♪ St. Andrew's Catholic Church
in Pasadena, California: This is a gorgeous place. And every day people
come in and out of these doors to partake of the sacraments. Babies are baptized. Children are confirmed. Masses are celebrated. Confessions. Marriages... Every sacrament
has been administered at some point or another
inside these holy walls. My name is Matthew Leonard. Welcome to
"The Bible and the Sacraments", part of the St. Paul Center's "Journey Through Scripture"
Bible study series. Our mission for this study
is to examine and explore the sacraments
of the Catholic faith. If this is the first time you've
ever dug into the sacraments, you're in for a treat. But even if you're
not a first timer, I think you're going to find
this to be a bit unlike any other study on the sacraments
you've ever undertaken. Certainly we're going to look at
the basic teaching of the Church as to their meaning and origin. But we're going further. We'll also investigate
the deeper mysteries the sacraments contain that are illuminated
by Sacred Scripture. Our goal is to understand
where they come from, what they mean, and why they are so important
and foundational to our Catholic faith. Since this is a Bible study,
we'll be reading passages from Sacred Scripture
throughout. The underlying themes
we'll discuss in the
"Bible and the Sacraments" come from a book titled
"Swear to God" by Dr. Scott Hahn, the Founder and President
of the St. Paul Center. Now let's get on with it, because this
is the kind of study that can change your life. ♪ Now I'm betting
that some of you - and I mean those of you
who vividly remember watching the lunar landing
and skinny Elvis Presley - you memorized a great basic
definition of the sacraments: "A sacrament is an outward sign
instituted by Christ to give grace... The sacraments receive
their power to give grace from God, through
the merits of Jesus Christ". That's right out of the
old Baltimore Catechism. This explanation is an
excellent place to start. But once you
ponder it for a while, you start to realize
that it contains a depth and mystery
that needs to be unpacked. That's what we're about to do
and a great place to begin is the newer Catechism
of the Catholic Church. Drawing from Scripture,
the Catechism tells us: "Sacraments are
'powers that come forth' from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living
and life-giving. They are actions of the
Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church". I love this line - "They are
'the masterworks of God' in the new and everlasting
covenant". Now when we hear
a phrase like, "powers that come forth
from the Body of Christ", it often brings to mind memorable images
of Jesus' ministry: particularly moments
in which He healed people. Remember when a woman in the
crowd around Jesus touched Him, and was healed? On another occasion
St. Luke tells us that "all the crowd sought
to touch Him, "for power came forth from Him
and healed them all". You see, Jesus became
flesh and blood in order to heal
our flesh and blood. But His healing of humanity
is more than physical. More importantly,
He brings us spiritual healing. He brings us salvation. Those physical cures we read
about in Scripture were just "outward signs" of a deeper and
more lasting spiritual healing. But notice that to perform
these spiritual healings, Jesus used physical means - mud, spittle, spoken words,
even simple eye contact. Why? He did it this way because
He knows that as human beings we learn through our senses. So in order to show us the true
depth of what He has to offer, He came down to our level. Well, the sacraments
Christ instituted work the same way. We taste, touch, hear,
smell, and see our faith. And I think this is one of the greatest things
about Catholicism - the nitty-gritty physicality - the smells and bells
of the faith. God knows we relate
through our senses and so He set the sacraments up
to appeal to our humanity. So the sacraments
use physical matter, but provide supernatural
and natural benefits. The Church says they are
the ordinary means Christ uses to extend salvation
to the whole world. Now we know that
Jesus came to earth at a definite point
in human history. But we also know that the power
and grace of His presence isn't limited to that
small space in history - those 33 years
He walked the earth a couple thousand years ago. Through the Church He founded, Jesus makes it possible
for us all to experience His healing touch
and presence now. This is why
He commanded His priests to celebrate the
sacraments with Him - through all time - on earth. Think about it. When the apostles
rolled into a new place to establish the Church,
what did they do? They baptized. They gathered for the Eucharist. They ordained priests
and anointed the sick. In other words,
they employed the sacraments. Not just because they
thought it was a good idea, but because Jesus told them to. And Jesus came and said to them, "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 behold, I am with you always,
to the close of the age." Many of you know that command is referred to as
"the Great Commission," and for two-thousand years, the Church has continued
the work of the first apostles, bringing people to Christ
in Word and Sacrament. Now let's go back to that
basic definition of sacraments we mentioned at the beginning... they are "an outward sign
instituted by Christ to give grace." This idea of signs
isn't new to us. In fact, we use them to represent
something else all the time. The words I'm speaking
right now are signs. I say "chair",
and you probably think of what you're
sitting on right now. A heart is often a sign of love. A yellow light means
speed up or slow down depending on what
kind of driver you are. Of course, there are
other types of signs as well. For example, my wedding ring is
a sign of my love and fidelity to my wife Veronica. Now, the gold out of which
it is made is valuable. But nobody really
respects the ring because of the material
out of which it is made. People respect
what it stands for. So signs are visible symbols
of things that are invisible. And they reveal something
about the object they represent. The circular shape of a
wedding ring represents the fact that it is a lifelong union,
not to be broken. But while signs
reveal some things, they don't reveal everything. You can see the ring,
but it doesn't show you the full depth
of the union it represents. That's because signs and things
that they represent, are always distinct
from each other. The ring is not the same thing
as the vow it represents. No matter how hard
you study the ring, you can't define the marriage. The relationship, in a sense,
is a mysterious reality - a mystery. While a sacrament
is like other signs, it is also unlike them. The symbolic value
present in sacraments goes way beyond
normal signs and symbols. Let me give you an example
of what I'm talking about. Think of the last
baby baptism you attended. Usually, the baby
is washed three times. This is symbolic of: the forgiveness of sins, Christ's three days in the tomb, and the babies' participation
in the resurrection of Christ as it comes out of the water - a new birth. Similarly, the sacrament of
baptism also brings to mind many scenes from the Bible, like: The baptism of Jesus. The Spirit moving over
the waters at creation signified by the blessing
of the baptismal water. St. Peter says the cleansing
waters of the great flood are signified by the
washing of baptism. Similarly, St. Paul discusses Israel's passage
through the Red Sea in the context of Baptism
in 1 Corinthians. These are just a few examples. And they're important
because they show us that sacramental signs - like the waters of baptism - can represent many realities
at the same time. It's also important to note that these examples
I just gave from Scripture are not merely
creative interpretations of these Old Testament stories. I didn't come up with them. These are the
sacramental interpretations that the apostles
and New Testament writers gave to these events. Of course, the many meanings
of the sacraments are not the only,
or even the most significant way sacraments are
different from other, more normal kinds of signs. When a baby is washed
with water at baptism, that washing not only symbolizes the soul being cleansed
from original sin, it actually restores grace. It does what it symbolizes. In other words, sacraments
are efficacious signs. They help bring about
the very reality they signify. They sanctify us. They cause grace. They get us to heaven. As we move through
our study of the sacraments, we're going
to come to understand that while all seven
sacraments of the Church are actions of Jesus Christ, they're nothing new to the story
of salvation history. It wasn't like Jesus sat around
dreaming up ways that he was going
to give us grace: Hmmm, let's see.
How about we use water, maybe a little bit
of oil and bread. In fact, make it
unleavened bread. That's not how it went down. The New Covenant sacraments actually bring to light
and fulfill God's promises that were
present from the beginning. God has always
dealt with humanity in a sacramental manner. The sacraments we now celebrate aren't some random things
the Church concocted so we could have
some cool ceremonies. They are the continuation
and fulfillment of how God has been dealing
with us from the beginning. What that means is the Old Testament
is full of sacraments that foreshadow
and point forward to those which
Christ instituted. St. Augustine said "the
sacraments of the New Testament give salvation, the sacraments
of the Old Testament promise a savior". We need to make
a distinction here because I don't want
anyone to be confused. The sacraments
of the Old Testament were not sacraments of grace as we now have
in the New Covenant. They're sacraments
with a small 's' - sacraments in the broader
sense of the term. They were signs
of something sacred. And St. Paul saw many of these Old Testament,
'small s' sacraments in the ritual worship
of ancient Israel. Circumcision is
a great example of this. If you remember, circumcision -
severing a part of the foreskin, was the rite by which Abraham
and all his descendants made their covenant with God. This action signified
their membership in God's covenant family. And in St. Paul's mind this was but a foreshadowing
of something far greater. In Him
also you were circumcised with a circumcision
made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh
in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried
with Him in baptism, in which you were also
raised with Him through faith in the working of God,
who raised Him from the dead. So Paul shows us
that circumcised infants prefigured those "newborn"
in Christ, through baptism. This kind of
biblical foreshadowing has a special name. We call it typology. This is derived
from the Greek word the New Testament
uses for the process, typos, or "type" in English. Typology is a 25-cent word that
basically describes the process of how God's works
in the Old Covenant prefigure what He
accomplished through Christ in the New Covenant. How the people, places and
events of the Old Testament point forward to,
and are fulfilled in Jesus. Now some of you
might be thinking, "Well, that's something
I've never heard of before." But in fact, we practice
typology at every Mass. In the Liturgy of the Word we are invited to read the
Old Testament in light of the New and the New Testament
in light of the Old. And when we read
Scripture this way, we see that what God says
and does in the Old Testament points us to what Jesus
says and does in the New. Likewise, what Jesus says
and does in the New Testament sheds light on the promises and
events we read about in the Old. We'll talk more about
the liturgy in a bit, but for now, let's return to a couple
of the Old Testament scenes we discussed a moment ago - the scenes which
remind us of Baptism. Let's put this whole
typology thing to work and see how these scenes
prefigure and point toward the New Covenant sacrament. In 1 Peter 3:21, we learn that
the great flood and Noah's ark prefigured salvation by Baptism because through it the earth
was cleansed of sin, so to speak. Likewise, St. Paul refers to the Israelites'
crossing of the Red Sea as another foreshadowing,
or type of Baptism in 1 Corinthians 10:2. In other words, they were
physically freed from bondage as they passed
through its waters. Similarly, we are freed from
spiritual bondage to sin as we pass through the waters
of Baptism. Another example of typology is the manna the Israelites
ate in the wilderness. It prefigured the Eucharist,
"the true bread from heaven". And as we move through
our study of the sacraments, we will return to these 'types'
and discover new ones as well. Now why is typology important? Well, it's an essential tool
for interpreting Scripture because salvation history - the story of how we're saved
in the Bible - it unfolds in three
successive ages or stages as God worked out his plan
to get us to heaven. You see these stages described
by St. Paul in Romans chapter 5, as well as in the writings of
others like St. Thomas Aquinas. What are they? The first is the age of nature,
which begins at creation, runs through the era
of the patriarchs - so, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - all the way
to the time of Moses. The second stage
is the age of law, beginning when Moses received
the law from God at Mt. Sinai, continuing through
the history of ancient Israel. And stage three? The age of grace, which began with the advent
of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago and continues
to this very moment. Now as Catholics,
we read the Bible as a whole - it forms one story telling us how God
prepared the world for Christ. We learn how He fulfilled what was prepared
in the Old Testament and how He will come again
to finally complete His work. So as we study these stages
in salvation history of nature, law, and grace, it becomes apparent that since
sacraments were essential to Christ's saving work in
stage three, the age of grace, they were part of God's plan
"from the beginning." Natural sacraments in the
Old Testament - like circumcision - point toward their
fulfillment in Christ because they prepared
the way for the Messiah. The sacraments established
by Christ in the age of grace elevate all that was sacramental
in the ages of nature and law. "Christ took up the signs
of creation, culture, and the liturgy of Israel; for He Himself is the meaning
of all these signs," says the Catechism. In other words, Christ took
those types and foreshadowings that were present
in the Old Testament and transformed them. Old Testament
sacraments and rituals like water, bread,
blood, and animal sacrifices were more numerous,
way more complicated, but less powerful -
weak against sin, says the book of Hebrews. But because
of Christ's divine power, the New Covenant
sacraments of grace are much fewer,
less complicated, and far more powerful -
strong against sin. We no longer have
to deal with things like the messy business of
sacrificing animals at a temple, or all the ritual purity laws which comprise
the entire book of Leviticus. Christ has fulfilled all
the signs and sacraments of the Old Testament in Himself and given greater grace
through seven simple, yet very powerful sacraments. Rather than
something we do for God, in the New Covenant,
the sacraments are what God does for us. They are His gifts to us. And while they don't
make salvation easy, they make it possible. They are avenues of real grace
from which we receive the ability to live
as children of God. And this is really
what it's all about. Through the sacraments
we become the children of God. This is a huge point. Moving through this study, we're going to see that
being called a child of God isn't figurative language. It's the glorious reality
of our faith. You and I were created
to be members of the divine family of God - partakers of his divine nature,
says St. Peter. God shares himself with us! And he does it
through the sacraments. ♪ I hate to stop now because I feel like we're
just getting warmed up. There's so much to get into! But not to worry, because as we continue
to lay some foundation for discussion of the individual
sacraments themselves, in our next lesson we're going to dive
more deeply into this idea that the sacraments really make
us a part of the family of God. We're also going to learn the
importance of liturgical ritual, and how through
the sacraments of grace we're actually swearing
a covenant with God. It's going
to be very interesting and may even totally transform
the way you think about and participate
in the sacraments. Until then, God bless you.
