If you've ever done a serious home improvement
project, you know that good results, beautiful results, take wisdom, the right tools, hard
effort, and time.
This is, even more, the case if your home improvement project entails flipping the entire
house.
Now, what if you want to flip not a house but a human?
A human soul?
That's very delicate, but that is God's project for us.
God's human improvement project.
Salvation entails a greater participation in God's own life.
This participation is called grace.
God uses various means to bring about this grace.
Most especially, God uses the Incarnation.
This coming among us as the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Other helps include the angels, the Scriptures, and the seven sacraments.
If Jesus is the ultimate repairman, the sacraments are his custom power tools.
St. Thomas Aquinas' teaching on the sacraments is insightful, so much so that the Church's
Magisterium has adopted it as the Church's official teaching the basic points of Thomas' teaching.
This class looks at what the sacraments have
in common.
The sacraments are ritual acts that signify and bring about God's sanctity in our lives.
The sacraments are signs that effect holiness.
Not all signs are also effective.
A traffic light can show a green sign and a red sign, but the red signal is not always
effective in making drivers stop.
A sacrament is different.
It is a causative sign.
A number of elements come together to form a sacrament and there are a number of results.
Thomas understood the sacraments as having three dynamic stages, a tripartite structure.
The first stage is a ritual act called the sacramentum tantum, Latin for the sign itself.
A particular human person has to say certain words while also doing a particular physical
gesture or being in the presence of a particular object.
Thomas used the Aristotelian philosophical framework of hylomorphism to describe this
complex act.
The physical gesture or object is the sacramental
matter and the spoken words are the sacramental form.
The sacramental matter and form individually, and more especially together, signify the
specific sanctity that Christ wants to give in that sacrament.
Take baptism for instance.
In baptism, washing a person's head with water is the sacramental matter and the sacramental
form is the saying of the words, "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit."
Pouring water over a person can, among various possibilities, signify cleansing.
Adding the verbal formula signifies that this act configures the baptized into the death
and new life of Christ.
When the sacramental rite is done, there are effects.
An initial effect, the second stage of the sacramental dynamic, is called in Latin the
res et sacramentum.
This second stage creates a stable relationship with God and perhaps another human being.
For instance, at this stage, the sacraments
of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders give something called sacramental character.
This is a permanent configuration of the soul to Christ and his priesthood.
Character is a spiritual power that moves the person to do religious acts, acts of worship
in Christ.
If by analogy, we think of a sacrament as a multistage rocket, the first stage the sacramentum
tantum, gets the rocket going.
Then the second stage, the res et sacramentum, ignites and elevates the rocket higher.
Finally, without losing that second stage, another stage ignites.
That third and last stage is the final sacramental effect.
It's our soul being moved at top speed.
By analogy, our spiritual astronaut has broken through the atmosphere and is working at a
supernatural level.
In Latin, this final effect is called the res tantum.
This effect is the final grace of the sacrament.
Within the multi-stage process of the seven
sacraments there are lots of possible effects.
The bestowal of sanctifying grace, the forgiveness of sins, the infusion of the supernatural
virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the conferral of actual graces.
For instance, concerning actual grace, the sacrament of Marriage may help a husband to
help his wife by joyfully doing such a mundane task as taking out the trash.
Sacramental effects mean that Christ is active in our lives.
This happens through secondary causality, instrumental causality.
Whenever a sacrament occurs, there's an amazing chain of agents at work.
At the highest level, God works through the humanity of Christ and through Christ's earthly
acts and sufferings.
God's movement furthermore incorporates a human minister to do the sacramental rite
to a human recipient.
The recipient too has a role to play.
The recipient may need to actively participate in the sacramental rite.
For instance, when a woman accepts a man's pledge of marriage and vice versa.
In all cases, the sacramental recipient has
to be open to God's grace.
The recipient cannot interject any obstacles.
So, together, God, Christ, the sacramental minister, and the sacramental rite perfect
the recipient in grace.
Sacramental grace is communicated ex opere operato, as the Latin saying goes.
And its English translation from the sacrament to work having been done god's grace reliably
is given.
We see this described in Scripture.
For instance, St. Paul says in Titus 3 that God saved us by the washing of regeneration
and in Galatians 3 that as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.
Or we can think of Christ teaching about the Eucharist in John 6.
My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.
Each sacrament builds upon faith and is a
form of saving, physical contact with Christ and his redemption.
The sacraments heal, elevate, and perfect as instruments of God's working through Christ.
From the one tree trunk of Christ has come forth seven branches, seven sacraments.
Each offers us a form of Christ's holiness, particularized to our personal needs.
So, with this sacramental goodness, we want to have devotion in our sacramental practice.
We want to participate well.
The sacraments are Christ's power tools in his human improvement project.
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