Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Holy Orders, Matrimony, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick.
The Catholic Church teaches that there are seven sacraments. But lots of non-Catholic Christians,
who say they follow the Bible, object to the Catholic teaching and practice of the
sacraments. Catholics, too, can be confused. Are the sacraments biblical? If so, how?
Yes, the sacraments are biblical. It may be useful to back up and ask why do we have the pages of a
Bible, with its Old and New Testaments? Are we saved by words on biblical pages? Or are
we saved by the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to whom all the words on biblical pages direct us?
The Bible communicates the mystery of Christ, the Word made flesh. Jesus Christ is the end of
the Law. He suffered, died, and rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures. What was
foreshadowed in the Old, is made manifest in the New, for Christ’s Spirit gives new life in grace.
Both the Old and the New Testaments are given by our one good God so that his people in salvation
history may live their life in accordance with his will. Sacraments are those sacred
signs from God to direct our life to him, and they can be understood in terms of biblical law
and the divine plan of grace. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that God gives us
law to instruct us and grace to assist us. Among the different kinds of law, there’s a privileged
place for revealed divine law. The Old Law, what we find in the Old Testament, has different kinds
of precepts or commands: moral precepts, ceremonial precepts, and judicial precepts.
The ceremonial precepts are determinations of moral precepts, and they directed God’s people in
the Old Testament to worship him. These ceremonial precepts included sacrifices, sacraments, sacred
things, and observances. As for the sacraments of the Old Law, we can read in the Old Testament
about such things as circumcision, the Passover banquet, and various rites of purification.
But the Lord promises through the prophet Jeremiah: “Behold the days are coming, says
the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” The Lord
goes on later to say, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts.”
Does that mean that there are no more external observances, such as sacraments? The New Law,
St. Thomas teaches, is the law of the New Testament, and it is written on the heart.
The New Law is chiefly the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is given to those who believe
in Christ. St. Thomas is adamant about the New Law as grace. He says that even the letter of
the Gospel would kill unless there were present interiorly the healing grace of faith. Grace is
far more important than the words on a page of the Bible. Only secondarily or in second place does
the New Law consist in certain external matters. Grace flows from the Incarnate Word through
certain external sensible objects—just as it was fitting that the Incarnate Word
could be touched and heard in human form during his earthly ministry.
Christ, in fact, instituted the sacraments to give grace to unite people across various
lands and times to be in him. These sacraments are instruments that convey the lifegiving power found
in Christ’s sacred humanity pierced on the Cross once and for all. From his pierced side poured
out blood and water, symbolizing our sacramental life in the Church that comes from his Passion.
The Church’s sacraments were anticipated in the Old Testament, which looks in faith toward the
coming Messiah. Take the first sacrament, baptism, as an example. In the third chapter of his First
Letter, St. Peter directs our attention to Noah’s ark in terms of baptism. Eight persons then were
saved through water, and that prefigures Baptism that saves us now. Circumcision,
given to Abraham, and boys eight days old also in a way prefigured baptism.
Jesus Christ himself, who was circumcised on the eighth day, was baptized by John
the Baptist. Christ wanted to baptize us in the Spirit, a new circumcision of the heart
for both males and females. Consider the last words of our Lord in Matthew’s account of the
Gospel. After rising from the dead and before his ascension, Jesus says to his disciples:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo,
I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Christ’s parting words to us are sacramental,
and the disciples acted on them in the life of grace. The Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 6:
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
All the Church’s sacraments were instituted by Jesus Christ himself for the needs of our
salvation. But someone may ask, “What about Confirmation or what about the Anointing of
the Sick? Did Christ confirm? Did he anoint?” St. Thomas says that Christ
promised Confirmation through the sending of the Holy Spirit, and we read that by Christ’s
institution the apostles healed the sick by anointing them with oil. All the sacraments
come from the Lord himself, and in different ways the Bible gives witness to all of them.
In conclusion, in exploring the question “are the sacraments biblical?” we can see that the
Bible points us to Christ and those sacraments in which we meet him during our lives on earth.
Through the sacraments, the words of love, life, and mercy that we read in the Bible are fulfilled
in particular actions in our lives—here and now. In heaven, we will not be reading the
Bible nor will we be receiving the sacraments. But now is the time to live the fulness of grace
through the sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ, described in the Bible,
and ministered in the Church for our everlasting salvation.
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