar for ordination; namely, the stole and the chasuble. The
stole originally was a loose robe worn by the ancients, and in this
sense the word is still used by the English poets. Thus, Milton
pictures Melancholy as having "a sable stole of cypress lawn, over her
decent shoulders drawn."
In the Old Testament, the Levites were described as being clad in
stoles when conducting the sacred Ark to Jerusalem. In the "Book of the
Apocalypse," the saints are "clothed in white stoles." The stole is
worn only by deacons, priests, and bishops, but each wears it in a
different way, and it is associated with sacred orders. When, however,
the deacon enters the Church, the stole is carried only on one
shoulder, while over the left arm the deacon carries a folded chasuble.
In the right hand, he bears a lighted candle, and in the cincture is a
linen cloth, which will eventually be used for tying the hands, after
they have been anointed with oil.
During the ceremony of ordination, the bishop draws a part of the stole
which rests at the back of the candidate's neck over the breast and
lays the two ends crosswise. The chasuble which he carries and which is
a symbol of charity, is folded at the beginning of the ordination
ceremony, as an indication that the one who wears it is not a priest.
At a later point in the ceremony, the chasuble is unfolded. The
symbolism of this is that, in the first part of the Mass, the deacon is
made a priest and given the power of offering sacrifice to God. In the
second part of the ceremony, the chasuble is then let down when he is
empowered to preach and forgive sins. This indicates the more complete
powers of the priest.
St. John Chrysostom explains well the reason why priests wear different
vestments at the altar than on the street: "When you see a priest
offering the Sacrifice, do not think of it as if it were he that is
doing this; it is the Hand of Christ invisibly stretched forth." The
priest is really only a tool, but he is a tool in the sense that
Aristotle called man a living tool. The vestments hide and submerge his
own personality so that men may know it is Christ Who teaches, Who
governs, and Who sanctifies.
The Call from the Bishop
No man can be ordained unless he has been called by Christ through the
bishop. When Our Lord called His Apostles, He called them by name, and
this ceremony is repeated in the Sacrament of Holy Orders. The Latin
rite begins by the archdeacon presenting the deacons, saying that the
Holy Church asks them to be elevated to the rank of priest. The bishop,
reading from the Pontifical, reminds them of the old custom of the
Church, when the people were consulted concerning the life, conduct,
and morals of the clergy before they were elevated to the priesthood.
He then tells them that as Moses elected seventy elders from the
different tribes of Israel to aid him in the government of the people
of the Old Law, as Our Lord chose seventy-two disciples to preach the
Gospel, so are they to aid the bishop in the sacred ministry of
sacrificing, blessing, presiding, preaching, and baptizing.
The bishop seated on the faldstool at the middle of the altar begins
the ceremony of ordination. The archdeacon summons the future priests
with these words: "Let all those who are to be ordained priests come
forward." As they advance, their names are read out one by one. Each
answers: Adsum ("I am present") and then steps forward. The calling by
name means that there shall be no intruders and that the priesthood is
a divine vocation or calling. Our Lord "calls His sheep by name" even
now as He did in Galilee.
After the bishop calls out the names, there follows a very solemn warn-
ing, that they come not under false pretenses, that they are under no
penalties of the Church, and that they be not illegitimate:
"Most Reverend Father and Lord in Christ, [name of Bishop] by the grace
of God and the Apostolic See, Bishop of [diocese] commands and charges
under pain of excommunication that no one here present for the purpose
of taking Orders, shall presume to come forward for ordination under
any pretext, if he be irregular, excommunicate in any law or by
judicial sentence, under interdict or suspension, illegitimate or
infamous, or in any other way disqualified, or of any other diocese,
unless he has the license of the bishop; and that none of the ordained
shall depart until the Mass is over and the Bishop's blessing has been
received."
The archdeacon then bids the bishop to ordain these deacons "to the
burden of the priesthood." The phrase that is used is onus or burden.
The priesthood and the episcopacy are both called burdens, not honors.
This is because the terrific burden or responsibility of saving souls
entrusted to them is laid upon them there. Such was the idea given to
Moses when he complained to the Lord: "Must I carry a whole people like
a weight on my back?" (Num. 11:11).
As if still hesitant as to whether or not the deacons should be
ordained, the bishop then asks the archdeacon the question: "Do you
know them to be worthy?" To which he answers: "So far as human frailty
allows one to know, I do know, and I testify that they are worthy to
undertake the burden of this office." The bishop then answers, "Deo
Gratias" ("Thanks be to God").
Moral certitude about the worthiness of the candidates is required like
the certitude that Moses was to have when God told him to gather
seventy men among the ancients of Israel whom he knew to be worthy.
This concern for the worthiness of the candidates has always been
present in the Old Testament and the New, for St. Paul tells Timothy
that before he ordains any priests he should be very certain of their
worthiness: "He must bear a good character, too, in the world's eyes;
or he may fall into disrepute, and become a prey to the False Accuser"
(I Tim. 3:7).
The bishop, as if not satisfied with assurance of the archdeacon, asks
the people if they know any reason why the deacons should not be or-
dained. There follows a moment of silence, in which the people are
given an opportunity to protest, if need be, against any one of the
candidates.
The Prostration
The deacons now prostrate themselves flat upon the ground and become as
dead men, while over them the Church, chanting the Litany of the
Saints, invokes heaven to intercede, or pray for them, to be merciful
to them, and to make them good priests.
The prostration of the deacons during the Litanies is a slightly
different form of prayer than that which was used in the Old Testament,
when the Jews generally stood to pray. It was only in times of great
stress that they ever knelt (Acts 7:59 and Acts 9:40), such as when
Stephen and Peter knelt. The Jews, however, did lay prostrate before
the High Priest for a solemn blessing on the Day of Atonement (Ecclus.
50:19-26), and as Our Lord did in the Agony in the Garden. But the
reason for the kneeling is somewhat related to a prayer that went
before, where the ordinandi were told "as they celebrate the mysteries
of the Lord's death, they must be earnest in mortifying their members
of all vices and concupiscence." Being prostrate is a symbol of their
spiritual death, in which they die to their flesh and its
concupiscences at the same time, that they invoke all the saints in
heaven to let them have a resurrection worthy of being ministers of the
Word.
As the body of Adam came from the slime of the earth, when God breathed
into it a living soul, so each priest yielding his body to be an
instrument of Christ, prays fervently that it may never be a blunt
instrument. Then when he rises from the ground, his hands are bound
with a purificator, tied together in slavery, but that sweet slavery of
love. With Paul he says "I am alive; or rather, not I; it is Christ
that lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).
The Laying on of Hands
The bishop lays hands on the priests without saying anything. When a
bishop is consecrated, the hands of the consecrating prelates are laid
on him with the words: "Receive the Holy Spirit," but in ordination,
these words are omitted. This laying on or imposition of hands is what
is called the "matter" of the sacrament, and is part of the ritual of
other sacraments, like Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, and the
Anointing of the Sick.
There are many instances in the Old Testament of laying on of hands.
Jacob put his right hand on the head of Ephraim, and his left hand on
the head of Manasse and pronounced a blessing (Gen. 48:14, 15). Aaron
and his sons placed their hands on the heads of victims to be offered
in sacrifice:
"He is to lay his hand on the head of the victim, and it is to be
immolated at the entrance of the tabernacle that bears record of me,
the priests who represent Aaron's family pouring its blood upon the
altar." (Lev. 3:2)
God told Moses to lay his hand on Josue (Num. 27:18) and Aaron after
offering sacrifice. In the Old Testament, it signified that a victim or
a person was dedicated to a holy purpose, and also that there was a
flowing out of power from the one who laid on the hands.
Investiture of Priesthood
The bishop chants a preface invoking the Holy Spirit upon those who are
to be ordained; then follows what is known as the "form" of the
sacrament:
"We beseech Thee, Almighty Father, invest these Thy servants with the
dignity of the priesthood. Do Thou renew in their hearts the spirit of
holiness. Help them to be steadfast in the office of second priestly
rank received from Thee, O Lord, and to inspire others to strive for
perfection by their example. May they become zealous fellow workers in
our ministry. May they shine in all the Christian virtues, so that they
will be able to give a good account of the stewardship entrusted to
them, and finally attain the reward of everlasting life. Through the
same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, Who lives and reigns with Thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen."
The bishop arranges the stole in the form of a cross over the chest,
saying: "Take the yoke of the Lord, for His yoke is sweet and His
burden light." Then he invests each with the chasuble, still unfolded,
saying: "Receive, the vesture of priesthood, which is the symbol of
charity. God is well able to increase charity in you and make perfect
your works."
After the "Veni Creator Spiritus" has been sung, in which the Holy
Spirit is invoked, the bishop proceeds to anoint the hands of each in
the form of a cross. The bishop's right thumb is dipped in the oil of
catechumens; with the oil he traces a cross with his right thumb, a
line from the thumb of the right hand to the index finger of the left,
and the other from the thumb of the left to the index finger of the
right. Then he anoints the hands all over, and as he does so, he says:
"Be pleased, O Lord, to consecrate and hallow these hands by this
anointing and our blessing. Amen." He makes a sign over each saying:
"Whatsoever they bless may be blessed, and whatsoever they consecrate
may be consecrated and hallowed in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ."
In the Old Testament, the candidate was anointed with holy oil which,
in the case of the high priest, was poured upon his head, but in the
case of the other priests, it was merely put upon his forehead. The
anointed hands of the priests are folded and tied together with a linen
cloth, so as to allow the oil to penetrate into his hands. He then
becomes Christ's bondsman (Eph. 3:1).
The Delivery of Instruments
The bishop now presents each of the newly ordained with a chalice
containing wine and water, and a paten upon the chalice with a host.
Because the anointed hands of the priest are bound, he touches with the
fore and middle fingers both the paten and the cup of the chalice.
During the ceremony the bishop says: "Receive the power to offer
sacrifice to God and to celebrate Mass, both for the living and the
dead in the name of Our Lord. Amen."
Concelebration
After the Offertory, the newly-ordained priests begin to celebrate Mass
with the Bishop saying the prayers aloud with them. They even say the
words of consecration with him. The meaning of the ceremony is that as
the Apostles learned to celebrate Mass from Our Blessed Lord at the
Last Supper; so too, in concelebrating with the bishop, the new priests
learn a ritual from a successor of the Apostles. As the newly-ordained
priests concelebrate with the bishop, so too, they receive communion,
drinking from the same chalice, and consuming a host that was conse-
crated at the Mass.
The Commission to Absolve
Before the Communion prayer is read, the Mass is interrupted a second
time to give the priests a new function in the Mystical Body of Christ.
After the profession of faith, the bishop sits down and lays both hands
on the head of each one kneeling before him, and says: "Receive the
Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and
whose sins you shall retain, they are retained."
The bishop does not wear gloves for this second imposition, but he does
for the first. The Mass is interrupted here, for the second time, to
give the power to forgive sins, because this power was given by Our
Lord at a time distinct from that of the authority to offer the Mass.
The night of the Last Supper Our Lord ordained His priests, after
having offered the sacrifice of bread and wine, saying: "Do this in
commemoration of Me." But it was after His Resurrection that He gave
them priestly power to forgive sins and the power of binding and
loosing. This corresponds also to the double ceremony of the chasuble:
first, the putting it on as folded for the pre-Resurrection power; and
secondly, the unfolding, to indicate the giving of additional priestly
powers of forgiveness. When the chasuble is unfolded, the bishop prays:
"May the Lord clothe you with the robe of innocence."
The Promise of Obedience
The newly-ordained priests now come up for what is called the
"stipulatio." There is not a clasping of hands here, for that would
signify equality. The hands, being the instruments of action and
service, are put inside the bishop's hands to signify his will to be
put at the service of the bishop. It is a commitment of the young
priest to his father in Christ.
The Consecration of a Bishop
The bishop too must be called by the Vicar of Christ and cannot be
consecrated without his express permission. The consecration ceremony
begins with the question, "Have you the mandate?"; i.e., has the Holy
Father, the successor of St. Peter, given us the authority to number
this priest among the Apostles? Two things hang together there:
apostolic succession and the Primacy of Peter. The night of the Last
Supper when Our Lord consecrated His Apostles, He reminded them of how
they were bound together in Peter, whom He had chosen as the rock, the
leader and the first, not only in honor, but in jurisdiction.
What is very singular about the words of Our Lord is that He did not
pray for all of the Apostles as equals: He prayed for them in and
through Peter. It was through their oneness with Peter that they would
share in His prayer of victory over the evil of the world. This is
brought out in the way Our Lord addressed Peter in the second person
singular in distinction to the Apostles whom He addressed in the second
person plural:
"And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has claimed power over
you all, so that he can sift you like wheat: but I have prayed for
thee, that thy faith may not fail, when, after a while, thou hast come
back to me, it is for thee to be the support of thy brethren." (Luke
22:31, 32)
He told Peter that he would deny Him, but afterwards would return and
be the support of his brethren.
When the Communists in China attempted to destroy the Church, they
cleverly sought to insert a division between apostolic succession and
the Primacy of Peter. Brainwashing a few bishops, they succeeded in
inducing them to consecrate a few priests. The priests would then,
because they were consecrated by bishops, be in the line of apostolic
succession; the Communists thus hoped that the faithful would accept
them. But because they had not the authority or the mandate from the
Holy Father to do so, the Communists thereby denied the Primacy of
Peter. As it turned out, the Catholics refused to accept the bishops
who may have been in the line of apostolic succession, but certainly
were not embraced in the prayer of Christ for Peter.
Both apostolic succession and the recognition of the Primacy of Peter
go together. It is very much like the problem of lighting a city by
electricity. Suppose in this city there were a thousand houses. The
wire from one house ran only a foot, another twenty feet, another five
hundred feet, another fifteen hundred feet, another eighteen hundred.
But suppose that the dynamo that supplied all of this power was about
two thousand feet away from the houses. It would follow that none of
the copper cables would be able to light a house; regardless of how
close they came to the dynamo, they would not be in actual contact with
power.
So it is with the transmission of priestly authority and power. Any
organization which starts today, or which started fifty years ago, or
five hundred years ago, or one thousand years ago, is incapable of
transmitting the divine power of Christ's Passion, unless there is a
contact with Christ Himself and under the conditions Christ laid down.
As in biology, life comes from life, so in theology, divine life comes
from divine life. An unbroken succession of authority and power is
essential for the divinization of souls in the twentieth century. The
bishops, who are successors of the Apostles, are one in Peter and his
successors, to whom alone Christ promised that the "faith would fail
not."
During the ceremony, after the bishop-elect has been interrogated
concerning his fidelity, submission, and obedience to God and the
Church and all the truths of faith, the consecrating prelate
accompanied by two co-consecrators tells him at the beginning of Mass:
"It is the duty of a bishop to judge, interpret, consecrate, ordain,
offer, baptize, and confirm." After all the saints of heaven have been
invoked in the Litany, the consecrator and his co-consecrators
successively touch with both hands the head of the bishop elect saying:
"Receive the Holy Spirit." These words constitute the matter of the
sacrament. Then comes the prayer that is known as the form:
"Be propitious, O Lord, to our supplications, and bestowing the
abundance of sacerdotal grace upon this Thy servant, pour upon him the
power of Thy blessing, through Our Lord Jesus Christ Who liveth and
reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost."
He anoints the head of the consecrated kneeling before him, making
first the sign of the cross on the crown, and then anointing the whole
crown of the head, saying: "May the head be anointed and consecrated by
heavenly benediction in the pontifical order in the Name of the Father
+, in the Name of the Son +, and of the Holy Ghost. + Amen."
After a prayer, the newly-consecrated bishop has his hands anointed
with chrism in the form of a cross. The consecrator draws two lines
with the thumb of his right hand, one from the thumb of the right hand
to the index finger of the left, the other from the thumb of the left
hand to the index finger of the right; then the whole palm of the
consecrated is anointed while these words are said by the consecrator:
"May these hands be anointed with the sanctified oil and the chrism of
sanctification; as Samuel anointed David to be king and prophet, so may
they be anointed and consecrated in the Name of the Father +, the Son
+, and the Holy Spirit +. We make the Sign of the Holy Cross of Our
Savior, Jesus Christ, Who redeemed us from death and led us to the
Kingdom of Heaven."
The newly-consecrated Bishop concelebrates the Mass with his con-
secrator, even drinking of the same chalice. Passing over many other
details for want of space, his newly-acquired powers are symbolized in
his crozier, mitre, ring, and gloves.
Because the bishop is the father of a spiritual family, or a shepherd,
he is given a shepherd's staff. Our Blessed Lord called His bishops and
priests to be both shepherds and fishermen. Because the bishop is the
spouse of the Church, he is given a ring to indicate that espousal.
Because he is to be a mediator of the Old and the New Testament, he
wears the helmet of salvation, which is the mitre. Because he hopes to
receive the blessing of the Heavenly Father, as Jacob received the
blessing--thanks to covered hands--he wears gloves.
After the enthronement, the consecrated bishop then gives His blessing.
He goes to the Epistle corner of the altar, kneels and sings, "For many
years"; then going to the middle of the altar, he again kneels and
sings in a higher voice, "For many years." As he approaches the one who
consecrated him, kneeling a third time he sings in a still higher
voice, "For many years." Then he receives the kiss of peace from the
bishop who consecrated him and from the other bishops.
The keynote of the bishop's mission is not administration, but life--
the communication of the life that Christ brought to this earth. If
there is administration--and administration there must be--it is in the
service of divine life. All the bishop's powers are directed to the
formation of Christ in the souls of the people. Others may be
instructors, but in each diocese there is only one father, the bishop.
As St. Paul said: "Yes, you may have ten thousand schoolmasters in
Christ, but not more than one father; it was I that begot you in Jesus
Christ, when I preached the gospel to you" (I Corinth. 4:15).
Father he is, because he has the right and power to administer all the
sacraments. Father he is, because his government is in the exercise of
the Heavenly Fatherhood. Father he is, because his domain is universal.
He is sent first to the world and then, only for jurisdictional
reasons, assigned to a diocese. The reason is that the universal Church
is not the sum total of all the diocese throughout the world; rather,
the dioceses derive from the Church, not the other way around. The
Church preceded them. It has been founded entirely on the episcopacy
and its mission to make disciples of all nations. The bishop is not
primarily the pastor of a single flock. He is a pastor of the universal
Church in union with the supreme head of the Church, Peter and his
successors. Hence, one of the primary responsibilities of the bishop is
to the missions of the Church.
The bishop is a father also because he alone has the power to generate
priests, though priests have the power to generate Christians. No
priest has the power to ordain another priest, though he has the power
to beget the faithful.
The priest, or the bishop, in his daily round, is a minister of God, a
messenger from another world, bringing upward to God prayers and
adoration, and bringing down from God graces and blessings to the
people. he is to lay hold of anything and anybody who wills to be
ennobled curiosity, or an accountant, like Matthew at his desk, or a
fellow-traveler with the enemy. His feet are scarred from thorns, where
the lost sheep or the fallen-aways have become entangled; they are to
be dusty from searching and sweeping for the lost coin of spiritual
wanderers.
From proud tempers, he will meet ridicule and insult; from the
blasphemer, blows; from the oppressed, entreaty; from the poor, a
pleading. But he is one who after every contact should inspire others
to say as the woman at the well: "Come and have sight of a man who has
told me the whole story of my life; can this be the Christ?" (John
4:29)
No case to him is hopeless. Every soul must be to him like the drop of
water in the ugly gutter which, looked at closely, reflects the deep
serious blue of the far off sky. He knows that he cannot convince
others that he comes from another world, unless he acts as if he had
been there. The world may see his acts, but they do not know his
thoughts.
When he mounts the altar, he carries with him all the woes and the
wounds of the world. His feet, that walk up the altar steps, must have
on them the imprint of the homeless, the refugees, and the wanderers of
the earth. His face, as he kisses the altar, should bear within it the
faces of those whose eyes are blasted before furnaces, darkened in salt
mines, wet with the tears of grief and furrowed with the worry of sin.
His vestments should be heavy with the millions of souls who know not
Christ and yet who are clinging to his vestments, hoping for they know
not what. As his fingers lift up the body and blood of Christ, he asks
that all the sufferings of the world be united with Christ and that no
pain go to waste.
He will feel sad, because he knows how men are bitterly losing the good
in their lives, but he will be consoled knowing that God is near them
even if they know it not; around them, even though they perceive it
not. In his conversations, he will seek to lift flippancy into
reverence, controversy into thoughtfulness, frivolity into practical
life. When he mounts the pulpit, he should be a speaking crucifix.
But above all, he will not be just a priest, but a victim, for Christ
was that, offering Himself for our salvation. There will be no tear
shed by fellow man that does not bedew his own cheek; no mourning
parent who will not pierce his heart with grief; no sheep who will be
without a shepherd. And because he knows that he is too often a priest
offering Christ, and too seldom a victim sharing His Cross, he will
daily pray to the Mother of Christ:
"Since you formed Christ the priest and victim in thy body, form Him, I
beg thee in my heart. Do this, that in addition to the words of
consecration at Mass, I may say them, as thou didst gaze on thy Son on
the Cross: 'This is my body; this is my blood.' Then I shall, through
thy help, live and die with Him."
VII: THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY
Love exists on three different levels: the sex level, the
friendship-love, and the sacramental.
Sex love alone is directed toward another for the sake of pleasure
which the other person gives the ego. The partner is regarded as one of
the opposite sex, instead of as a person. The infatuation associated
with it is nothing but the boundless desire of self-centeredness to
express itself at all costs. Because it cares only for its own rapture
and its own fulfillment, such love quickly turns to hate when no longer
satisfied.
Over and above sex love, there is personal love. Personal love includes
sex in marriage, but in its essence, it is based on the objective value
of another person. The other person may be loved for artistic or moral
excellence, or because of a common, sympathetic interest. Personal love
exists wherever there is reciprocity, duality, and understanding. This
kind of love can exist with carnal love in marriage, or quite apart
from carnal love, for there is no direct connection between the flesh
and love. It is possible to be in love without there being physical
attraction, as it is possible to have physical attraction without being
in love. Personal love is in the will, not in the body.
In personal love, there is no substitution of persons possible; this
person is loved, and not another. But in carnal or erotic love, since
there is not of necessity a love for another person, but only a love of
self, it is possible to find a substitute for the one who gives
pleasure. Sex love substitutes one occasion of pleasure for the other,
but real love knows no substitution. No one can take the place of a
mother.
Beyond each of these two is Christian love, which loves everyone either
as a potential or actual child of God, redeemed by Christ; it is a love
which loves without even a hope of return. It loves the other, not
because of attractiveness, or talents, or sympathy, but because of God.
To the Christian, a person is one for whom I must sacrifice myself, not
one who must exist for my sake. Sex love demands carnal reciprocity;
personal love finds it difficult to survive without it; but Christian
love requires no reciprocity. Its inspiration is Christ, Who loved us
while we were sinners and, therefore, unlovable.
The sanctity of married life is not something which takes place along-
side marriage, but by and through marriage. The vocation to marriage is
a vocation to happiness which comes through holiness and sanctity.
Unity of two in one flesh is not something that God tolerates, but
something that He wills. Because He wills it, He sanctifies the couple
through its use. Instead of diminishing in any way the union of their
spirits with one another, it contributes to their ascension in love.
The sacrament which sanctifies this kind of love is Matrimony.
Marriage: A Symbol of the Nuptials of Christ and the Church
Marriage as a sacrament belongs to an entirely different order than the
mere union of man and woman through a civil contract. It basically
regards a husband and wife as symbols of another marriage; namely, the
nuptials of Christ and His Church.
The analogy of the heavenly nuptials goes back to the Old Testament,
where God appears as the bridegroom, and Israel appears as the bride.
When God becomes incarnate in Christ, He called Himself, and was
called, the Bridegroom; it is the new Israel, or the Church, which be-
comes His bride or His spouse. It is often forgotten that our Blessed
Lord called Himself a Bridegroom. When Our Lord was asked why the dis-
ciples of John fasted, but His own did not, He answered: "Can you
expect the men of the bridegroom's company to go fasting, while the
bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with
them, they cannot be expected to fast" (Mark 2:19). John the Baptist
called himself "the friend of the bridegroom," or what might be, in
modern language, the "best man." The title of Bridegroom, which
belonged to Christ, was shared by no other, as John himself said: "The
bride is for the bridegroom; but the bridegroom's friend, who stands by
and listens to him, rejoices too, rejoices at hearing the bridegroom's
voice" (John 3:29).
On the other hand, the wife's relationship to the husband is the rela-
tionship of the Church to Christ. That is why when St. Paul speaks of
marriage he says, "Those words are a high mystery...applying...to
Christ and His Church" (Eph. 5:32). The ultimate consummation of this
espousal of Christ and His Church will be after the resurrection, when
the Church "without spot or wrinkle" will appear as a bride adorned for
her husband or as the "spouse of the Lamb" (Apoc 21:2, 9:1, 22:17).
The Sacrament of Matrimony is not a pious extra added to the marriage
contract; it is rather the elevation of a natural marriage contract to
the order of grace, in which the husband loves the wife, as Christ
loves the Church, and the wife loves the husband as the Church loves
Christ. The husband and wife are not just a symbol of the union of
Christ and the Church; they enjoy a real participation in that union.
As Christ lives in the Church and the Church in Christ, so the husband
lives in the wife and the wife in the husband, and the two are in one
flesh.
The role of the priest in the sacrament is to ratify, to witness, and
to bestow the Church's official blessing on those whom she now empowers
to furnish new members to Christ's Mystical Body. This is the one
sacrament in which the contracting parties are the ministers of the
sacrament to each other. In the words of one to the other and in the
giving of the hand to each other, there is the mutual surrender of
rights and the acceptance of duties. But to be a sacrament, a
representative of the Church must be there to witness it.
Matrimony, in virtue of the mutual inherence of man and woman, is a
little cameo reflecting the greater espousal of Christ and His Body,
the Church. The word "body" is used throughout Scripture to signify not
only the human body, but also the Eucharistic Body or the Real Presence
of Christ, and also the Mystical Body which is the Church. All three
are in some way united. In the marriage ceremony the bridegroom, though
he does not say so expressly, is by implication saying to the bride:
"This is my body; this is my blood." The bride says the same to him. It
is a kind of "consecration" on a lower level. When during the Mass they
hear the words of Consecration, "This is My Body; This is My Blood,"
they give themselves to Christ in the same action, they give themselves
to one another. The epistle of their marriage Mass reminds them of this
bond to the Church:
"Wives must obey their husbands as they would obey the Lord. The man is
the head to which the woman's body is united, just as Christ is the
head of the Church, He, the Savior, on whom the safety of His body
depends; and women must owe obedience at all points to their husbands,
as the Church does to Christ." (Eph. 5:22-24)
The man is the "head" of the wife, as Christ is the Head of the Church.
What did Christ do for the Church as her Head? He died for it. Hence,
husbands must show love to their wives. The "headship" is not overlord-
ship, but love unto sacrifice. The wife, in her turn, will show to the
husband the devotion and love the Church does to Christ.
As further evidence of how seriously the Church takes marriage as the
symbol of Christ and the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas makes a distinction
between a marriage that is merely ratified at the altar, and a marriage
that is ratified and consummated, when husband and wife become two in
one flesh. The Church has always made this distinction in her Canon Law
concerning marriage. A marriage that is merely ratified at the altar,
but not consummated, represents the union of Christ with the soul
through grace. A marriage ratified at the altar and consummated in the
marriage act symbolizes the union of Christ and the Church.
The marriage that is ratified only, is a symbol of a personal union of
the soul with Christ through grace. This union can be broken by sin.
If, therefore, a husband and wife separated immediately after the
marriage at the church door, and never consummated their marriage, that
marriage would be breakable under certain conditions, because it is
only the symbol of the union of the soul and grace. But the marriage
bond of a baptized husband and wife which has been consummated is
absolutely unbreakable, as the union of Christ and the Church is
unbreakable.
The Administration of the Sacrament
The sacrament when administered at a nuptial Mass takes place before
the Mass commences, and begins with an exhortation to the couple. A
sample exhortation often appears in liturgical books, though it is not
part of the sacrament; a priest may and should prepare his own
sermonette to the lovers.
After the young couple have been reminded of the nature of the sacra-
ment and its obligations, the priest asks the groom: "[Name] will you
take [Name] here present for your lawful wife, according to the rite of
our Holy Mother Church?" The bridegroom answers: "I will." Then the
bride is asked: "[Name] will you take [Name] here present for your
lawful husband, according to the rite of our Holy Mother the Church?"
The bride answers: "I will." The priest bids them join their right
hands; then first the groom and then the bride says: "I take you [name]
for my lawful wife [husband] to have and to hold, from this day
forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and
in health, until death do us part."
Then follows the confirmation of the marriage bond in which the priest
says: "Your marriage contract, I, by the authority of the Church, now
seal and bless in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost." When the ring is blessed the priest says: "Bless, O Lord,
this ring, which we are blessing in Thy Name so that she who wears it
keeping faith with her husband in unbroken loyalty may ever remain at
peace with Thee, obedient to Thy Will, and may live with him always in
mutual love through Christ Our Lord. Amen."
Because the sacrament represents the heavenly espousals, the Church
practically asks the bride and groom what guarantee they will give that
they love one another until death. If they say, "We pledge our word,"
the Church will answer: "Words and pacts can be broken, as the history
of the world too well proves." If they say, "We give the pledge of a
ring," the Church will answer: "Rings can be broken and lost, and with
them the memory of the promise." It is only when the ring which is
given becomes a symbol of the love of Christ and His Church, does the
Church unite in marriage. Eternal salvation is involved in their
reception of the Sacrament. Their lives become bonded at the altar,
sealed with the seal of the cross, signed with the sign of the
Eucharist which they both receive into their souls, as a pledge of
their unity in the spirit, which is the foundation of their unity in
the flesh.
The Bride in the Marriage Ceremony
In a nuptial Mass, the bride and bridegroom come to the altar
immediately after the Pater Noster. The prayer that is said here is for
the bride. There is no special prayer said for the bridegroom. Part of
the prayer is as follows:
"Look in Thy mercy upon this Thy handmaid, who is to be joined in
wedlock and entreats protection and strength from Thee. May the yoke of
love and of peace be upon her. True and chaste may she wed in Christ;
and may she ever follow the pattern of holy women; and may she be dear
to her husband like Rachel; wise like Rebecca; long-lived and faithful
like Sara. May the author of deceit work none of his evil deeds within
her. May she ever be knit to the Faith and to the commandments. May she
be true to one husband, and fly from forbidden approaches. May she
fortify her weakness by strong discipline. May she be grave in demeanor
and honored for her modesty. May she be well taught in heavenly lore.
May she be fruitful in offspring. May her life be good and sinless. May
she win the rest of the blessed and the Kingdom of Heaven."
The bridegroom is now included in the prayer for the bride: "May they
both see their children's children unto the third and fourth
generation, and may they reach the old age which they desire. Through
the same Christ, Our Lord."
The liturgy is very interesting in that it gives the emphasis to the
bride. Even from a worldly point of view, the bride is the one who
receives the attention in marriage. There are showers of gifts for the
bride, but not always for the bridegroom. The marriage song is "Here
Comes the Bride," but there is no song: "Here Comes the Bridegroom."
Everyone, too, is interested in what the bride wears, not in what the
bridegroom wears.
In Scripture, where there is the final marriage of the Church and
Christ in heavenly glory after the end of the world, all the emphasis
is upon the Bridegroom, Christ, and little upon the bride. It would
seem as if time, human history, or the waiting for the Second Coming of
Christ is the season of the bride; but eternal glory is for the
Bridegroom. In the "Book of Ruth," where the final glory is typified
and symbolized, there is emphasis only upon Boaz. The bride is quietly
at home awaiting the coming of the groom. She does not appear in the
ceremony at the gate. Though in worldly weddings and even in the
liturgy of the Church, the bride steals the show, it is not so at the
wedding of the Lamb in Heaven. There He becomes the center of
attention. All the bride possesses is in Him, and through Him and with
Him. In the "Book of the Apocalypse," a long description of how the
Bridegroom would be dressed is given, but there is only a very simple
description of the bride: "Hers it is to wear linen of shining white;
the merits of the saints are her linen" (Apoc. 19:8). The "Apocalypse"
calls the final union of Christ and the Church the wedding of the Lamb,
not the wedding of the bride.
An Unbreakable Bond
Because Matrimony images forth in the order of flesh the union of
Christ and the Church, it follows that it is unbreakable. In the
Incarnation, Our Blessed Lord took human nature which was the beginning
of His Mystical Body, not for three years, nor for thirty-three, but
for all eternity. So man and woman, reflecting the eternal union of
Christ and the Church, take one another until death do they part. The
enduring character of marriage, "until death do us part," is evident
even in the natural order, where there are but two words in the
vocabulary of love, "you" and "always." "You" because love is unique;
"always" because love is enduring. No one ever said: "I will love you
for two years and six months." That is why all love songs have the ring
of eternity about them. No power on earth can fragment that which is
one, and husband and wife are made one in marriage. To try and make of
them two single and separate individuals, as they were before marriage,
is actually to make them fragments of a joint personality, like unto
Solomon taking his sword and threatening to divide the babe.
Other evidence of the unbreakable character of marriage is to be found
in the way Scripture speaks of marriage--never interpreting it in terms
of sex, but always in terms of "knowledge": "And now Adam had knowledge
of his wife, Eve, and she conceived" (Gen. 4:1). When the angel Gabriel
announced to the Blessed Mother that she was to be the Mother of God,
she asked: "How can that be, since I have no knowledge of man?" (Luke
1:35). St. Paul later on enjoins husbands to "possess your wives in
knowledge."
Why is marriage in the Bible related to knowledge? It is in order to
reveal the close union of man and wife. There is nothing in the
universe that reveals a deeper union than that of the mind and that
which it knows. When the mind knows a flower or a tree, it possesses
these objects within itself. They are not identified with intellect:
they are distinct from it, and nothing can separate them.
Because marriage is knowledge, it follows that it demands fidelity.
Suppose a student, until he entered college, never knew the soliloquy
of Hamlet. Once he came to know it, he would always be dependent on the
college which had given him that knowledge. That is why he calls his
college his "beloved mother" or his alma mater; she caused something to
happen in him which was unique. He could go on enjoying the soliloquy
all the days of his life, but he could never reacquire it.
So too, when a husband and wife come to know one another in marriage
they may enjoy the union many times, but they can never again reacquire
that knowledge. As long as time endures, it is this man who has made
her a woman; it is this woman who has made him a man. A deep bond of
relationship is established between the two, though not in the same
order as the bond between the mother and the child.
This suggests a union between man and woman that is much more personal
than carnal. Both man and woman, in the moment of knowing, receive a
gift which neither ever knew before, and which can never be known
again, except by repetition. The resulting psychic changes are as great
as the somatic. A woman can never again return to virginity; the man
can never again return to ignorance. Something has happened to make
them one, and from that oneness comes fidelity so long as either has a
body. Sex is never just an "experience"; it is a bond registered
through eternity.
The great advantage of the marriage vow which relates husband and wife
to the union of Christ and the Church, is that it guards the couple
against allowing the moods of a moment to override reason. There is no
other way to control capricious solicitation except by a vow. Once its
inviolable character is recognized, an impulse is subject to probing
one's own faults and the making of new efforts to deepen love and
understanding.
The Begetting of Children
The union of husband and wife also imitates the Church in its fecun-
dity. In the union of Christ and the Church, there is spiritual
fecundity (increase in conversions); in the human marriage, there is
corporal fecundity. As the Church begets children out of the womb of
the baptismal font, fecundated by the Holy Spirit, so husband and wife
beget children. Hence, in the prayer of the Church during the
sacrament, God is asked: "May they both see their children's children
unto the third and fourth generation, and may they reach the old age
which they desire. Through the same Christ, Our Lord."
If the ultimate aim of the union of man and woman is not life, then
there can be only one alternative, namely, death. The child is the
physical expression of the fecundity of the Godhead, in which the
Father is the source of the eternal generation of the Son. The gift of
generation is not a push from below; it is a gift from above. It comes
not from the animals of the field, but rather it descends from heaven
as a reflection of the Father saying to His Son: "This day have I
begotten Thee."
This primary end of Matrimony brings the couple in relationship to the
Divine Trinity, as the duality of husband and wife ends in the beget-
ting of children, the third term in their love. This is in keeping with
the very nature of love, which may be defined as a mutual self-giving
which ends in self-recovery. All love must be a giving, for without a
giving there is not goodness; without self-outpouring there is no love.
In marriage, love is first a mutual self-giving for love's greatest joy
is to gird its loins and serve.
But if love were only mutual self-giving, it would end in
self-exhaustion, or else become a flame in which both would be
consumed. Mutual self-giving also implies self-recovery. The mutual
self-giving of husband and wife, like the love of earth and tree,
becomes fruitful in new love. There is a mutual self-surrender as they
overcome their individual impotence by filling up, at the store of the
other, the lacking measure. There is self-recovery as they beget not
the mere sum of themselves, but a new life which makes them an earthly
trinity. Love that is ever seeking to give, and is ever defeated by
receiving, is the shadow of the Trinity on earth; therefore, a
foretaste of heaven.
Behind the urge to procreate is the hidden desire of every human to
participate in the eternal. Since man cannot do this in himself, he
compensates for it by continuing life in another. Our inability to
externalize ourselves is overcome by giving, with God's help, something
immortal to the human race. Thus, the parents become co-creators with
God, as the angel told Tobias:
"Then, when the third night is past, take the maid to thyself with the
fear of the Lord upon thee, moved rather by the hope of begetting
children than by any lust of thine. So, in the true line of Abraham,
thus shalt have joy of thy fatherhood." (Tob. 6:22)
Instead then of reflecting in any way upon sex, the sacrament sees
generation as a reflection of the eternal generation of the Son in the
bosom of the Father. As St. Thomas Aquinas puts it: "If one is led to
perform the marriage act either by virtue of justice, in order to
render the debt to the partner, or by virtue of religion, that children
may be procreated for the worship of God, the act is meritorious."
As the sacrament sees in the father of the family the reflection of
Divine paternity, so there is in motherhood a relation to the
Eucharist. The mother says to her child, "As I live because of Christ,
so you will live because of me." As, under the species of bread, day by
day Christ nourishes the Christian soul, so drop by drop the mother
nourishes the child. As the Divine Eucharist gives immortality, so this
human eucharist of motherhood is the guarantee of temporal life. The
angel that once stood at the gate of paradise to prevent man from
eating the tree of life now sheathes the sword. Life comes into its
own. There is communion with human life at the breast and Communion
with divine life at the altar.
When the Son of God espoused humanity and became a Child, there was a
new emphasis on fecundity. It placed primacy at a point never before
seen in history. Up until the Incarnation, the order had been father,
mother, and child. Now it was turned backwards, and became child,
mother, and father. For centuries humans looked up to the heavens and
said: "God is away up there." But when a Mother held a Child in her
arms, it could truly be said that she looked down to Heaven. God was
way down there in the dust of human lives. If it be objected that Mary
had only one Child, it must be repeated that she had only one Child
according to the flesh, but she had other children according to the
spirit, for Our Blessed Lord said to her at the foot of the Cross:
"Behold, thy son," referring to John. And John, being unnamed, stood
for all humanity. At that moment she became by divine decree the Mother
of all whom Christ redeemed and the Patroness of all mothers.
For Better or for Worse
Because of human frailty there may be, despite love's effort, a failure
to achieve common union in mind and body; but this does not give the
offended party the right to contract a new marriage. "What God, then,
has joined, let no man put asunder" (Matt. 19:6).
When human love and sex love break down, there is always Christian
love, which steps in to suggest that the other person is to be regarded
as a gift of God. Most of God's gifts are sweet; a few of them,
however, are bitter. But whether bitter or sweet, the partner is still
a gift of God, for whom the other must sacrifice himself or herself.
Selfish love would seek to get rid of the burden of the other person
simply because he is a burden. Christian love takes on the burden in
obedience to the command: "Bear the burden of one another's failings;
then you will be fulfilling the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2).
What sickness is to an individual, an unhappy marriage may be to a
couple; namely, a trial sent by God in order to perfect them
spiritually. If a husband were suffering from pneumonia, the wife would
not leave him. In like manner, if the husband is unfaithful or unkind,
the wife will not leave him for another marriage. The acceptance of the
trial of marriage is not a sentence to death. As a soldier is not
sentenced to death because he takes an oath to his country, but admits
that he is ready to face death rather than lose honor. Being wounded
for the country we love is noble; being wounded for the God we love is
nobler still.
Just as there is a communication of vital forces between husband and
wife, so too, there can be a communication of spiritual forces: "The
unbelieving husband has shared in his wife's consecration, and the
unbelieving wife has shared in the consecration of one who is a
brother" (I Corinth. 7:14). What a blood transfusion is to the body,
reparation for the sins of another is to the spirit. Instead of
separating when there are trials, the Christian solution is to bear the
cross for the sake of the sanctification of the other. A wife can
redeem a husband, and a husband can redeem a wife, as Christ offered
Himself for His spouse, the Church. As skin can be grafted from the
back to the face, so merit can be applied from spouse to spouse. This
spiritual communication may not have the romantic satisfaction in it of
carnal communication, but its returns are eternal.
The great difference between a Christian and a pagan in such a trial is
that the Christian receives suffering; he even speaks of it as coming
from the hands of the Crucified; the unbeliever, however, finds no
place for it in the universe because it negates his egotism; it cancels
out his love of pleasure, and it begets an inferno within him. A cross
to the Christian is outside him and therefore bearable; the double
cross on the inside of the unbeliever is insoluble, unbearable.
Christian love not only can make such suffering bearable; it can even
make it sweet. The Son of God voluntarily ended on a cross; but it did
not conquer Him because it came from without: "He suffered under
Pontius Pilate." The Christian, in like manner, sees that if Innocence
did not spurn the cross, then somehow or other, it must fit into his
life, which is far from innocent. Since marital love is the shadow cast
on earth by the Love of Christ for His Church, then it must reflect
Christ's redemptive quality. As Christ delivered Himself up for His
spouse, so there will be some wives and some husbands who will deliver
themselves up to Golgotha for the sake of their spouse.
Just as in the spiritual life there is the "dark night of the soul," so
in marriage there is the dark night of the body. The ecstasy does not
always endure. In the days of romance, the emphasis is on the ego's
durability in love. Later on, the Christian sees that marriage is not
two persons directed toward one another, but rather two going out to a
common purpose beyond themselves.
When the Incarnate Son of God burst the bonds of death and rose to
glory, Scripture revealed that the physical universe is groaning in
pain until it is destined to be transformed as a perfect instrument of
the spirit; that is, until there is a new heaven and a new earth. In
the meantime, the Church makes use of the material things of this
creation and associates action and prayer with it. Water, bread, wine,
oil and other things are made the effectual signs of the spiritual
gifts which God bestows upon His people through the Church as His
agency. As Cardinal Newman put it:
"We approach and in spite of the darkness our hands, our head, our
brow, or our lips become, as it were, sensible of the contact of
something more than earthly. We know not where we are, but we have been
bathing in water and a voice tells us that it is blood. Or we have a
mark signed upon our forehead and it speaks of Calvary. Or we recollect
a hand laid upon our heads and surely it had the print of the nails
upon it and resembled Him Who gave sight to the blind and raised the
dead. Or we have been eating or drinking, and it was not a dream surely
that One fed us from His Wounded Side and renewed our nature by the
heavenly meat He gave us."
It would be a false view to look on water, oil, bread, and the matter
of sacraments as having any power of and by themselves. This was the
mistake made by Naaman, the Syrian general, when Eliseus told him that
he could be cured of his leprosy if he would bathe in the Jordan seven
times. Naaman answered: "Has not Damascus its rivers, Abana and
Pharphar, such water as is not to be found in Israel?" (IV Kings 5:12).
Thinking that the cure would be wrought through water alone, Naaman
argued that the dirty water of the Jordan could not compare with the
purer waters of his own land. Finally, at the urging of a servant,
Naaman was healed and immediately saw that it was due to the power of
God, not to the power of the waters. So it is in the sacraments. God
uses men and matter; the power is not in them, but in God.
ABOUT THIS BOOK AND THE MEN WHO MADE IT
FULTON JOHN SHEEN was born May 8, 1895, at El Paso, Illinois, one of
four sons of Newton Morris and Delia (Fulton) Sheen. He was baptized
Peter and took the name John at confirmation, later adopting his
mother's maiden name. His father was a farmer, but the family later
moved to Peoria, Illinois, where he attended St. Mary's School and
Spalding Institute, from which he was graduated in 1913. He received
his A.B. and M.A. degrees from St. Viator College, Bourbonnais,
Illinois, where he first tasted the pleasures of speaking and writing
as a member of the college debating team and newspaper staff. He
completed his theological studies at St. Paul's Seminary, St. Paul,
Minnesota, and was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of
Peoria, September 20, 1919. A year later he obtained the degrees
Bachelor of Sacred Theology and Bachelor of Canon Law from the Catholic
University of America, and then went to the University of Louvain,
Belgium, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1923. He also attended the
Sorbonne in Paris and the Collegio Angelico in Rome. In 1924, he
received his Doctorate of Sacred Theology in Rome and, a year later,
while teaching dogmatic theology at St. Edmund's College, Ware,
England, he was made an Agrege en Philosophie by Louvain and awarded
that university's Cardinal Mercier International Philosophy Award.
Included among his honorary degrees are: LL.D., Litt.D., and L.H.D. On
his return to the United States, he served as a curate at St. Patrick's
Church in Peoria; joined the faculty of the Catholic University of
America, Washington, D. C., in 1926 as a philosophy of religion
instructor, and was later promoted to a full professorship. In June,
1934, he was appointed Papal Chamberlain and was elevated the following
year to Domestic Prelate. He was consecrated Bishop on June 11, 1951,
which was a year after he became National Director of the Society for
the Propagation of the Faith. He has been heard by millions of people
in the United States, Canada, and England through the media of radio
and television. A prolific writer, he is author of two syndicated
columns: "God Love You" for the Catholic Press, and "Bishop Sheen
Speaks," for the secular press, and is editor of two magazines:
"World-mission," a quarterly review, and "Mission," a bimonthly. The
popularity of his radio and television programs can be judged from the
fact that his daily mail, as a result of these programs, has reached as
much as ten thousand letters in a single day--about one-third of them
from non-Catholics. The largest single delivery of mail was thirty
thousand letters. He conducted the first religious service ever
telecast, served as narrator for a "March of Time" film, and has had
his sermons issued in record album form. As well as serving in such
organizations as the Catholic Literary Guild and the American Catholic
Philosophical Society, he is an active member of the Mediaeval Academy
and the American Geographical Association. The long list of his books
started with publication of "God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy"
(Longmans, Green, 1925). This was followed by "Religion Without God"
(Longmans, Green, 1928), "The Life of All Living" (Century, 1930) "Old
Errors and New Labels" (Century, 1931), "Moods and Truths" (Century
1932), "The Way of the Cross" (Appleton-Century, 1934), "Seven Last
Words" (Appleton-Century, 1933), "The Eternal Galilean"
(Appleton-Century, 1934), "The Philosophy of Science" (Bruce, 1934),
"The Mystical Body of Christ" (Sheed and Ward, 1935), "Calvary and the
Mass" (Kenedy, 1936), "The Moral Universe" (Bruce, 1936), "The Cross
and the Beatitudes" (Kenedy, 1937), "The Cross and the Crisis" (Bruce,
1938), "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" (Macmillan 1938), "The
Rainbow of Sorrow" (Kenedy, 1938), "Victory Over Vice" (Kenedy, 1939),
"Freedom Under God" (Bruce, 1940), "Whence Come Wars" (Sheed and Ward,
1940), "The Seven Virtues" (Kenedy, 1940), "For God and Country"
(Kenedy, 1941), "A Declaration of Dependence" (Bruce, 1941), "God and
War" (Kenedy, 1942), "The Divine Verdict" (Kenedy, 1943), "The Armor of
God" (Kenedy, 1943), "Philosophies at War" (Scribner's, 1943), "Seven
Words to the Cross" (Kenedy, 1944), "Seven Pillars of Peace"
(Scribner's, 1944), "Love One Another" (Kenedy, 1944), "Seven Words of
Jesus and Mary" (Kenedy, 1945), "Preface to Religion" (Kenedy, 1946),
"Characters of the Passion" (Kenedy, 1946), "Jesus, Son of Mary"
(McMullen, 1947), "Communism and the Conscience of the West" (Bobbs,
Merrill, 1948), "Philosophy of Religion" (Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1948), "Peace of Soul" (McGraw-Hill, 1949), "Lift Up Your Heart"
(McGraw-Hill, 1950), "Three to Get Married" (Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1951), "The World's First Love" (McGraw-Hill, 1952), "Life Is Worth
Living, First Series" (McGraw-Hill, 1953), "Life Is Worth Living,
Second Series" (McGraw-Hill, 1954), "The Life of Christ" (McGraw-Hill,
1954), "The Way to Happiness" (Garden City, 1954), "Life Is Worth
Living, Third Series" (McGraw-Hill, 1955), "The Way to Inner Peace"
(Garden City 1955), "God Love You" (Garden City, 1955), "Thinking Life
Through" (Garden City, 1955), "The True Meaning of Christmas"
(McGraw-Hill, 1955), "Life Is Worth Living, Fourth Series"
(McGraw-Hill, 1956), "Thoughts for Daily Living" (Garden City, 1956),
"Life Is Worth Living, Fifth Series" (McGraw-Hill, 1957), "This Is the
Mass" (Hawthorn, 1958), "This Is Rome" (Hawthorn, 1960), "Go to Heaven"
(McGraw-Hill, 1960), "This Is The Holy Land" (Hawthorn, 1961), and "The
Fulton J. Sheen Sunday Missal" (Hawthorn, 1962). He is Auxiliary Bishop
of New York.
YOUSUF KARSH was born on December 23, 1908, at Mardin, Armenia. He came
to Canada at the age of fifteen during the Turkish massacres. Son of an
import-export entrepreneur and grandson of an engraver, he went to stay
with an uncle, A. G. Nakash, who owned a photography studio in
Sherbrooke, Quebec. He took an interest in the art of the camera and
was sent by his uncle to Boston, Massachusetts, to study. After several
years in the United States, he opened his own studio in Canada's
capital where, within a few years, he was photographing the cream of
society and leaders of government. When war broke out in 1939, Ottawa
became a center of Allied war activity, and "Karsh of Ottawa" became a
familiar signature on the portraits of some of the world's greatest
leaders. In 1941, his famous portrait of Winston Churchill rocketed him
to fame as the world's greatest portrait photographer. That photograph,
along with seventy-four others which were taken in all parts of the
world in the four years that followed, went into making his first book,
"Faces of Destiny" (Ziff-Davis, 1946). He followed this with "This Is
the Mass" (Hawthorn, 1958), "Portraits of Greatness" (Thomas Nelson &
Sons, 1959), "This Is Rome" (Hawthorn, 1960), "This Is The Holy Land"
(Hawthorn, 1961), and the publication of his memoirs in a work entitled
"In Search of Greatness" (Knopf, 1962). Still a world traveler, he
keeps cameras and equipment at studios in London, Paris, and New York,
as well as in Ottawa. He usually carries a set of camera equipment that
weighs at least 250 pounds. He always uses a white camera, finding that
the traditional black is depressing, and his focusing cloth varies in
color according to his own mood--though it is most often of red velvet
with a gold satin lining. Groups of his portraits form part of the
permanent collections of such museums as the Brooklyn Museum Department
of Photography and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; Eastman
House, Rochester, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the
Huntington Library, San Marino, California. In acknowledgment of his
contribution to Canadian art and culture, he received one of the first
Canadian Citizenship Certificates in January, 1947, when Parliament
passed a law creating Canadian citizenship.
