Sacristan

“ These glorious, holy, life-giving, and divine sacraments, have been set apart, consecrated, perfected, joined together, and commingled, in the glorious name of the adorable Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be unto us, O Lord, for the forgiveness of our sins, the washing out of our iniquities, the great hope of the resurrection from the dead, and a new life in the kingdom, unto us, and unto the Church of Christ our Lord, here and every where, now and for ever and ever. ”

“ We adore thee, O hidden Deity! and most ardently wish we could offer thee such love as would atone for our own offences, and those committed by all mankind against this most amiable mystery. But, my God, if all creatures are so deeply indebted to thy mercy for this adorable sacrament, how much more sensibly should we feel our obligations, since by thy special predilection we have been chosen to assemble here under the same roof with thyself, to see thee daily offered on our altars, and to receive so frequently thy precious body and blood. ”

“ The sacrament of Baptism met us at our entrance into this world; the sacrament of Extreme Unction will be our guide at our departure to the other world. Religion, which rocked us in the cradle of life, will lull us to sleep in the cradle of death.
Go to the bedside of the dying Catholic and you will see the reasonableness of the practice of calling the priest to administer the last sacraments. After the sacraments have been administered, peace and joy and contentment are visible on the countenance of the sick person. He clings no more to the things of earth. ”

“ These are among nature's sacraments, and in the life of man we have, above all, the sacrament of the family, which at its best is an image of the love of the All-highest, and a foretaste of His Kingdom among men, of the city which is to be, in which all are members of one another, living to serve each other.
It may comfort us to think that the devil's sacraments are not so all-pervading; for night, which we think of as the cloak of evil, may itself be to the devout soul a symbol of the mysterious peace of God. ”

“ Where else is God awarded the first place, and religion paramount? Where else is devotion to the blessed sacrament practised as it is in Rome? To say nothing of the countless masses, of the churches open from early dawn to dusk; the kneeling worshippers; no day in the year but what, in the beautiful devotion of the Forty Hours, the blessed sacrament is exposed to the adoration of the faithful—now here, now there—the Son of God upon his earthly throne; lights burning as they burn nowhere else ”

“ And yet, is He not likewise offered up in the sacrament as a sacrifice, not only in the special solemnities of Easter, but also daily among our congregations; so that when a man is questioned and answers that He is offered as a sacrifice in that ordinance, does he not declare what is strictly true? For if sacraments had not some points of real resemblance to the things of which they are the sacraments, they would not be [pg 450] sacraments at all. [Augustine's general definition of a sacrament is that it is a sign of a sacred thing.] ”

“ I believe that the most worshipful Sacrament of the Altar is very Christ's body in form of bread: the same body that was born of the blessed Virgin our Lady Saint Mary, done on the cross, dead and buried, and the third day rose from death to life; the which body is now glorified in heaven.
Also as for the Sacrament of Penance, I believe that it is needful to every man that shall be saved, to forsake sin, and to do due penance for sin before done, with true confession, very contrition, and, due satisfaction, as GOD's Law limiteth and teacheth ”

“ But indeed a Sacrament so great and so rich in all manner of blessings can never be extolled as it deserves by human eloquence, nor adequately venerated by the worship of man. This Sacrament, whether as the theme of devout meditation, or as the object of public adoration, or best of all as a food to be received in the utmost purity of conscience, is to be regarded as the centre towards which the spiritual life of a Christian in all its ambit gravitates; for all other forms of devotion, whatsoever they may be, lead up to it, and in it find their point of rest. ”

“ A. The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.
Q. What is grace? A. Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills. Q. What are the two great sacraments of the Gospel? A. The two great sacraments given by Christ to his Church are Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. ”

“ Wherefore likewise we call not upon the saints, seeing that Holy Scripture saith ‘oo God and a Mediatour is of God and of men, a man, Crist Jesu:’ neither may we allow the holy bread of the blessed Sacrament of the Altar to be the very carnal flesh of our Saviour Christ, there bodily present, seeing both that Paul sayeth of it ‘this breed’ after that it be consecrate, and moreover that our own very bodily senses do deny it to be any other matter. ”

“ Of this sacrament, this sacrifice, this priest, this God, before, having been made of a woman, He entered on His mission, all sacred and mystical, angelic and miraculous appearances to our fathers, as well as their own deeds, were resemblances, in order that every creature might in a manner by its acts speak of that One destined to come, in whom should be the salvation of all that were to be restored from death. ”

“ Here revelation in its stricter sense commences, and conjecture becomes a glorious reality: in the composition of the dispute on the sacrament, the Saviour after ascension seated on his throne, the attested son of God and Man, surrounded by his types, the prophets, patriarchs, apostles and the hosts of heaven, institutes the mysteries and initiates in his sacrament the heads and presbyters of the church militant, who in the awful presence of their Master and the celestial synod, discuss, explain, propound his doctrine. ”

“ Paul to “stand fast, and hold the traditions which we have been taught, whether by word or by epistle,” 2 Thess. ii, 15. 4. That seven sacraments were instituted by Jesus Christ, namely, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, orders, and matrimony; and that they confer grace. To prove that confirmation, or imposition of hands, is a sacrament, they quote Acts viii, 17: “They,” the Apostles, “laid their hands on them,” believers, “and they received the Holy Ghost.” ”

“ Next as to the point dwelt upon in pp. 66-70, as seeming to prescribe, and to render important, the position of the Celebrant at the Holy Communion: viz. that our Lord's having "given" or "presented" in a mystery, through the Elements, the Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, is the whole secret of their consecration to be that which they represent: and that we, too, must "give," [102] "present," or "offer," the Elements with the same intention, if we would effectually plead the Sacrifice, and receive the Sacrament:—
The Bishop of Exeter, still commenting on 1 Cor. xi. ”

“ On the other hand, if the person be already in the state of grace, and receive any of the other sacraments, he receives by them an increase of justifying grace, by which his soul is rendered more pure and holy, and more beautiful in the sight of God; and therefore these other sacraments are called the sacraments of the living, because they cannot be received worthily unless the soul of the receiver be alive to God by being in the state of grace. ”

“ The sacraments are the highest part of religion, the symbols to our senses of an extraordinary divine favour and grace. In the Lord's Supper earthly lips are to receive a divine Being embodied, and partake of an heavenly under the form of an earthly nourishment. This sense is just the same in all Christian churches; whether the Sacrament is taken with more or less submission to the mystery, with more or less accommodation as to that which is intelligible ”

“ In the earliest liturgies, in the most ancient sacramentaries, there is the prayer for "refreshment, light, and peace," as it is now found in the missals used at the daily sacrifice, on the lips of the priest, in the prayers of the humblest and most unlettered petitioner. It is the "low murmur of the vale," changing, indeed, at times into the thunder on the mountain tops, amazing the unbelieving world which stands aloof and stares, as in the instances but lately quoted, or existing forgotten, and overlooked by them, but no less deep and solemn. ”

“ Still less will any one assert that such promises are vain; and if not so, then let us look forward, and ever more and more forward, to the progression of our dear Lord’s kingdom upon earth; himself present amongst us in the Blessed Sacrament, coming in that meek guise to take possession of his territories, and all but silently planting his standard first here, then there, as new altars are raised to him, and as other souls are brought beneath the sacraments—the oaths of allegiance to their new Master. ”

“ A Sacrament is a ceremony or work in which God presents to us that which the promise annexed to the ceremony offers; as Baptism is a work, not which we offer to God but in which God baptizes us, i.e., a minister in the place of God; and God here offers and presents the remission of sins, etc., according to the promise, Mark 16, 16: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. A sacrifice, on the contrary, is a ceremony or work which we render God in order to afford Him honor. ”

“ Again, if there be an altar and a sacrifice, there will be a priesthood; unless the voice of the whole world (over and above the constraining teaching of the Scripture) be in error, and any man that pleases may “take this honour unto himself,” [66a] and offer up “gifts and sacrifices” acceptably to God.
Premising, then, thus much, I proceed to call attention to the fact, that the whole literature of Christianity from the beginning either states or implies the doctrine of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, which we have deduced also from Holy Scripture. ”

“ We esteem for an abomination, and as antichristian, all those human inventions which are a trouble or prejudice to the liberty of the spirit. (12.) We do believe that the sacraments are signs of the holy thing, or visible forms of the invisible grace; accounting it good that the faithful sometimes use the said signs or visible forms, if it may be done. However, we believe and hold, that the above-said faithful may be saved without receiving the signs aforesaid, in case they have no place nor any means to use them. (13.) We acknowledge no other sacrament than baptism and the Lord’s Supper. ”

“ We have thus a clear distinction of (1) the ‘res sacramenti,’ Christ’s Death and Resurrection, (2) the ‘sacramentum’ or ‘sign,’ the outward form of Baptism, and (3) the ‘virtus sacramenti,’ our real participation in the benefits of Christ’s Passion, “a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness.” ”

“ In the sacristy is a narrow but deep font, in which the infant is baptized by being dipped in the water up to the knees at the name of the Father, up to the waist at the name of the Son, and wholly immersed at the name of the Holy Ghost, the priest repeating, "Thou art baptized in the name of the Father, Amen, and of the Son, Amen, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen." ”

“ Though some desire by means of this Canon to oblige those who come to Church to receive the Sacraments against their will, yet we do not; for we decide that the faithful are to stay to the end of the Divine Sacrifice ”

“ I answer that, Signs are given to men, to whom it is proper to discover the unknown by means of the known. Consequently a sacrament properly so called is that which is the sign of some sacred thing pertaining to man; so that properly speaking a sacrament, as considered by us now, is defined as being the "sign of a holy thing so far as it makes men holy." ”

“ For, just as what is offered everywhere is one body, and not many bodies, so also is it but one sacrifice."
Reply to Objection 2: As the celebration of this sacrament is an image representing Christ's Passion, so the altar is representative of the cross itself, upon which Christ was sacrificed in His proper species.
Reply to Objection 3: For the same reason (cf. Reply OBJ [2] ) the priest also bears Christ's image, in Whose person and by Whose power he pronounces the words of consecration, as is evident from what was said above ( [4696] Q [82] , AA [1] ,3) . ”

“ I answer that, This sacrament is both a sacrifice and a sacrament. it has the nature of a sacrifice inasmuch as it is offered up; and it has the nature of a sacrament inasmuch as it is received. And therefore it has the effect of a sacrament in the recipient, and the effect of a sacrifice in the offerer, or in them for whom it is offered. ”

“ Consequently, these three sacraments imprint a character, namely, Baptism, Confirmation, and order.
Reply Obj. 1: Every sacrament makes man a participator in Christ's Priesthood, from the fact that it confers on him some effect thereof. But every sacrament does not depute a man to do or receive something pertaining to the worship of the priesthood of Christ: while it is just this that is required for a sacrament to imprint a character.
Reply Obj. 2: Man is sanctified by each of the sacraments, since sanctity means immunity from sin, which is the effect of grace. ”