Growth by Oath: Introduction to the Meaning of a Sacrament Program 20 Transcripts Scott Hahn

We're going to do a six-part series on the sacraments of the Catholic religion. Why the sacraments? It's clear when you understand Catholicism - that the sacraments are the most important idea, the most important reality in the Catholic faith. They constitute the very heart of Catholicism. They are what make Catholicism so unique and distinct.

Introduction

The sacraments are built upon this idea, this theological principle of the good creation: that God created the world and he saw that what he made was "very good," as it says in Genesis. In other words, it isn't just the spiritual side of human life that is good whereas the material, physical life is evil. That view was rejected by the early Church. No, the Christian vision is that all of creation is a good creation, as God made it.

"But what about the sin and the fall?" somebody could say. Well, that's right. The sin has radically affected all of creation, both spiritually and materially, but what about redemption? How did Christ accomplish our redemption? It was precisely by taking upon himself human nature -- not just spiritually but also physically. He took on our flesh in the Incarnation and he resurrected that flesh as well; and that flesh and blood, that human body is enthroned in glory in heaven. So, our Savior did not despise living in a virginal womb for nine months, as physical as that was, nursing at his mother's breast, growing up as a young child, experiencing all the material and physical things that a child goes through. Why? Because Jesus Christ who is the redeemer of the world is also the Creator.

So the one who made matter and spirit redeems matter and spirit and he uses matter and spirit to redeem us as well. So we have to say with the Church that Jesus Christ, the Creator and Redeemer of the world, in the sacraments is using matter, physical reality, for our redemption.

I think that is going to go a long way in explaining how it is that the Catholic Church, the Church of Christ, is the Body of Christ, the physical, the visible expression of Christ. Theologians say that the Church is the extension of Christ's incarnation and that extension takes place through the sacraments. In other words, God does extraordinary things through ordinary means. He takes the natural to do the supernatural. So the sacraments, in sum, constitute the very heart of the Catholic faith. But I have to say something else and that is that perhaps the sacraments are the least understood dimension of the Catholic faith.

That's true for almost anybody alive in this century but, especially perhaps, it's true for modern Americans. Why? Because America may well be the least sacramental society in history. Unlike ancient Greece, unlike ancient Rome, India and other ancient civilizations, America really finds no place for religious ritual in public life. In fact, religious ritual in public life makes most Americans very, very uncomfortable because our society stresses individualism, individual rights and freedoms as opposed to the family.

We also find that Americans think in a pragmatic, in a scientific, experiential mode. They want it here and now and they want it served up piping hot. They think in terms of that which entertains and amuses and excites. So, when it comes to the sacraments, you're hard pressed to understand it; because, in American life religious ritual has almost no place.

Now you could point out a few isolated fragments, I suspect. You know, on the coin is, "In God We Trust." When we say the Pledge of Allegiance we acknowledge that we are "one nation under God." We require our politicians to take an oath of office, if they are going to become President. We even require witnesses in a courtroom to take an oath and ask for God's help as they swear "to tell the whole truth." But the fact is these are isolated fragments that don't really find an integrated place in American society, and so it's hard for Americans to understand what a sacrament really is.

Now at this point, a cradle Catholic who has been born and raised and catechized could protest and say, "Now, wait a second. Sacraments are really simple. You're making complicated what is really easy to understand, because, after all, aren't sacraments just simply "outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace?" That, of course, is the catechism definition and it's a very good definition, as far as it goes. But I think we are going to discover that as essential as a catechism definition is, it doesn't really go that far in explaining what sacraments are.

That definition explains where they come from -- they are instituted by Christ. It explains what they do -- they give grace, but not what they are, as sacraments, per se. Recent attempts by scholars to explain sacraments in a clearer way, I think are helpful; but they might fall short, because in the last ten, twenty, thirty years, many theologians have gone to psychology or anthropology to understand how it is humans use signs and symbols to structure social life -- the handshake, the kiss, the common meal are all more than just actions. They are signs and symbols that convey a great deal of truth through the signs.

Now, if recent attempts to study signs and symbols through such things as kisses and handshakes and meals have been helpful, I have to say that they are also deficient when it comes to explaining what the sacraments of the new covenant are. Now before I show how, let me explain what's going on here. If you take a look at something natural, like a kiss, you could say, "That's a sign, that is in a sense almost sacramental?" Why? Because it causes what it signifies, doesn't it? Somebody could say, "Well, a kiss is just a kiss. It doesn't necessarily communicate love." That's true, not necessarily; but suppose I kiss my wife and she says, "Well, that's just a kiss and a kiss is a kiss, is a kiss."

Then suppose we proceed to kiss for five minutes or fifteen or thirty-five or forty-five minutes. What will happen? Is that kiss just simply a sign or does that kiss begin to do more than just signify? Does it also, in fact, intensify that love? Does it also magnify the love and lead to a deeper experience of that love? Well, yeah, it does. So at the natural level we do have some comparisons to make as we study the anthropological and psychological parallels to the Catholic sacraments.

Okay, well and good. But a non-Catholic could easily protest at this point and say, "Now wait a second. A kiss does signify and intensify and magnify love, but that's not the same thing as what the Catholic Church claims for its sacraments." Why? Because these signs that constitute the sacraments of the Catholic Church don't just intensify love through lip smacking. The sacraments, according to the Catholic religion, actually bring about, for instance, the Body and the Blood of God, the wiping away of original sin and the mystical infusion of the soul into the Mystical Body of Christ?

You know, the non-Catholic, I think has a point. I mean, if we are going to make a comparison between our sacraments and the signs and symbols in human society, we have to admit that the sacraments do far more than our experience or human reason could explain. I think the problem is this. The Catholic might say, "Well the comparison is very helpful to me, but oftentimes, constant exposure dulls the senses and makes it hard to understand how unique and how distinctive the Catholic sacraments really are." I mean, let's face it, what we believe about the seven sacraments goes way beyond what human reason tells us and, in the case of the Eucharist, what we believe about the sacraments goes right against what our five senses and what human experience tells us.

In fact, what we really believe about the sacraments is a divine mystery revealed by God, supernaturally, depending upon a supernatural gift of faith in order to believe and live out and adhere to. In other words, the sacraments are really not reducible to any social convention that you could find in society, the signs and the symbols that constitute social relations. No, the sacraments constitute the mystery of faith. They are divinely revealed. They are believed by supernatural faith, through God's grace. Simply on the basis of God's word do we believe in them. It's because we have Christ's testimony that we accept the sacraments for what they do and for what they are. It's the same as our belief in the Trinity, something that goes well beyond reason -- our belief in the incarnation of God in a human body; that goes far beyond our sense experiences. Were Christ to walk into this room right now, we would never know from our five senses that this is the Eternal Logos, the Second Person of the Godhead, the Creator of the Cosmos. It's only by faith that accepts supernatural revelation by grace, God's assistance.

Now the sacraments go far beyond reason but they don't go against reason. They go beyond logic but they are not illogical; they are not contradictory. So there is still room for reason to explore and study, to grasp the intelligibility and the meaning of the sacraments. So we are not suggesting that Catholics act like zombies in some mindless, unquestioning way just simply accepting and grasping that which is absurd. No. Catholics should not be zombies. They should be faithful children who accept the testimony of their father in heaven through the Spirit but, at the same time, they ought to grow up and allow their reason to explore the intelligible meaning of the sacraments. That's what we are going to do with our time as we study the sacraments. How can we reason to better understand our faith and the mysteries of faith that are the sacraments.

Why Refer to the Divine Mysteries as Sacraments?

Now, one thing I think that we can ask ourselves that will be very, very helpful is, "Why is it that the Holy Spirit led the early Church to refer to these divine mysteries as sacraments?" The term sacramentum is a Latin term that goes back to pre-Christian usage. Now why is it that the early Church felt it so proper to adapt a term with certain non-Christian or pre-Christian meanings to explain these divine mysteries? In other words, what's the original meaning of the term sacramentum?

Well, it's actually hardly a matter for dispute. All scholars are in agreement. Sacramentum is the Latin term used in antiquity to designate an oath. For instance, we know that in antiquity Roman soldiers, as they came into the army, actually had to swear a sacramentum, an oath to the Emperor to serve in the army. We also know that in ancient Rome, for instance, when there was a legal dispute between two people, a pledge was left by both parties at the temple for the gods and this sacred pledge constituted a sacramentum.

So, sacramentum is the term in antiquity designating oath. Now at first glance we might be tempted to say, "So what? Big deal. Oaths of initiation, these rituals and the secret societies of antiquity, I mean, how does this really help us understand a sacrament or why the Church was led by the Spirit to accept the term sacrament to explain these divine mysteries?"

"Sacramentum" is the Latin Word for "Oath"

I think further study will give us greater insight, though. For instance we will find that one of the early Roman historians by the name of Pliny wrote to Trajan, a very important person in Rome, to explain who the Christians were and what they did. Pliny said to Trajan that (he was trying to summarize in a simple way so that Trajan could understand these Christians). He said, "On a certain designated day, they get together before sunrise and they sing an antiphonal hymn to Christ as God and then they bind themselves with an oath not to commit any sin."

He saw these Christians binding themselves with an oath not to commit any sin or crime. Now the Latin term is sacramentum. What is it that the Christians are binding themselves to when swearing not to sin? The sacramentum is, of course, the Eucharist which they receive and celebrate there on a Sunday morning after they sing the Psalms and songs of praise to Christ as God. In other words, when we look a little closer at the ancient meaning of sacramentum as oath, I think what we see is that we may be holding the key to understanding the sacrament, but we might be holding it upside down.

So let's take a look and understand what sacramentum really meant. I think we're going to see that one big reason why sacraments are so little understood these days is because an oath is even less understood. Where do we find oaths in modern society? I mean, how in our own experience do we relate ourselves to oaths in a meaningful way? Well, the President takes an oath of office as soon as he assumes the presidency. We also hear physicians swearing the Hippocratic Oath. We also know that immigrants who want to be naturalized as citizens have to take an oath as well. When you enter the military you frequently have to take an oath or when you register to vote, you have to take an oath.

But what is the most familiar oath that we all know about from seeing things like Perry Mason on TV? Where are oaths most common in our mental association? In the courtroom. When the witness is to take the stand, what does the witness say? Well, he is sworn in and what is the oath that he swears? "I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God." Even clarifying or emphasizing this particular oath in modern life might not shed much light. After all, all the oaths I have just mentioned -- for the President, for the doctor, for the witness for the military man, for the immigrant -- all of these things might seem awkward, obsolete, out of place in modern American society, almost, in fact, like a violation of Church and state. I mean, there, in a civil courtroom, asking for God's help. How is religion accorded such a central role in such public, secular and civil activities? It certainly bothers some people.

Let's take a closer look at this best known example in the courtroom. "I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God." What is going on there? Well, before I say what is going on, I want to mention that in my studies I found a historian who looked at the use of oaths in modern society. From his studies he discovered that Americans simply do not understand the oath they swear. They swear them, but they don't know why. They don't really understand and they don't really believe that they have any power to do what they seem to be doing.

So he refers to an oath, this Professor Mendenhaul does, as an ancient ruin still standing. So what difference does it really make if a witness swears an oath before taking the stand in the courtroom? In other words, they are going to lie anyway, aren't they? They are going to swear the oath and they are going to sit there and lie through their teeth. So why bother swearing the oath; or why focus on this instance in order to clarify the meaning of oath as sacramentum? Well, I think if we return to the original purpose of the oath, we're going to understand that the oath is given and the oath is sworn to strengthen the promise.

Think, for instance, of the old Perry Mason shows where as the witness is about to break, the judge leans forward from the bench and what does he say? "I remind you, you're still under oath." What does that mean? I mean is the witness supposed to look up and see some ax blade dangling over his neck and identify that with oath? What do you mean, I'm under oath? Well, one practical way to understand the difference that an oath is supposed to make is to look at the lie. If I were to stand here right now and proceed to tell you all about my ten kids who are all doctors, having received advance degrees from Harvard University, I would be telling you a few white lies, perhaps harmless. They wouldn't get me in trouble. You might think I'm strange. But suppose I said those same exact things in a courtroom, on the witness stand under oath. What would those white lies be called? Perjury.

What is the Purpose of Swearing an Oath?

Now what might be just simple sins here become major crimes in a courtroom. Why? Because I'm under oath. The oath is supposed to make a difference. The oath is supposed to strengthen the promise and the individual's resolve not to lie. And the oath is especially supposed to gain the help of God to assist the witness in telling the truth. In other words, to understand the purpose of the oath, we need to understand what's happening with the witness, that a witness is called upon to give testimony that may hold in the balances the difference between life and death or a few million dollars or whatever kind of legal settlement might be reached.

In other words, guilt and innocence will be determined on the basis of the testimony. So you have to trust the witnesses. But what if it's in the best interest of the witness to lie? What's going to keep him from lying? Well, sometimes we simply have to trust other people beyond their own personal trustworthiness. How can you do that? Well, society better find a way because society frequently finds itself in a place where it has to trust people beyond their reasonable level of trustworthiness or reliability.

For instance, in the battlefield, why do military men have to take an oath? Because they know they might find themselves on a battlefield with bullets whizzing overhead. What happens there? Suppose one soldier looks up and sees an escape route where he could desert and he could leave? What happens if the other soldiers spot that man leaving under battle conditions. Are they allowed to do anything to stop him? They are obligated to do something. They are obligated to shoot him on sight for desertion in battle conditions! Why? Because what is desertion in battle? If you see one guy leaving to save his own neck, who doesn't want to flee? Who doesn't want to run away and live to fight another day? It's just common sense. But as soon as the door is opened, who won't want to run through it, and then what is left of the army? What is left in the battle? In other words, the battle requires a degree of trust from our fellowmen that by themselves we could not reasonably demand. Yet we need it. So what do we do? We put them under oath, like we put witnesses under oath.

If a politician elected into office, right before he takes office says to all of the voters, "Trust me," what do you feel? All of a sudden you just kind of sit back and relax and say, "Oh, I'm so glad he asked me to trust him." Of course not. I mean between politicians asking for trust and used car salesmen, we're not going to be able to rely upon such words at all. So, what do we do? We put them under oath, the oath of office. Why? It's the same thing. We need to engage a more reliable person, a more trustworthy party who is going to be able to make a difference. Because, as I say, society finds itself in a very awkward position. For instance in the courtroom, society needs the truth in order to establish and vindicate justice. But the calling for truth from witnesses where no absolute certainty is obtainable. Are we certain that he is telling the truth? No, he could be lying.

So what do we ask the witnesses to do before they testify? To make a kind of sacrifice, to pledge themselves before God and witnesses that they will tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And at the same time they make that pledge, they state a plea, "So help me God." In other words, we all know that in moments of distress and temptation, where it might really pay to tell a lie, it might really pay to stretch the truth, we're going to need God's help to overcome that temptation. That's what the oath is for. Why not lie? Because an oath has engaged the services of Almighty God who is truthful, who is truth itself; who is all-knowing and who is present, actively present, in our midst to judge us, to help us and to insure that the truth is out and that the truth is vindicated.

So we engage the services of God as judge and as provider -- as judge to vindicate the truth and as provider to give that extra assistance to the person who is called upon to give the truth, even under tempting circumstances. So what do we do? We have him put his left hand on the Bible and raise his right hand and he says the oath. What is it signifying? That left hand on the Bible, that right hand to heaven represent or constitute an appeal to God. What we are saying is, "If I am false and the judge doesn't know it, and the jury doesn't know it and if all the people in the court don't know that I'm lying through my teeth, God, you who know all, you who are truth, you know that I am lying."

So may, the curses recorded in this book. "Come upon me from heaven if I lie or deceive. Conversely, we also signify by this act that if I tell the truth and the judge doesn't believe me and the jury doesn't accept my testimony and all the other people don't as well, God, you know my heart, you know the truth, you vindicate me according to the blessings recorded in this book that you promised to give to those who live the truth and speak it as well." So God is engaged as a guarantee, He supplies a kind of warranty. God is actively present in human affairs when his name is pledged in the oath, the sacramentum, as judge and as provider. It's a pledge of self and it's a plea for his help.

Now, I'll give you an example. Suppose I were to take out my checkbook right now and I were to go ahead and write for you all in this room a $1 million check and give to each of you a $1 million check. How would you all feel about that? Would you take it and cash it tomorrow? I'm not sure you would. You'd look at me and say, "He's a college professor. A million dollars per person. I mean, his school might pay well, but what school pays that well?" But suppose you took a second look at that check and you notice that underneath my signature was a co- signer. You saw the name Donald Trump. What would you do then with that check in hand? You'd guard it with your dear life. You would hold on to that. You would clutch it and make sure that tomorrow morning, if not earlier, you would go out and cash it. Why? Because when that name is invoked underneath your own, that word becomes trustworthy. It becomes reliable.

So when we swear an oath, God becomes the co-signer. He becomes the surety, the guarantor. His signature is even greater and more trustworthy than Donald Trump's. So God's name becomes attached to our performance whenever we swear an oath. His reputation is on the line. He has got to act to vindicate his holy name. No wonder out of Ten Commandments, he only gives us ten, right? Number two is what? "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, Thy God, in vain for he will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." I mean God only gives us ten, why waste one of them on false oath taking? Because that's really the meaning of the second commandment. Notice, it's the second commandment, second only to, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

So, once we choose the true God, we have to worship and live according to that God in a true way. That means when we swear oaths with God's name and his reputation attached to our performance, we do not take that name in vain. We don't take his name and drag it through the mud. We don't lower his reputation to the same level as our own deception and fraudulent behavior. This, I believe explains why the oath is meant to strengthen the promise. It also explains the curious custom we find in the Bible. When people are called upon to take an oath in very dire circumstances at a very important time where the truth is absolutely essential, where fidelity is crucial, what do they do?

Well, there's one word for oath, shabot, to swear an oath in the Hebrew. There's another word that's actually stronger. It's to swear an oath, but literally, it's to curse oneself. In other words, you directly curse yourself. It's almost like -- do you remember when you were kids? I remember when I was a kid, I went down to Florida and I came back and I had caught a red snapper out in the Gulf. The first week back, I told all my friends about the red snapper that I caught because we ate it for dinner. It was a beautiful red snapper about a foot long.

The second week though, I told some more friends about the red snapper and all of a sudden it had grown to be about two, two and a half, three feet long. All of a sudden those teeth began to expand and the ferocity of this beast became just enormous and the fight that I put up...and what did my friends say? "Sure, sure, you caught a red snapper." So what do kids say whenever they start enlarging upon the truth? I don't know about you, but I know what I used to say when I was a kid. I'd say something like this, "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye."

Now where do kids get that idea? Where did that statement come from? Well, if you study the statement you'll discover it comes from the Middle Ages where oaths were quite common and a very common form of the oath was the self-curse; and a very common self-curse that people take upon themselves was what? "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye." What does it mean? What does it convey by way of meaning. Simple: "Cross my heart" means cut my heart into four pieces. "Stick a needle in my eye," means, "If I am lying, may God be my judge and may he take away my life and cut my heart into four pieces and gouge out my eyes with needles." You're calling a curse upon yourself. That's the strongest form of oath possible, the self-curse.

Thus, God's active presence is called down and engaged in the fullest possible way when that oath includes the curse. Now, does that guarantee the truth? No, it doesn't. It doesn't guarantee the truth. Just because you swear an oath and you call down upon yourself a curse doesn't mean that you will necessarily tell the truth any more than being a citizen in a nation necessarily means that you're patriotic. It doesn't necessarily follow.

What does necessarily follow is that God is actively engaged to bring judgment upon a person who has taken his name in vain. So, finally and ultimately, the person who is taking the oath determines whether or not we receive the desired outcome. In other words, the oath depends upon the reliability of the man who is swearing the oath or the curse. For instance, oath in the Old Testament -- we see throughout the Old Testament that men continually prove themselves false and insincere by swearing an oath on the one hand and then by failing to live up to it on the other.

Continually we see this in the Old Testament. As a result of this behavior, the curses of the covenant are unleashed. So, when Israel swears an oath to God and accepts a curse upon itself in case of infidelity, what happens? In just a matter of years they are unfaithful. As a result, the curses are unleashed and the curses consist of such things as conquest, exile, slavery, pestilence. You can read all about it in Deuteronomy 28 or Leviticus 26. In both those passages you have a long list of frightening curses that come upon people in case they don't live up to the oaths they have sworn, the sacraments that they have taken upon themselves.

What is the Significance of the "Sacramentum" for Christians?

Now, let's ask ourselves what the significance of all this is for us as Christians. Well, tomorrow morning I am going to begin explaining how it is that an oath is the practical equivalent of a covenant. Throughout scripture, for instance, in Luke 1: verses 72 and 73, we discover that oaths and covenants are interchangeable terms. There we read about how God swore an oath to the fathers and so made a covenant. Also in Ezekiel 16 verse 9 and some other verses in Ezekiel 17, we'll look tomorrow morning and see how when oaths are sworn, covenants are made. In other words, the sacramentum, the oath, constitutes a decisive force for establishing a covenant. The sacramentum oath is that which binds people together in a covenant relationship.

Thus, you want the strongest, the most reliable person to swear the sacramentum, the oath. Why? Because ultimately the covenant oath is only as strong as the person who swears it. The reliability of the covenant is ultimately going to rest entirely upon the dependability of the person who has sworn the oath. So, throughout the Old Testament what does God do? Well, he selects the strongest and the holiest men to swear the oaths to form the covenants - beginning with Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and Solomon and Ezra, the High Priest, and others as well. He picks the strongest and holiest men to swear the oaths.

But what do we discover in every case? No matter what the strength of these men might be, no matter how holy their character may seem, time and time again, human nature proves incapable by itself of fulfilling all the demands of God's law to which we swear ourselves when we take upon ourselves the oath.

So what is so unique and distinctive about the New Covenant? What makes Christianity so great? We have something brand new in human history. In the New Covenant, Christianity is built upon one simple revolutionary fact: for the first time in history, God has sworn the oath and taken upon himself the curse. It's almost as if God said, "I am going to save you, as I promised, but I am going to transform that promise into an oath by swearing an oath and taking upon myself the curse." God says, in effect, "I give you my word." And the word became flesh and dwelt among us! And that word was crucified because God took upon himself in the God-Man Jesus Christ, the curse for our sin.

In other words, the New Covenant is built upon the fact that for the first time in history, God swears the sacramentum. God became man and as man he swore an oath, Jesus did, to the Father. He takes the strongest oath upon himself in the form of a curse. By so doing, he institutes the New Covenant in this sacramentum which Christ himself is! Christianity is built upon a New Covenant all because God became man and swore the oath.

You could say that this is the purpose of the Incarnation. God in the Old Testament had promised to provide all that we needed and various humans swore oaths to be the ones to do so, to be the instruments, but they kept falling short. For instance, Noah, after delivering the family of man through the ark and the flood, ends up naked and ashamed in his tent. We also see Abraham who is righteous through thick and thin until he succumbed to the temptation to enter into a polygamous concubinage with an Egyptian woman. Even Moses who is the meekest man in all the earth, according to the Bible, sins so as not to be able to enter into the Promised Land. David, a man after God's own heart, swears the oath and then commits adultery with another man's wife and has that man killed and becomes a murderer. And Solomon, who establishes an oath covenant, as well, what does he do? He falls to so many temptations, he ends up with 700 wives and 300 concubines!

How do the Seven Sacraments all Participate in the One True Sacrament, Jesus?

The Old Testament reads like a dismal record of human failure because of our weakness, the weakness of fallen human nature. But Christ becomes man. God becomes human to take the oath, to form a New Covenant and to accept the curse. First of all, he assumed human nature with all of its debts and obligations and weaknesses. Second, he perfected that human nature in himself with his divine life and power as he lived it out -- as an infant, as a child, as a pre-adolescent, as a teenager, as a young adult and as a mature adult. He perfects all of human life and all human relations as a son and as a man. Third, he establishes a New Covenant by becoming a co-signer to the Old Covenant. He accepts the burden of the Old Covenant curse upon himself.

In so doing, he institutes in his own body and blood, the sacrament by which the New Covenant is constituted. I'll say it again: Christianity is the only religion in all the world and in all of history where we have God swearing the oath. Christ himself is the one, true, ultimately dependable sacrament, oath. His life, thereby, becomes the source of all of our sacraments.

For instance, let's take a look at the seven sacraments and see how they all participate in the one true sacrament, which is Jesus Christ himself. When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, we hear a heavenly voice declaring him to be God's son, with whom he is well pleased. So, Baptism in the Church is the sacrament of rebirth, the sacrament of our divine sonship.

Jesus Christ goes on later to the Mount of Transfiguration where before three apostles his appearance is transformed, so that the sonship, this divine sonship which he possesses, which was declared at Baptism becomes visible and powerful and manifest to Peter, James and John -- so much so that they end up on their faces. In a sense, Confirmation is that. If Baptism instills divine sonship in the believer, Confirmation unleashes the power of sonship and the Holy Spirit's glory as we receive that sacrament.

We also follow Jesus to the Upper Room in Jerusalem where on Maundy Thursday, he strips down and he washes the disciples' feet. And so he shows them the way to authority in the New Covenant is by serving others in their needs. So the Church teaches that by so doing Christ established the priesthood of the New Covenant. The sacrament of Holy Orders corresponds to this action of Christ.

Then, of course, he proceeds on to institute the Eucharist. He transforms the Old Testament Passover Feast which he is celebrating at that moment into the New Covenant Passover by establishing the Eucharist and telling these newly ordained apostles that they must do this in remembrance of Me.

Then Jesus, who was anointed by Mary before his death, is then resurrected, giving to us in a sense the significance and meaning behind the sacrament of Anointing as our bodies and souls are prepared to be united with our family in heaven through resurrection.

Then as Christ is resurrected and as he returns to the disciples, what does he do? In John 20: verses 21 through 23, it describes how Jesus breathed on the eleven disciples and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." Then he says, "Whoever's sins you forgive shall be forgiven, and whose sins you retain shall be retained." In this action of Christ we see another sacrament instituted, namely the sacrament of Penance.

Then finally at Pentecost, Jesus having ascended into heaven, having been glorified and enthroned at the right hand of the Father sends the Holy Spirit down on the feast of Pentecost and so, in a sense, establishes his Church. He betroths the Church to himself as a bride to a bridegroom and he gives to this bride of his the Holy Spirit as a dowry. This is the understanding of Pentecost that the Church has always had. So Matrimony becomes a sacrament in the work of Christ.

Now in these and in many, many other ways Christ established himself as the New Covenant sacrament from which all of the other seven sacraments are derived. Now the sacraments are supposed to give grace. The reason they give grace is because they all share a common source which is Christ himself, the one true sacrament. In fact, grace can be understood properly as the life of Christ, as divine sonship. The Holy Spirit comes into us to give to us divine sonship, divine grace. So, in effect, God is saying, "I am going to give you my love and my love is going to give you myself, my own life, my own sonship. I'll stake my life on it," Christ says, and then he does on the cross. So the grace of the sacraments is not derived only from the holiness of the minister or primarily from the holiness of the recipient so much as from Christ himself, who is ultimately the final minister and the real recipient.

The sacraments are truly actions of Christ on our behalf. They are designed with us and our needs in mind. They are designed to meet the crises in our life that arise -- infants, children, young adults, teenagers, full-grown adults, senior citizens -- all encounter unique problems and they all have distinct needs that must be met.

Christ acted in such a way so as to institute his life as the sacrament par excellance from which the seven sacraments would come to accompany us through the journey of life, assisting us and providing us with the grace that we need as infants to overcome original sin, as young children who have sinned and stained themselves to be restored to the Father through Penance, our first confession. Then to be invited to the family supper table in the Eucharist and to be nourished, to grow that life. Confirmation is almost equivalent to spiritual adolescence when supernatural hormones are released in the children of God to cause them to grow and to become able to control and harness their own newly found powers and desires.

Then on it goes, because when you enter into Matrimony you have specific needs that are provided for by the sacraments. When you become sick, when you become infirm and elderly, the sacrament of Anointing provides you with the grace you need to prepare for resurrection and new life in heaven.

Conclusion

By the sacraments we are united to Christ in the deepest and greatest possible way. The sacraments, as I said, are designed to meet our many needs. They are designed with our needs in mind. The sacraments are the instruments that Christ uses to incorporate us into his own body, the Corpus Christi, so much so that we become identified with Christ. St. Paul says, "It is no longer I but Christ who lives in me." So we are incorporated with Christ. We become identified with Christ through these sacraments. Thus, our sacramental worship in its essence really amounts to Christ's perfect worship of the Father that he continues in our bodies, in our souls, and in the Church that is constituted and strengthened and expanded through the sacraments.

It's this which makes us acceptable. These are the sacramental graces that make our worship, not only acceptable to God but delightful to the Father, as well. The major emphasis throughout this weekend is simple. The sacraments of the Church are not a substitute for holiness. The sacraments are not a substitute for hard work to attain sanctity. They are, rather, the divinely appointed means by which we struggle to overcome sin, and we receive divine aid and grace to help in time of need to grow up and mature as the sons and daughters of the most high God, our heavenly Father.

The sacraments are God's tools for our sanctification. They are not magical and they are not mechanical. They are powerful because Christ is the one who has instituted them because Christ is the sacrament. Christ is the oath that God has sworn for our salvation. So we must accept the challenge to allow Christ to live his life in us and join with him in pledging to God that we will live the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.

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

THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Grace is For-Giving and For-Getting Program 21 Scott Hahn

This second talk is building upon the first talk and I would like to explain briefly how it is. The first talk was an introduction to the idea of sacrament. It was titled "Growth by Oath" because we tried to see the deeper meaning of sacrament is wrapped up with that term "oath" once it is properly understood. We are going to move on now. Our second installment, if you will, is going to be on an overview of the seven sacraments of the Catholic faith -- an overview. The title I've given it -- it's kind of clever, I guess, -- it's "Grace is for Giving and for Getting."

Introductory Review of Previous Talk

Just to review briefly from last night: four main points or maybe five. First of all, sacrament is the most important idea in the Catholic faith. It's the most distinctive element in Catholicism. When you look at all the other non-Catholic variations of the Christian religion, it's the one thing that stands out the most and when you understand the Catholic faith, it's the one thing that stands clearly at the center.

Secondly, we also said that sacraments may well be the least understood part of the Catholic faith because of our society, perhaps because of lack of training, but also a lack of historical sense when it comes to understanding what sacramentum is all about.

The third idea that we tried to get across last night was that the oath concept on which sacrament is built is perhaps even less understood than sacraments themselves. So we have a kind of double duty for ourselves if we want to understand the sacraments. We are going to have to understand the Catholic distinctives. We are also going to have to understand why the Holy Spirit led the Catholic Church to use this term "sacramentum" to describe these sacred and holy actions that Christ gave us.

We saw, fourthly, that the oath, sacramentum, is constitutive of a covenant bond. That is, covenant and oath are practically interchangeable terms. Let me give you just a little bit of backup so that you can see what I mean there. In Ezekiel 17 we read in verse 8, "I gave you my solemn oath and entered into covenant with you," declares the sovereign Lord, "and you became mine." When he swears the oath, he forms the covenant and we become his possessions. Likewise going over to Ezekiel 16, verse 59, "I will deal with you as you deserve because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant." The next chapter, Ezekiel 17, verse 13, "Then he took a member of the royal family and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath." Likewise, it talks about verse 16, "As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, he shall die in Babylon and the land of the king who put him on the throne, whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke." Verse 18, "He despised the oath by breaking the covenant," and on and on we go.

You may say, "This is just simply an Old Testament idea, but we actually find that one of the first occurrences of the terms "oath" and "covenant" in the New Testament together is found in Luke, Chapter 1 where Zechariah is giving us his psalm. In Luke 1 beginning in verse 68 it says, "Praised be the Lord the God of Israel because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David to show his mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, yea, the oath he swore to our father Abraham."

You see how oath and covenant are interchangeable terms. They are practically synonymous ideas in our religion. So to pledge oneself to God and to plea for God's help, as we do in an oath, we say, "I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." That's our pledge and then comes our plea, "so help me, God." That is what constitutes a covenant bond. We are going to look into that a lot more this morning.

Finally, we concluded last night by saying that what is distinctive about the New Covenant, as opposed to all of the Old Testament covenants is that Christ swears the oath. Christianity is the only religion in the world, the only religion in human history where God is the one swearing the oath. God says, "I give you my word," and the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. That word speaks love and truth to us and says, "I'll stake my life on it," and then he proceeds to stake his life on the cross so that from his body, as a result of his curse, we might derive our supernatural life.

Now this talk is going to explore more in depth how the sacraments relate to the central idea of the covenant, to discover what it really means. If you ever read through the Bible from beginning to end, and that's something I would really encourage all Catholics to do; the Bible is not a Protestant book, it's our most treasured family heirloom. Vatican II compares it to the Eucharist as the bread of life for our souls. So if you have read the Bible all the way through or if you will read the Bible all the way through, you will discover, I am sure, that the covenant idea is central to scripture. It's central to understanding what the Bible means by salvation and what the Catholic Church teaches about salvation.

Meaning of Covenant

But what is the covenant? What is the meaning of the term "covenant"? We see its relationship to oath. They are practically interchangeable but how do we move on from identifying sacrament and oath, oath and covenant? What is the practical meaning of covenant? You might say, "Well, that's simple." It's not! Just as we had many confusions and misunderstandings about oaths, I would say that we have at least as much misunderstanding about covenant.

Let's remove some of the misconceptions. One of the most frequent confusions I run into is people identifying a covenant with a contract. A contract and a covenant are often used interchangeably in our society. That is one of the greatest blunders you could commit, if you really want to understand the nature of a covenant. The difference between a contract and a covenant is practically as great as the difference between prostitution and marriage, between your boss and your grandfather, between your employees and your children. They are practically antithetical at one level. The difference is profound and so the confusion is dangerous if we are going to see the covenant as the center of the Christian faith and then misunderstand it as a contract. A contract is a mutual relationship between two parties based merely upon promises exchange, to exchange goods and services. Contracts exchange property through mutual agreement between two individuals.

The oath is what transforms a contract into a covenant by bringing down God and interposing him between the two parties. God becomes judge and provider. He helps us if we open ourselves to it and he judges us by what we do and say according to our oath. The oath transforms the contract into a covenant. A covenant doesn't exchange property; a covenant exchanges persons. That's why God said in Ezekiel 16, "I swore an oath. I entered into a covenant with you and you became mine." We become his treasured possessions, and he becomes our treasured inheritance. Persons exchange themselves in a covenant under God's care and under his supervision and with his grace.

An oath is what makes the difference because it brings down God to be actively present as provider and judge, the father-figure in the family. In fact, one of the greatest scholars of this century, when it comes to studying oaths and covenants, is a man by the name of D.J. McCarthy, a great scripture scholar. McCarthy once said that covenants were the means by which the ancient world took to extend relations beyond the natural unity of blood. Let me say that again. McCarthy defines covenants: covenants were the means the ancient world took to extend relationships beyond the natural unity of blood. If we are related by blood, we are family. If we want to extend family bonds beyond natural flesh and blood, we use oaths and form covenants, and those covenants become family bonds.

McCarthy, in fact, defines covenant, in his important work, "Treaty and Covenant" as "a quasi-familial union based on oath." A family-like union, a familial union based on oath. Now that is going to be one of the most important ideas to penetrate into the most glorious depths of the Catholic religion and the Christian life that we are trying to lead with God's help. Because the sacraments are the bonding agents in the family of God.

If the covenant that Christ forms in the New Covenant is that sacred family bond, then the sacramental oaths that he swears and then offers to us to reenact within the Body of Christ, if all this in fact is true, then we need to see the sacraments as the bonding agents in the family of God. It's interesting that even the Hebrew word for covenant, bereth -- if we trace the origin of the term bereth back to its etymology, you come up with the idea of chain or binding or fetter, a chain or a fetter, binding. Now that might seem odd, at first. To bind, to chain, to fetter? Yeah, that's right, because in a family you're in a bind. You're bound to each other. You're chained together. This helps clarify what Michael Novak means when he kind of jokingly defines the family as "the only place on earth where when you go, they have to take you in." When you go home, it's the only place where they have to take you. Why? Because you are all bound together and it's the oath covenants of the family that bind us together.

It reminds me of a very sad but enlightening experience I had teaching a course at an important Catholic university in the Midwest. I was teaching a course in the Theology of Marriage for four weeks and one of my top students -- she was not only brilliant, she was very beautiful and also you could tell, very committed to practicing her religion by her comments and by her demeanor. She didn't speak that much in class until the very last week. We were just sharing practical experiences about marriage at the close of the course and I asked around, I was asking various students what their plans were in light of what they were studying. I called on her. We'll call her Maryann. I said, "Maryann, what are your plans? Are you going to get married?"

She said, "Oh, no." A lot of guys looked down glum, you know. Doggone it, you know, it would have been nice. There goes one dream. I said, "Oh, okay," I was fishing, "Are you thinking of the religious life.

"Who, me? No, I'm not cut out for that."

And I said, "Oh, okay," sort of like option C, what is it again?

It didn't come to me. I said to her, "Okay, what are..."

"I don't know, I don't know."

"Well, okay, what do you think about marriage?"

"I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole."

Why?"

She looked down and she looked back up and she said, "Well, do you really want to know?"

I wasn't sure I really wanted to say yes but I did. She said, "Well." She proceeded to explain that her father is one of the top divorce lawyers in one of the most important Midwestern cities and he has been for decades, and ever since she was a little girl, she would sit at the dinner table as Daddy came home and he would tell one horror story after the other, week in and week out about all of these terrible divorces that he was deliberating over as a lawyer.

One the previous week involved a married couple who had been together for over forty years. The man invented something, patented it, got rich and decided it was a new life for himself. So he decided it was time for a new wife. So he proceeded to run off with his 23-year-old secretary, she said. Well, the divorce was very bloody. The proceedings were very hard. She described them briefly and she said that the day before her father explained how hard it was. He was trying to settle, resolve this whole thing, trying to figure out some cash settlement. Here's a million dollar check, and he wrote it out and he proceeded to hand it to her attorney. He gave it to her. She ripped it up. She started crying.

"What do you want? That's just the way you are!" He wrote a check for twice the amount. She ripped it up. Three times the amount. She ripped it up, and he said, "What do you want?"

In between these uncontrollable sobs, she just began to say, "I don't want to grow old alone. I don't want to grow old alone."

She said, "Now, do you understand why I don't want to get married?"

I said, "No, I think you might be able to understand, though, why marriage is a sacrament because we need all the help God can give us to stay together."

But we fear growing old alone, don't we? Marriage as a covenant is the chain that liberates us. That's what an oath is. That's what a covenant is. If a covenant comes from the term to bind, to chain, to fetter, it's so that we can grow old in security, in freedom, not fearing our wrinkles, our potbellies, our varicose veins, our balding heads. You know, all of these things. We could have security because we belong to each other through covenants that chain us together. That's the idea. That's the idea in antiquity. That's the idea in the New Testament. That's the idea today, whether or not we understand it and God knows, we need to understand it better.

Old Testament as a Series of Covenants Whereby God Fathers His Family on Earth

All of the Old Testament reads this way: a series of divine covenants whereby God fathers the family that he has on earth by oaths with these very important people that we mentioned last night. He established an oath with Adam. He established an oath covenant with Noah. He establishes an oath covenant with Abraham and with Moses and with David and then ultimately, of course, with our Lord, Jesus Christ. But the Old Testament can only really be understood, this series of covenants needs to be seen, as a process by which God fathers his family.

Through these covenants he restructures and administers his love, his life, his grace, his justice and power to his people: that marital covenant with Adam, that domestic household covenant with Noah. A covenant with Abraham forms the family of God into a tribe, and you can just see God's family expanding. With Moses instead of just a tribe, there are twelve tribes and the covenant that God makes with Moses reforms and restructures those twelve tribes into a national family.

Then, with David that nation becomes a kingdom that subjugates and controls other nations, hoping to lead them closer and closer to their Creator and Father through these covenants. A national kingdom family is the best we get in the Old Testament, but when Christ comes, what is it that he establishes? What is it that he extends out in this great extended kinship network? Simple. The climax of the Old Testament series of covenants is when Christ establishes an international family, a Catholic covenant.

Jesus' New Covenant Establishes an International Family, A Catholic Covenant

The word for international, cataholiche, is where we get the word catholic. The distinctive genius and beauty of the New Covenant is precisely its Catholicity. We are part of a worldwide family. No longer do we divide and segregate between Jews and Gentiles. We are all God's children in the household of faith through the flesh and the blood which bonds us together, that flesh and blood of Christ that we receive in the Holy Eucharist.

We also need to see, however, that the Old Testament reads almost like a tragedy, almost like a horror story. How is that? Well, if mankind is God's family, the more you read the Old Testament carefully, the more you realize that outside of the covenants, outside of Israel, outside of God's family arrangement in the Old Testament, you can see that mankind was one, big, unhappy family torn apart by sin, broken by violence and injustice, selfishness. So much so, that mankind forgot that it was really one family under God.

That's truth. We all come from Adam. That isn't just historically true, that's biologically true and that's theologically significant because it explains why Christ comes as a new Adam, the founding father of a new family, not a natural, earthly family, but a supernatural family in heaven and we who are members of it on earth are pilgrims and sojourners, wayfarers, waiting to get home -- a colonial outpost, a kingdom established away from the royal capitol, here on earth. We're on probation and we're on pilgrimage, but we are in a new covenant that Christ has sworn the oath for so that we can have much greater assurance that we will make it home, back to the Father and back to the great family reunion in heaven.

If we keep this covenant connection in mind and we think about the covenant in light of the oath that Christ swears -- God swears the oath by becoming man and dying for us and taking on himself the curse -- if we see all of this, I think we are going to be able to understand grace in a radically new way. It's going to be much more significant, much more attractive and our Lord will be much more adorable and desirable for our life and for our love and for all of our needs.

This explains why the covenant is so central to the Catholic faith and why the life we lead is a family life. If we keep this covenant family connection in mind, if we keep it at the front and the center of our thinking, it's going to help explain three of the most important things that the sacraments do. Let me quote from Sacrosanctum Concilium, a document from Vatican II in 1963, paragraph 59 where it describes how the purpose of the sacraments, "is threefold. First, to sanctify man." That's the first thing, that is, God personally fathers us, his children, to maturity, to love, to wisdom, to holiness.

The second thing, Vatican II says, "The sacraments are purposed to build up the Body of Christ," not just we, as children of God, as persons, but God fathers his entire covenant family in justice and love and mercy.

The third thing is to "give worship to God." The sacraments are to give worship to God because the father wants to fill us with all that which we adore and praise in him. One of the most forgotten laws in modern society is we become like the one we worship. That's not just true for Christians; that's true for everybody. Everybody worships something. Everybody serves something and we always tend to become like the one we worship. So we don't worship because God is some cosmic egomaniac who says, "Give me all the glory." We worship because through worship God fills us up with all that which we praise and adore in him, and so we become more and more like him. We worship him, ultimately, for our sake. It doesn't add anything to his glory, but it sure adds a lot to ours and that's what a father takes great satisfaction in.

So God gives us these sacraments so that we can say, "So help me God," and be assured that he will give us his help. That help isn't just truth. It isn't just justice. It isn't just laws. It's all of that embodied in Christ who lived and walked among us and who died for us to give us this New Covenant. That's why we do practically everything as Catholics, "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."

Every time we make the sign of the cross, what are we doing? We're renewing our oath. It's like the court was dismissed for a day and we came back and it's in session again. And I remind you, you're still under oath, and so take the oath sign, "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," because that was the sign sworn over you when you were reborn into his family. That reminds us we are his children. We're his possessions and he is our possession and our inheritance. We do practically everything under the sign of the cross because that is the oath that gives us certainty that we are truly his children and that isn't just some quaint metaphor that stirs up our feelings.

That's more true than everything you see around us in this room. That's bedrock reality. So, when we do this, we continually remind ourselves that we are children of the Blessed Trinity. That gives to us a sense of identity. It gives to us a sense of dignity. It gives to us a sense of royalty, and it should also give us a drive for holiness because it isn't just a reminder of who we are, it's a renewal of the oath that we swore in our Baptism and that was sworn over us in Confirmation.

We miss the overarching centrality of the family for Christianity and the Catholic Church. It isn't just a metaphor. It isn't just an analogy. It's the master idea to our faith. Somebody might say, "Well, wait a second. The family is a good illustration. It's a good teaching device. It's a helpful metaphor. It's just too ordinary. It's too mundane. You know it's just so... it's all around us, family, you know. We should look for something very unique and special and unusual to understand God." Is that right? Not if we really understand the character of our Father, because God's deepest desire is to give to all of his children the raw materials, that which it takes, whatever it takes, to understand his love. Not a Ph.D. in theology, though he might call some to that. Not necessarily graduate studies, though I hope we all commit ourselves to the apostolate of studying our faith.

Ultimately, God gives to every garage mechanic, every cleaning lady, every bag lady, every street person, everybody rich and poor, everybody famous and infamous -- he gives to every human being the raw materials to understand his love by giving them a mother and a father, brothers and sisters. Well, you might say, "Family experiences are often raw and painful." That's right. He gives us family, so that we can understand his love, but he gives us a fallible family so that we will desire the only true infallible family, the Blessed Trinity whose life is lived in the Catholic Church, God's international, universal family.

I'll say it again: the family of God is the master idea to the Catholic faith. Boy, did that come as a shock to me! I was still anti- Catholic when I was working on oath and sacrament and covenant and family. My sharper students were saying, "This is going to lead you to ruin," and I thought, "Ah, poppycock, it's not going to lead me near the Catholics." It did, and I'm glad to tell you why. Because there's really no other way to get to the heart of what we mean when we describe the Blessed Trinity or when we describe the Blessed Virgin Mary as our supernatural mother, or when we pay respect and homage to the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, or we speak to the priests of the parish family as Father, or when we celebrate the feast days of the saints, because what family doesn't celebrate birthdays and anniversaries?

The statues and the icons and the pictures and the relics and the medals -- they're all family trinkets! They are supernaturally charged with a supernatural love, but the family of God is the master idea to our faith. If we try to understand it and if we try harder to live it, we are going to see how it is that the sacraments enable us to fulfill that family life. The New Covenant gives to us privileges that are just incredibly superior to the Old Covenant. That's why, incidentally, the New Testament sacraments are fewer than the Old Testament sacraments were. They're easier. We don't have to sacrifice tens of thousands of cows and sheeps and goats. Aren't you glad? They're fewer. They're easier because they're stronger to overcome our sin, because Christ is the one who swears the oath behind it all.

Sacraments Enable us to Fulfill our Supernatural Family Life

I'll tell you one thing that I want you to take home. The highest good in all creation, the greatest goal for all our lives can be reduced down to one thing, outside of God himself, of course, and that is the grace of divine sonship, Sanctifying Grace. The grace of divine sonship is the most precious thing in the whole universe, outside of God himself.

What is that grace? It's the life of Christ, the Eternal Son, within us. So it's no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me, as Saint Paul says. Jesus says in John 15, verse 5, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." But St. Paul says in Phillipians 4:13, "I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me." We need to understand that. The highest good in all creation is the grace of divine sonship. He wants to bring that sonship to maturity. He wants to bring that grace to perfection. He wants us to become like Christ. Romans 8:29, "Those whom he foreloved, he predestined to be conformed to the image of the firstborn among many brethren." Christ is the new Adam because he is the founding father of a new family in his own glorious and divine and human flesh and blood and he calls us to bring that sonship to maturity and he gives to us all that we need to do so. That's the bottom line. The supernatural life of His children is His biggest concern for History and for the world.

He wants to bring us to maturity. I once spoke to a former professor of mine, probably the most brilliant man I have ever studied under, certainly the godliest person I have ever had the privilege of studying with. I talked to him a couple years before I became a Catholic. I called him because I was scared that I might end up having to take the Roman road and swim the Tiber and "Pope," as they say, and it was the last thing on earth that I wanted to do. So I called this professor and he said, "Come on, you know my wife is an ex-Catholic, and she left in her childhood and she's glad; she's been glad ever since. And all of this sacramental business, what do you make of that?"

I proceeded to explain how the sacraments can fit into a family program, that you can see a natural family life cycle reflected in the supernatural life cycle. "A family life cycle," he said. "That's curious. That's a novel teaching tool to try to make sense to what is so obviously wrong and superstitious."

At the time, I did think it was novel. I thought it was one of my clever innovations, you know? I was sharing with my students as though I had come up with it. I was in for a rude shock. Of course, I thought I had found it in the New Testament, but I had never heard any of my teachers who found it there.

Then I began to read the early Church Fathers. The early Fathers frequently speak of the sacraments as the most essential part to what they call "God's economy of salvation." Now that's a phrase that is hard to understand for modern Christians. Why? The sacraments are an essential part of God's economy of salvation. What do they mean by economy? God's GNP? The heavenly market place? You know, is there Wall Street up there on the streets of gold? I don't think so. I don't think that we are merely commodities that are being traded on the heavenly exchange.

The idea that the early Fathers had in mind when they said that the sacraments are the essential part of God's economy of salvation is only understood when we see that the word economy is a compound in the Greek of two terms -- oeconamia is literally family law. Oecas-namas, family law. It's a household management program. That's what the sacramental system is, supernaturally charged with divine life for us weak and fallen and needy humans. Family management because God the Father as our provider and as our judge fathers his children from cradle to grave through the sacramental grace that we can receive.

Now that isn't just something that the Fathers in the early Church had but then the Catholic Church lost once it became so encumbered by superstition. That's what I thought. What I found in the early Church Fathers I thought, "Well, it's too bad the Catholic Church lost it." Then I discovered that in 1439 at the General Council of Florence in Exaltate Domino, one of the great decrees on the sacraments in the 15th Century, all these Papists had it right.

These Roman Catholics were teaching way back, right before the Reformation, "The first five sacraments are ordained to the interior spiritual perfection of the person, God's children, and the last two sacraments are ordained to the government and increase of the whole Church." Then they go on to explain what they mean. "By Baptism we are spiritually reborn. By Confirmation we grow in grace and are strengthened in the faith. By the Eucharist we are nourished with Divine food. By Penance we are spiritually healed. By Extreme Unction we are healed in spirit and in body. Through Orders the Church is governed and through Matrimony the Church receives bodily growth or increase."

The Family of God is the Master Idea of the Catholic Faith

Now, put it all together. Where do you find in life, birth, growth, strength, nutrition, healing, governing and fruitful expansion? Sounds like a family to me. Sounds like God's family and the Council of Florence understood it quite well, unless we mean by family the impoverished view of parenthood that we have today in modern society or unless we have a very rootless conception of kinship, which is unfortunately too common these days. Then it might be hard for us to understand what and how the sacraments work to bring about this supernatural family life cycle under God's control.

It's tragic that Protestants and other non-Catholics don't understand this. But what is even more tragic is that many Catholics don't understand it either, many Catholics. The sacraments are not some mechanical, magical ritual, like a car going through a car wash. "Put it in neutral. Now just stand still" and we go through all this mechanical ritual and we come out clean on the other side. That ain't the way it works! We're children. God knows that paternalism is a lousy way to father and so the sacraments are oaths that call us to grow up and receive from the Father all the grace and all the truth and the power we need.

This mechanical, magical ritual process is a total distortion of the sacramental economy of God's family laws. We lose this vision of the supernatural family life cycle. It wasn't lost in the Council of Trent, the Council in the 16th Century that was called to rebut and respond to the Reformation, the so-called Reformation of the Protestants. In the seventh session on March 3, 1547, in the Decree on the Sacraments, I discovered that even the opponents of the Protestants sought in terms of God's family: "Because the sacrament, validly administered, contains grace in itself, thus the sacraments effectively confer grace to those who receive it worthily. The sacraments are explicitly linked, therefore, to our justification." That's session seven.

Session six, had just explained justification and it explained it basically in one way: sonship. Session six says, "Justification by faith is the gift of sonship in God's family." Session seven says that the sacraments are ordered to growing up and maturing that justification, that sonship. In the forward to this decree, it says, "All true justification, that is, all true divine sonship, begins through the sacraments, like in birth through Baptism, or once begun, increases through the sacraments or when lost, is regained through the sacraments."

Think of the Prodigal Son. When he came back, what did the father say? "Good to see you, kid. You've been my son all along. Why did you squander the wealth?" No. He said to his older brother, "This is your brother who was lost but is now found." And then he says, "He was dead, but he is now alive." Sonship can die and through penance, it can be revived because Christ gives to us what the Catholic Church calls the "caro vivificens," life-giving flesh, the power of Christ within us. Trent goes on to explain how the sacraments of the New Covenant contain the grace they signify and "They bestow it on those who do not hinder it."

In other words if you have a sincere desire as a child to receive something you want from your parents, Jesus says, "Even bad parents know how to give good gifts to their children, and how much more our heavenly Father." Trent explains that the primary minister of all the sacraments is Christ himself and, in a sense, the original recipient of the sacraments, we saw last night, is Christ himself. It is also Christ himself who produces their effect in our souls, so says the Council of Trent. In other words, the human ministers, the priests, and so on, are merely God's tools, Christ's instruments to give his life to his loved ones, to his brothers and sisters.

So the recipients of the sacraments are God's beloved children. This is not, then, magically manipulating God to get our way. This is a humble submission on the part of God's children to the words and the works that God has in store for us as a good father. He takes created human symbols. Somebody could say, "Well, they're just symbols, that's all, just signs. All they do is signify." "No," the Catholic Church says, "they are not just symbols and just signs because they are divine actions by Christ himself. They are Christ swearing oaths for us." Then, in our lives, they are Christ swearing oaths in us and by us and through us.

As the new Adam, Christ fathers his New Covenant family through the oaths that he allows us to share. This is still something that is a cherished part of the family legacy. In 1947, Pope Pius XII in "Mediator Dei" reaffirms this family of God perspective, this family paradigm, if you will. He says, "In the whole conduct of the liturgy, the Church has her Divine Founder with her. He is present in the sacraments by his power which he infuses into them as instruments of sanctification." Pope Pius XII goes on, "It is certainly true that the sacraments possess an intrinsic efficacy, that is an intrinsic power to sanctify us because they are actions of Christ himself transmitting and distributing God's grace." He goes on, "But to have their proper effect, they require our souls to be in the right disposition so the work of our redemption, though in itself, independent of our will, really calls for an interior effort from our souls." Let me say that again, "These sacraments have intrinsic power because Christ is the one who administers them, but to have their proper effect, they require our souls to be in the right disposition." We have to be sincere in desiring what children need from their parents.

So the work of our redemption, though in itself independent of our will, really calls an interior effort from our souls. When we receive the sacraments, we don't put ourselves in neutral, like a car in a car wash. We don't say, "Well, here God, you take it from this point on." We say in effect, "I am going to give you my all because that's what I received from you and now in this sacrament I ask that you would supplement it with your grace and with your power." It really calls for an interior effort from our souls.

As I mentioned, this is something that was reaffirmed in 1963 in Vatican II in Sacrosanctum Concilium. This was stated perhaps more beautifully there than anywhere else. I quote, "By his power Christ is present in the sacraments so that when a man baptizes, it is really Christ himself who baptizes. Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ, for the purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify man, to build up the Body of Christ as the family of God and to give worship to God as his children gathered together in this big family reunion around the altar, the Lord's table, and we celebrate the family life that we receive in his name through baptism." And Vatican II concludes, "and because they are signs, they also instruct. Sacraments are powerful teaching tools that the Father uses to instruct his children in the ways of love and justice."

Vatican II Sacrosanctum Concilium concludes, and I want to stress this, "It is, therefore, of the highest importance that the faithful should easily understand the sacramental signs and should frequent with eager earnestness those sacraments which were instituted to nourish the Christian life."

Conclusion

Do we seek after the sacraments with an "eager earnestness?" Do we desire them with this holy resolve to use the wills that God has given us and the grace that he has given to supplement and to empower us to grow up and to give glory to him. Jesus illustrates this perspective. He says, Jesus says in John 15, verses 7 and 8, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you," in other words, the words made visible are the sacraments, "ask whatever you will and it shall be done for you. For by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit."

How is the Father glorified? By fruitful children, children who have wisdom and power and love. Is the Father threatened when his children grow up to be great or is the Father's greatness magnified and manifested? My wife insists that it was not only academic study that made me a Catholic. Since she's a Catholic, she can say this more emphatically now. She says that it was academic study of the scriptures and prayer, but even more, it was when I first became a father seven years ago. I think she's very perceptive, right on target.

When I became a father I was really thrown for a loop because I was a typical American, very individualistic, very self-centered, even in my marriage, until all of a sudden I saw this baby who a year ago never existed, whose life came from my wife and me and from our love. All of a sudden I discovered how God calls us to be co-creators and doesn't feel gypped in the process, but is glorified. Then, all of a sudden, I realized that I don't give glory to God when I grovel and call myself a mere worm and stop there. On my own I might be a worm, a wretch, but what makes grace so amazing is that it saved a wretch like me!

One of the great unfortunate tragedies in the Catholic Church is how they have mangled that song by the Protestant John Newton. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..." The first time I sang it in a parish, "that saved and set me free." Give me a break! Another version I heard a few weeks later was "that saved a soul like me." Original, "that saved a wretch like me." Oh we don't want people to feel like a wretch. Well, that's what makes grace so amazing, that it saves wretches, that it takes nobodies and makes them somebodies! It takes ordinary folks like us, through whom God does extraordinary things. You might say, "Well, I'm a nobody. I don't study theology like you. I don't speak like you. I don't, you know, emote like you do in front of a crowd. I can't do much." Bingo! You're more qualified, then, because the less we are, the more the Father's grace and glory will be manifested in us.

People see the extraordinary work of ordinary people and they will no longer confuse the cause. "Well, he went to Harvard," they'll say. "He has to be filled with God. Look at him! It has to be the Lord. He must be right in giving glory to his Father in heaven." When we bear that kind of supernatural fruit, our Father takes absolute delight. Our salvation is free, but brothers and sisters in Christ, it ain't cheap! Christ purchased for us this gift of salvation at the cost of his own life.

This inheritance is ours, freely given within God's family, but it came at a very high and steep cost. But it is only for those who trust God enough to entrust themselves by oath. God's free gift of salvation is only for those who trust God, not themselves, but who trust God enough to entrust themselves to God by an oath. Somebody could say, "Well, I'm not going to swear to God to do all of these things because I don't trust myself enough. Good, don't! But the whole reason why we swear a sacramental oath is because a sacramentum is an oath plea for God to make up for what we lack.

Don't trust yourselves, but entrust yourselves to the one you can trust. For those people, salvation is free and full. This is not paternalism. God wants us to work hard. He wants to fill us with his power because when he does his work in us, his life grows up and comes to perfection. He loves us like a father, just the way we are -- total acceptance no matter what you've done, no matter what sins you may have committed.

At this moment, no matter how far you feel from God, no matter what crimes you have committed, no matter what horrible thoughts and resolutions you may have reached, God the Father loves his children just the way they are -- total acceptance! But he loves us too much to let us stay that way, and the sacraments are the tools by which he will transform us into mature sons and daughters. So don't say, "Really when it comes to religion, I'm a nobody." God's greatest joy and his age-old specialty is taking the ordinary nobodies and doing extraordinary things through them.

Let me conclude then by saying the sacraments are not a substitute for holiness. They are not some kind of mechanical morality. To treat them as such is worse than perjury. It's tantamount to sacrilege. But those sacraments that Christ has given us are powerful because every time we receive those sacraments, we get grace so that we can give grace, and we say to God again, "We swear to live the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So, help me, God."

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. And thank you.

THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Signed, Sealed and Delivered Program 22 Transcripts Scott Hahn

We're going to take a move now; we're going to make a shift away from the foundational concept concerning the sacraments to the sacraments in particular. The next hour we will be discussing Baptism and Confirmation. As we move away from the theory to the practice, as we move from the sacraments in general to the sacraments in particular, I have to confess a real feeling of inadequacy, not only because I've only been receiving the sacraments for less than five years but also because I want to assure you that out there, there is a veritable ocean of material to feed your soul on with respect to each one of the sacraments.

So, each one is like the seven seas. You look at the seven seas and how could you possibly chart them all in a lifetime? The seven sacraments are the same way. They are the seven seas of God's grace. All we can really do then, if I am going to be honest, is just to skim the surface and share some thoughts that I hope the Holy Spirit can plant deep within your hearts and bring forth fruit from.

Introduction

Just briefly by way of review, last night we introduced the sacraments by looking at the nature of the oath and seeing that the oath of the New Covenant was sworn by Christ himself and that that's what makes the New Covenant so distinct and unique. This morning we took an overview of the seven sacraments, and we looked at them in terms of a supernatural family life cycle. We saw how that perspective is not novel. It's actually embedded in the New Testament. It's echoed in the early Church Fathers. It's carried on through the medieval Church and the Councils all the way into the Council of Trent and into our own century with the Popes of the 20th Century. We see that throughout Church history.

Various Ways of Dividing the Particular Sacraments

Now the way I've divided up the sacraments in particular follows the classical order, but there are different ways to distinguish or to categorize the seven sacraments. For instance, we saw in the Council of Florence in 1539 in that document Exaltate Domino, written by Pope Eugene IV, that there was a distinction made between the sacraments of interior spiritual perfection, that is the five sacraments that are designed to bring interior perfection within each one of us as persons and then two sacraments that are ordered for the life of the Church, its government and its growth -- Holy Orders and Matrimony.

Now that's a famous distinction, and that's helpful. But another way of categorizing the sacraments -- some theologians prefer to categorize them as the sacraments of the dead versus the sacraments of the living. The sacraments of the dead would include Baptism, which is only given to those who are still with original sin and perhaps actual sin in the case of adults, and penance in the case of being in a state of mortal sin. Those are the sacraments of the dead. The sacraments of the living would thus relate to the other five.

One way I like, though, one way of categorizing the sacraments that I prefer is to distinguish between the sacraments that have an indelible mark, or what theologians call a character, as distinct from those sacraments that can be repeated. The three sacraments that are known as indelible are Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. The first two represent the prime focus for our time right now. The sacraments that could be repeated, of course, would be the Eucharist, because we receive the Blessed Sacrament at least weekly. We also have the sacrament of Reconciliation, which can be repeated, and it should be received frequently. Also, the Anointing of the Sick -- oftentimes we think of Extreme Unction only with reference to the dying, but in fact, it can be given to one person several times. Then also, Matrimony, so that if your spouse dies, you are free to remarry and thus repeat that sacrament.

But those three sacraments that are indelible, Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders, are, in a sense, prime sacraments. Baptism is the sacrament of our new birth whereby we become babies in Christ. Confirmation is the sacrament of battle, whereby we become soldiers of Christ. Then Holy Orders, as we will see tomorrow, is the sacrament of the supernatural Father, the Pontifex, the Bridge Builder who helps and offers himself up to be a bridge between God and man.

Analogy of Sacraments

Using this last distinction, I'd like to give you an analogy. You know the song "Silent Night" -- one of my favorite Christmas carols? In one of the stanzas theres a that goes something like this, "Silent night, holy night, Son of God, Love's pure light." If we think of Jesus Christ as the PURE light, after all, he said, "I am the light of the world," in him is light and there is no darkness. If Christ is Love's pure light, then we can think of the Church as a prism. What happens when light hits a prism? That light is refracted and we have the seven colors of the spectrum, don't we? Coincidentally, how are those seven colors categorized or distinguished in the two categories? There are primary colors, which are three, and then there are four secondary colors.

To use the analogy, those colors are the sacraments that refract for us the glory of Christ as that pure light is received by the Church. And the indelible sacraments, Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders are like the three primary colors. Let's keep that in mind because I think that will help us think of these sacraments in their proper context as being beautiful and glorious. They are meant not only to strengthen us but to beautify and enrich our souls. Too often people think of the sacraments simply as medicine. We forget that sacraments don't just heal; they also strengthen. They beautify. They enrich. They don't just bring us back to point zero; they take us on into infinity and eternity and fill us with the very life of God.

Basic Catechism Definition

Keeping all this in mind, I don't just want to overwhelm you with images and analogies and new concepts. It's always helpful just to remind ourselves of the basic catechism definition of a sacrament and that is "an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace." What is grace? It's that divine life within us. It's the grace of sonship. St. Thomas Aquinas once defined grace as "the act of divine life and love that God is in himself," so that when we receive grace, we don't just receive knowledge about God, we receive nothing less than God himself as he is in himself -- that eternal communion of life and of love, and that is a glorious gift indeed.

Baptism as the Sacrament of Divine Sonship

Recall also how we said that the highest good in all the universe is grace, the grace of Divine Sonship, and this is the meaning and purpose of Baptism and we will see, secondarily, of the sacrament of Confirmation. Baptism is, in short, the sacrament of Sonship. That's what some theologians call it. Others prefer to speak of it as the sacrament of our justification; but since the Council of Trent in section six identified justification with the grace of Divine Sonship, it doesn't matter which you choose. It brings us into the family of God, and that brings up my favorite topic, the family of God, the master idea to the Catholic faith.

Just a few years ago, how important this idea is came home to me in a very, very vivid way. I have a good friend. He happens to be my brother-in-law, and he lives out in Pennsylvania and he works with an Evangelical Protestant organization on the Penn State campus. His primary outreach is to reach international students. One of the things that came up was the opportunity, at least the possibility of a debate, or a forum discussion between a Christian and a Muslim. The Christian would represent the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Muslim would present Islam, the two great faiths vying for control in a sense. They are really interacting in a very interesting way these days.

He contacted me. He asked me if I would consider it. I didn't need to think about it! I said, "Sure, that would be exciting." He said, "I already have somebody in mind. He comes from the Middle East. He is very well educated and he is wealthy and he has been financed to go around the country and he has been engaged in these debates on other university campuses." I said, "Well, then, in that case, let me think about it a little. In other words, this man's experienced in debate?" "Oh yes, sure. He's debated many times." "Oh, I see. What is it he would like to debate?"

The one topic that he wanted to debate the most was the Trinity. I thought, "No wonder, what doctrine is more difficult for the human mind to comprehend? It's a trick. It's a setup." Then I thought about it a little while and I said to myself, "That really does need to be presented in a vital, understandable way to people and maybe debate is a proper context." At any rate, I consented. Before we debated and before the debate was actually scheduled, my brother-in-law notified me that this Muslim wanted to get together and discuss, I don't know what; he just wanted to discuss things and get to know me -- maybe feel out the foe or something,

We arranged for a lunch time visit at a restaurant in State College, Pennsylvania. I went, nonchalant. I was just looking forward to meeting this man. We sat down and we exchanged amenities and all of the light conversational things to get things started for about two minutes. Then all of a sudden, he just launched right into it. He started talking about the pillars of Islam and Allah and Mohammed and so on. Then he turned to me and said, "What are you going to do to defend the Trinity?" I thought about it for a second and I said, "Well, I'd like to present the Trinity in terms of the family of God."

He changed the subject. We started talking about Islam in general and Christianity in general and I noted in my mind, "He's changed the subject." About a minute later, just in passing, I mentioned God, and I said, "God, the Father, and I went on ..." but before I could go on he stopped me, and he said, "Please, don't refer to God as Father again. Thank you." I stopped and I said, "Well, all right. Does it offend you?" He said, "It offends me very much. It's blasphemous to call God, 'Father.' God has no sons." Oh yes, of course, this is Islam and Christianity, the Trinity and Allah, all right, all right.

About a minute or two later in conversation, I happened to mention God the Father again. I mean it's hard to talk about Christianity and not talk about the Father and the Son, right? This time, he got a little bit more irate, and he pounded his fist one time and he shook his finger and he said, "I don't want you to bring that up again." And I said, "What is it with Father?" And he said, "Allah is Master, not father. He has no sons." Then I said, "All right, now I understand that's your belief, but you understand that my belief is that he does, that God is a Blessed Trinity and there is an Eternal Son and we all are sons in the Son, Filii in Filio, and all that." He didn't know Latin, so it didn't help.

I tried to explain to him that this is the ancient gospel, how the Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men could become sons of God. He was waiting patiently until finally he said, "I don't want to hear it. It's blasphemous." I said, "Why is it blasphemous?" "Because Allah has no need of sons." I couldn't resist a little barb at this point. I said, "Oh, I see. He's a master and we're his slaves. Does he need servants? Can't he get the job done, himself?" He didn't think that was funny and I probably shouldn't have said it. Anyway, I tried a little bit harder and we proceeded to talk about some other topics.

We ended up meeting for at least two hours. Then it came around to the Trinity again, and I noted in my mind how long and roundabout that circuitous conversation was before we came back. When we came back, he was expecting me to explain the Trinity in philosophical, abstract language because, historically, that's how it's often been explained, using the word usio or essence or substance or nature, then trying to differentiate that from the three Persons who have the one nature, and where in human life and experience do you see anything like that?

The three-leaf clover doesn't work. Water is ice, steam and liquid doesn't work. Really, no human analogy works, except the family. Now I can't get into the whole explanation because we're not talking about the Trinity; we're talking about sonship and Baptism. But as I began to explain it, I could see that old anger coming back. I stopped. He stopped. I said, "What is it about all this?" He explained in greater detail. He said, "To take fatherhood and sonship and put that on to God is wrong because it's something that belongs exclusively to creatures." "I see. Now, do you think that Allah is wise?" "Of course." "Well, do humans share wisdom?" "Well, yes." "Is Allah powerful?" "Yes." "Do humans also possess some power?" "Um-huh." "Does Allah provide for our needs? "Yes." Do we provide for each other's needs, at least sometimes?" "Well, yes." "Is Allah caring?" "Yes." "Is Allah good?" "Yes." "Can humans be caring and good?" "Yes, what are you getting to?"

I said, "Well, if Allah is all of those things, is Allah loving?" "Yes." "Well, if he is a loving, caring, providing, good God and all those things are found in human experience and we can project them onto Allah anyway, then why not fatherhood, as well?" Whoa! I said the wrong thing. He said, "Allah loves, but not as a father. Allah is master, we are his slaves. We're his property. Let me explain." "Please do." He said, "I have a dog in my apartment back in the town I'm living in now and I have to move. I've found a new apartment to move to in this new city, but I'm not allowed to have pets. The dog in my apartment is my dog. I love that dog. It's my dog that I love. I am going to move. Before I do, I will kill that dog. It's mine."

I looked at him. He looked back at me and I waited for a crack of his mouth into a smile or something. I thought he was joking. Nothing. "That's love? That's Allah's love, the love of a master and an owner. With love like that, who needs hate?" He didn't laugh. I didn't push it. We finally had to leave that lunch table, and my brother-in-law and I got in the car and he couldn't even start it up, and I didn't want him to because we kind of just sat there stunned. We looked at each other and I knew what he was feeling and he knew what I was feeling. We had always taken so much for granted, that God is our loving Father and that we are his beloved children. Something that is so common, so humdrum, so routine and sometimes practically meaningless to us, we discovered, is absolutely novel, strange, alien and foreign and offensive to other religions.

Thank God, he's our Father. It's just embedded into our faith, and yet we still take it for granted. The "Our Father, who art in heaven.... Glory be to the Father and to the Son.... I believe in God, the Father Almighty." And I had never really appreciated what it meant to be a son of God and how much greater the dignity that was than merely being a slave or private property or the personal possession of our Creator.

Now all of those things are also true in the Christian religion, but our Creator has become our Father and the property has become children and heirs with Christ, and Baptism is what conferred that exalted dignity upon us. Baptism is the sacrament of our Divine Sonship. We could almost stop now and just spend the rest of our time in prayer, asking God to help us see what it really means to have been baptized in the Spirit in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to take upon ourselves the life of Christ, to be clothed in Christ, to be called the children of God because as 1st John 3:1 says, "That's what we are." Behold the manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, for that is what we are." See, it isn't just an image. It isn't just a metaphor. It is the metaphysical, supernatural fact of life around which everything else revolves, in terms of which everything else needs to be understood.

Something I learned just recently is that the religion of Islam also uses oaths. Muslims swear oaths to Allah frequently and these oaths are tied up with covenants, but Allah has never sworn the oath. And the oaths that we swear to Allah in the Islamic religion are all the oaths of slaves in a household., not children, not heirs, not sons and daughters.

The New Covenant on which Christianity is built is unique and distinctive because the Son of God became the Son of man so that the sons of men could become the sons of God. And Baptism is this new birth. Saving faith is more than just a feeling. It's more than just a decision to accept Jesus Christ into our heart as personal Lord and Savior. It's more than a commitment of our wills and our hearts to Christ. This is the language that non-Catholics use and it's right and proper to use it, but it is not right and proper to base our sonship on our feelings, on our decisions and on our experiences. No matter how many crusades, no matter how many altar calls, no matter how many times we may have repented and sworn our allegiance to God, it's the sacrament that Christ lives out and calls us to enact that is the firm foundation on which our supernatural life is built.

When Jesus was baptized, Matthew 3, verses 16 and 17 say, "Behold the spirit of God descended like a dove and lo, a voice from heaven said, 'This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.'" Now did God say that from heaven for Jesus' sake? No. Jesus knew it with absolute certainty. He said it for our sake so that we would learn to associate Baptism with that same divine declaration. We can't hear it, except by faith and by faith we hear it every time a child is validly baptized "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." We hear God say, "This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased."

What were Jesus' last words? You know how important people's last words are always recorded. What were our Lord's last words? In Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, Jesus said, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me." Do we believe that? Let's just stop and ask ourselves, do we believe that right at this moment that Jesus Christ possesses all authority in heaven and on earth? He says "All of it has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of the nations." The word for nations is ethnic group. We get that idea of family solidarity, ethnic identity there. The nations are all descended from Adam and Noah. We are all one, big, unhappy family, broken and torn apart by sin and restored and reunited in the flesh and blood of the new Adam, the God- man, Jesus Christ.

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." That's a sacrament, for that's an oath. When somebody says, "I give you my word," what do they mean? Is it some secret password? No, it's not. When somebody says, "I give you my word, the word they mean is their name. So, if Donald Trump says, "I give you my word," he will proceed to sign underneath your signature on that check.

When we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that's the oath that Christ swears over us. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we say, "Our Father, who art in heaven," because that's where our home is, "hallowed be thy name." How do we keep his name hallowed. How do we hallow that name? By taking those sacramental oaths seriously and by living them out with all of the grace that he gives us and all of the natural power that we have from him, as well. "For, lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age."

Now when Jesus tells us, "Go baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," why does he immediately say, "for, lo, I am with you always till the close of the age"? Why bother saying that as his last words? After all, if Jesus is God, he is omnipresent. Where isn't Jesus found? How is it that Jesus can say, "I am with you always till the close of the age?" Jesus is God. God is omnipresent. Does it mean that somehow there is more Holy Spirit packed per square inch when there are baptized Christians in the room? What kind of Divine Presence is that speaking of?

It's analogous to the Divine Presence that is called down in a court room when the witnesses take the oaths, "So help me, God," and God comes down and becomes actively engaged to provide the grace those witnesses need and follow it up by judging their testimony.

This is the foundation of Baptism. We have to look now at some scripture texts besides the ones we have looked at already, but just remember that at the very beginning and at the very end of his ministry, what does God ordain for his son? Baptism -- his own and the command to go baptizing. It suggests that this sacrament was of the highest priority in the mind and in the intentions of our Lord. Mark 16 paraphrases these last words when it has our Lord saying, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved."

Other Scriptural Texts Referring to Baptism

Now, if you have a Bible, take it out (cradle Catholics, I can see. Nobody has a Bible on a retreat). All right, let me read to you a few texts from Sacred Scripture. Ephesians 5:25: "Christ loved the Church and delivered himself up for it that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the washing of water in the word." What is that a reference to? Well, when you study the context of Ephesians 5, it's actually a description of Christ's marital union with the Church, that that marital union is brought about through Baptism whereby we enter into this family covenant with our God through Christ.

Likewise, 1Peter 3:20 reads, "In the Ark of Noah eight souls were saved by water where unto Baptism being the like form now saves you also. Not by the putting away of filth of the flesh but by a pledge of a clear conscience towards God." What does it mean, "the pledge of a clear conscience"? When somebody is baptized, they are making a personal pledge. They are swearing an oath, in Christ, by Christ and through Christ. They are calling for God to cleanse their conscience. The book of Hebrews says that all of the ablutions, all of the dunkings in the Old Testament ceremonies didn't cleanse the conscience. The word in the Greek in that section of Hebrews is "baptismois". All the Old Testament baptisms couldn't purify the conscience, implying that the one New Testament baptism does, in fact.

A very important passage for our attention is found in the Book of Romans, Chapter 6. "Original sin is that which took us out of God's family and made us children of the devil," as Jesus says in the Gospel of John. That is what original sin does. That's what Paul describes in Romans 6. Then he describes how Jesus Christ as the new Adam works out our redemption so that we can be brought into the family of God. That's where Romans 6 begins and the question that the reader has is, "Okay, how do we get in on the action? How do we get out of Adam's family, where we were children of the devil and get into the family of Christ and become children of God?"

Notice that St. Paul does not say, "For as many of you who have come forth to an altar call or who have received Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior into your heart." Again, as true and as helpful as those things are, those are not what Paul said. Nowhere in the New Testament is the language like that used. Nowhere do you find, "You have to receive Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior into your heart." Do you realize that?

The Catholic Church is Bible believing and Catholics are Bible Christians because they base their salvation and sonship upon the very words of the Bible. When Saint Paul raises and answers the question, "How do we get in on the action to get out of Adam's family and into the family of God?" he says this, "By no means we died to sin, so how can we live in it any longer, or don't you know (Romans 6, verse 3) that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were therefore baptized with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too, may live a new life." What is the assurance that we have? The sacramental oath of Baptism whereby God regenerates us.

That is the teaching of St. Paul. It's very clear. That is also the teaching of John. Let's turn to the most famous passage regarding baptism, John 3. This, of course, is the passage that's famous because it's used by so many Bible believing Christians to explain what you've got to do to be saved. You've got to be what? Born again. Right? And that is what Jesus seems to be saying in verse 3 when he says to Nicodemus, " I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born anothen." Now that Greek word is a deliberate choice. That word can mean two things, either again or the same word means from above.

Jesus says, "Unless you are born anothen." Nicodemus takes it to mean "again." So he asks, "How can a man enter a second time into his mother's womb?" Jesus realizes that he has misunderstood the word. Jesus says, "You've got to be born anothen." Nicodemus thought it meant "again." The word can also mean "from above." I would suggest that it means "from above" primarily. And Jesus clarifies this in the following verse, John 3, verse 5, "I tell you the truth. Amen, Amen, truly, truly I say to you." When Jesus begins the statement with "Amen, Amen," he is attaching an oath to his words. "No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit."

So, if you want to see or enter the kingdom of God, you've got to be born from above or again. In other words, you've got to be born of water and Spirit: A equals B equals C, therefore A equals C. If we have to be born of water and Spirit to enter into the kingdom of God, what does it mean to be born of water and Spirit? Well, John has already shown us, hasn't he? In the first chapter just preceding this section, in John 1, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and what came down "anothen" from above? The dove, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. When he received water, he received Spirit and both came from above in his baptism.

What is John hoping the reader understands by this teaching of Jesus, "You must be born again"? That is, you must be born of water and Spirit. That is, you must be baptized for when you are, you are born from above a second time through water and Spirit. We are Bible believing Christians. We've also got to become Bible studying Christians, haven't we?

Now I would also suggest that the rest of John 3 backs up this Catholic interpretation of this crux passage. John 3, verse 22, right after this discourse with Nicodemus, tells us, "Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside where he spent some time with them and baptized." It's the only reference in the entire New Testament where Jesus and the disciples are baptizing and it immediately follows Jesus' discussion with Nicodemus about being born again or being born of water and Spirit.

In fact, the same passage uses the same word, anothen two more times. In John 3, verse 31 and 32, it tells us, "the one who comes from above is above all; the one who comes from heaven is above all." The word anothen is used, showing that it's not born again, like reincarnation, but rather born from above in the sense of regeneration. We do not believe in reincarnation as Catholics or as Christians. We do believe in the necessity of regeneration, and that is baptismal. No wonder in John 3, verse 25, an argument developed between some of John's disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. They came to John the Baptist and said, "Rabbi, that man Jesus, who was with you on the other side of the Jordan, the one you testified about, well, he is baptizing and everyone is going to him." They were crying on his shoulder. What does John the Baptist say when he hears that Jesus and the disciples are now baptizing? "You yourselves can testify that I said, 'I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.'" And by the way, what does Christ mean? Christos is the word for "anointed one," the christened one. The bride belongs to the bridegroom, the friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine and is now complete. "He must increase and I must decrease." Old Testament baptisms are now out of the picture because Jesus and the disciples have begun baptizing, introducing a new hope into this hopeless world, the hope of becoming the children of God.

Now, I hope you heard what I just said, because I guarantee you the 1990's will not be through before at least two or three people come up to you and ask you, "Are you born again?" And they'll mean by that something simple as accepting Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior into your heart. So you should say, "Yes, I've accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but the reason I'm born again is because I've receive the sacramental oath." Just to give you a clue as to what to say when they come knocking on the door, because you know they will.

Anyway, we have to get on to Confirmation. Let me just try to summarize here a few elements of the teachings on Baptism in the Church. It's been said by a great saint that if we could see with the angels' vision a newly baptized soul, we would be sorely tempted to fall down and worship. If we could see how pure and glorious Christ makes a soul at the moment of baptism, we would almost mistake that soul for God because that soul is adorned with the glory of God.

Baptism of Infants

Now that's speaking hypothetically, but it raises the question in many minds and that is, "Why do we baptize babies if it's the sacrament of faith?" Well, Baptism is the sacrament of rebirth, regeneration. Did you decide when you would be born the first time? Did you make any negotiations with the doctor and the nurse as to the moment that your physical birth would occur? Did you work things out in advance with your mother? She sure wished you would have!

Your physical, natural birth occurred without any decision on your part and without any help as well. So, likewise, supernatural rebirth from above comes from God's grace alone. Did you hear me? It's by grace alone that we have been saved. It is not our works. We do not buy our way or work our way into God's family. We work, but as sons. We do not buy membership in the family. We are freely given sonship and then we are expected to work it out because he has given us the capacity to do so. But don't ever mistake that state of grace for a wage or a salary. It's not. We are sons who inherit by grace alone. We are saved by faith working in love but this comes to us by God's grace and God's grace alone.

That is why the early Church believed that the baptism of an infant was so appropriate, because what better picture do we have of our own soul, helpless and dependent for new life? And so it was from the very beginning that John 3 and Acts 2 and other passages were used to explain why from the very start the Apostles were not only baptizing individual adults but entire households as well. So, there are good solid reasons from Scripture to baptize babies and to see those children as reborn children of God. Good reasons, and most Protestants accept those reasons. The Baptists don't and they are frequently the ones who will come at your door. So I just say this to get you ready.

Responsibility of Parents

I also want to say one other thing to get you ready to baptize your baby. Parents who baptize their infants obey the Lord's command, but parents who baptize their infants with little or no commitment to raise the child in the context of the living faith profane a divine institution. They endanger their own souls as parents, and they also deprive their child of all of the benefits and the advantages and graces that normally are associated with Baptism. It's a lot like having a baby and then letting him starve. Let's pray, because we are surrounded by many Catholics like that who have been baptized as babies but raised in homes where the faith was never really brought up or lived out or loved. Let's be sure that we reverse all of that.

One other thing I want to mention before I move on to Confirmation is that in the early Church Baptism was understood as an exorcism. Did you know that? That in the liturgy of Baptism, even to this day, there is a rite of exorcism whereby we not only renounce the works and the pomp's of Satan, but where Satan is driven out through Baptism. How does that happen? You mean a sacrament can exorcise demons? That seems a little far fetched, doesn't it? I want to tell you one little known fact. The word exorcism is a compound of two Greek words, "ex orchia". The word "orchia" is the Greek word for, guess what? Oath. Exorcism is the act by which demons are oathed out of people. Exorcism gains its power from sacramentum, from oath. If sacramentum is the Latin word, orchia is the Greek word and to exorcise is to drive out the devil with the oaths of Jesus Christ, the sacraments that he has instituted for our life.

So we were baptized out of the name of the devil, out of the name of Adam and in the name of Christ and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So the Blessed Trinity becomes the first family of our kingdom and the Church becomes our universal family and we become, not only children of God, but priests and prophets and kings. Because that really is the ultimate significance of the sacrament of Baptism. Because those were the three offices anointed or baptized in the Old Testament.

Confirmation

Now, I see we are running short of time, and I want to discuss Confirmation. Let me say a few things about this second sacrament. Confirmation could be described as our own personal Pentecost. It's where the Spirit, received in Baptism, all of a sudden bursts into life with Confirmation. If Jesus was declared to be a child or a son of God at his baptism, do you remember the Mount of Transfiguration where all of a sudden the glory of sonship blinded the disciples and they fell down at his feet? Then they hear that same heavenly voice coming down and saying, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased." Only this second time God adds a new phrase, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him." "Listen to him." And right after that event, Jesus, we are told, set his face like flint to Jerusalem because he knew he had to go up and do spiritual battle with the devil.

He had to offer up his life in the great war for our souls, as the great martyr and sacrifice, victim and priest for our salvation. In a sense, Baptism and Confirmation make us "little Christs." Christos means anointed. Anointing is what Baptism and Confirmation both involve. It is the sacrament of spiritual adolescence. You know how that body you received at birth was small and weak and dependent and so it had to be nurtured and cared for until you gradually developed more and more independence? Then all of a sudden puberty sets in and that's where we want all of our independence yesterday. Right? What is it about puberty, what is it about adolescence that transforms us?

Biologically we could describe it as the release of hormones. I don't know much about it, but I do know that doctors and scientists talk about estrogen reaching new levels in testosterone for males, and all of a sudden facial hair begins to grow and the voice begins to deepen and the body begins to grow and so on and so forth. In other words, we have physical hormones that are released at certain times according to a kind of biological clock whereby our bodies grow up to prepare us to become soldiers and more -- husbands, wives, fathers and mothers.

Sacrament of Spiritual Adolescence

Confirmation is the sacrament of our spiritual adolescence. You could almost say that it releases supernatural hormones to enable the teenager, the Christian adolescent, to overcome all the temptations associated with all of the new powers and the new desires that flood into the human soul during those early teen years. It's the sacrament of fortitude whereby we take courage, and we take courage to fight the fight. It's also called the sacrament that makes us soldiers of Christ. We're drafted, or hopefully we volunteer and enlist in Christ's army, and we become soldiers of Christ fighting the devil.

I believe that Confirmation is the most underrated of the seven. Confirmation is the most underrated sacrament. It gives to us the capacity to gain spiritual self-mastery, and what do adolescents need? It gives to us a greater conformity to Christ so the glory of our sonship might be lived out morally at a time of increased temptations and opportunities and occasions for sin. And it releases the fullness of the Holy Spirit's power in us. We determine ourselves by choices and by actions and we need God's help to make the right choices to do the holy actions.

Let's face it. Modern life, like never before, presents our teenagers with greater temptations and trials and tests of purity and moral courage than we can barely imagine. The sacrament of Confirmation gives to human beings something more than natural virtue. It gives to them what is known as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 11, verse 2 describes these seven gifts: "wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, Godliness and the fear of the Lord." These gifts of the Holy Spirit are supernaturally infused into the spiritual teenager's soul to give that person powers to overcome occasions and temptations to sin and to rise to a new level of holiness and glory. And let's face it -- this is what our Catholic teenagers need like never before. And we've got to be explaining to them what it is they are receiving in this sacrament so they don't despair of chastity, so they don't give up hope in being perhaps the exception to the rule of their high school. Because we face tough times and we need the gifts of the Holy Spirit because natural virtues are not enough.

Theologians can compare the natural virtues that we can develop by exercising our will to choose holiness. Theologians compare these natural virtues of the gifts of the Holy Spirit by comparing oars on a boat, you know, which we have to use with great effort to move the boat closer to God. If the boat is our soul, the oars are the natural virtues that we use to get closer to God. But the gifts of the Holy Spirit are like a sail. All we have to do is hoist the sail, and the Holy Spirit comes along and provides the energy and the drive that we need in the sacrament of Confirmation lived out to overcome impurity. But not just to overcome the negative, but to attain the positive and the constructive virtues of chastity, of self-mastery so that we can learn to give ourselves to the needy among us. That's what the sacrament of Confirmation is all about.