Category Archives: Sacraments

Reflections on the Sacraments of the Church.

Confession and Healing

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Today I made my First Confession.

I’ve heard from various friends about the sensations they felt the first time they took part in the Sacrament of Reconciliation — from joy, to peace, to release. For me, it was similar. I was very nervous going in. It was a new experience, and I would be laying my soul and my faults bare. I had written out my confessions beforehand. As I confessed them, I had the sensation of a pouring out of my soul — and in the end, catharsis. I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt clean. I didn’t smile; I didn’t skip away; I cried.

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.
He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
—Micah 7:18-19 ESV

This has always been one of my favorite Scriptures about God’s forgiveness. Today I truly feel that my sins have been cast into the depths of the sea.

What has moved me the most in approaching Confession is that it’s known as a Sacrament of Healing. I don’t know what I thought it was when I was a Protestant; but I conceived of it more as a burden, a legalistic obligation, than as an administration to the soul. Christ is the physician to our bodies and souls. Confession is the Sacrament of Reconcilation, the Sacrament by which we as sinners are reconciled to the Church, to each other, and to God. It is also called the Sacrament of Conversion, because through it, through Confession and Penance, we actively turn away from our sins and convert (turn towards) God and His path of righteousness (CCC 1423-1424). This whole chapter in the Catechism is powerful and poignant to me; I have quoted sections of it before; but to quote another:

“The whole power of the sacrament of Penance consists in restoring us to God’s grace and joining us with him in an intimate friendship.” Reconciliation with God is thus the purpose and effect of this sacrament. For those who receive the sacrament of Penance with contrite heart and religious disposition, reconciliation “is usually followed by peace and serenity of conscience with strong spiritual consolation.” Indeed the sacrament of Reconciliation with God brings about a true “spiritual resurrection,” restoration of the dignity and blessings of the life of the children of God, of which the most precious is friendship with God (CCC 1468).

One of the key scriptural foundations for Confession is telling to this point:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
—James 5:13-16 ESV

Here, confession of sins is intimately connected with healing, both physical and spiritual. And it is paired essentially with the other Sacrament of Healing, the Anointing of the Sick.

In the Christian tradition from which I’m coming, miraculous healings, through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, are at the forefront of the Christian experience. When someone is sick, especially gravely sick, there is so much prayerful petition, so much faith and hope that God will work miracles of healing through prayer, anointing, and the laying on of hands — inspired by the healing miracles of Christ and the Apostles, and by this same Scripture that undergirds the Catholic Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. There is a genuine belief and an active faith that God heals; but even beyond this, there is ready credence and faith given to faith healers, individuals who profess to have individual, personal gifts of miraculous healing through the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, in the Great Commission of the “Longer Ending” of Mark (Mark 16:14-20), that “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” and that “these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues . . . ; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, writes of gifts of healing and other spiritual gifts. While Catholics and cessationists apply these passages only to the Apostles and believers of the Apostolic Age, many Protestants and continuationists apply them to wider Church, to all believers in all ages, and believe that these miraculous, personal gifts of healing continue to this day.

I have no doubt that God heals today — that He intervenes in our lives in miraculous and mysterious ways. If this weren’t the case, I wouldn’t be alive today. But I believe that more often than not, these healings follow the course of the mysterious rather than the miraculous: of God’s infinite love and grace, and not His desire to make a show or spectacle. My own healing was miraculous, but it was a private, personal miracle, more for me than for anyone else. My experience, and the faith it engenders in me, is of little weight to anyone else; and to me, that makes it all the more personal and precious. I believe God works through medicine, through surgery, through the unexplained, through paths that no one sees, that few appreciate but those that receive His graces. When it comes to professed faith healers, to individuals with professed gifts of healing, I tend to be a skeptic. Many of them, I fear, are charlatans and showmen. I certainly don’t believe “word of faith” teaching, that professes that we can “speak” or “declare” God’s blessings and graces into our lives.

Do Catholics believe in divine healing? This was one of the most pressing questions I faced as I made this journey. When someone is terminally ill and dying in the Catholic Church, I have never heard a priest or anyone pray for God’s divine healing. There seems to be a ready acceptance that death is imminent. In many ways I think this is healthy; earthly death is a part of life, as much as being born, and I have seen firsthand the crises of faith faced by those who believed they had “spoken” a healing and “received” it, only to face death in the end. But do Catholics believe in divine healing? Most certainly. Catholicism abounds with stories attributing healings and other miracles to the intercession of saints; even attributing intercession against certain ailments and diseases to particular saints. St. Peregrine Laziosi, for example, is the patron saint against cancer.

And in the Catechism itself, in the mainstream, established doctrine of the Church, there is also hope in God’s healing. The Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick — the so-called “Last Rites” — is not a sacrament of death or even strictly of preparation for it, but of healing (CCC 1499-1532). Though the emphasis of the Sacrament, as described in the Catechism, is the healing of the soul — on the gift of grace to face sickness; on the forgiveness of sins; on preparation to make life’s final journey — throughout is an acknowledgement that Christ is a physical healer. It affirms that Christ may heal the body to accomplish the salvation of the soul (certainly, this is what happened for me); but accepts that the salvation of the soul is paramount, and that crossing over into the next life is a grace in itself to those who belong to Him.

So do Catholics believe in divine healing? Yes, they do. Sometimes I think that there should be more faith and prayer for physical healing in this life; but what I see, more openly than that, is perhaps even more valuable: a full acceptance of God’s Will and Grace in our lives, that not ours, but His Will be done.

Baptism and De-baptism

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I wrote a letter this morning to my former pastor at Calvary, asking him to attest to my baptism, which he gave to me in 1992 when I was twelve years old. The Catholic Church will recognize my Christian Baptism, made under the Trinitarian formula of “in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” as valid, and receive me as a candidate for Confirmation into the Church at Easter. But first I need witnesses. Thankfully, Pastor George is still pastor at Calvary, and my parents are still here and supportive.

The Baptism of Clovis

The Baptism of Clovis, King of the Franks. (Note: A Frenchman, sort of, who embraced baptism.)

Then I read this story on NPR, the other side of the coin: while I am working to have my baptism verified and recognized, an elderly man in France is fighting in court to have himself “de-baptized.” Is this even possible? Not in my understanding of the Sacraments. Not according to Rev. Robert Kaslyn, dean of the School of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America:

“One can’t be de-baptized. . . . [B]aptism changes one permanently before the church and God. One could refuse the grace offered by God, the grace offered by the sacrament, refuse to participate . . . but we would believe the individual has still been marked for God through the sacrament, and that individual at any point could return to the church.”

Baptism, in Catholic theology (CCC #1213-1284), is a new birth, a birth into a life of grace in the Church, a “washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” But one can’t be un-born. Just as Nicodemus didn’t understand — “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus asked Jesus (John 3:4, ESV) — Rene LeBouvier wants to be un-born when he is old.

And it breaks my heart. I understand that the failings of some in the Church’s flock, among her shepherds even, have hurt many people, and offended many others. I understand that even as I am turning to the Church as something new and glorious, so many others are turning away from it as something antiquated and out of touch with “modern times.” I will write about these issues — the pedophilia scandals, the rejection of birth control and sexual protection even in AIDS-torn Africa, and other charges against the Church — in more detail another time. For now, let me say that I choose to join with Christ’s Church, for the love and grace of Christ embodied in it; I choose not to reject it for to the failings of some of the men who make up it.

Baptism is the initial rite of initiation into the Church. Once you are baptized, you are a member of the Church, engrafted into the body of Christ. I suppose that membership is what M. LeBouvier wants to revoke. But, spiritually speaking, it can’t be done. He was baptized into Christ. It has been done. Perfectum est. He can erase the physical, temporal record of the event; eradicate his name from the baptismal records of the Church; but he can no more un-baptize himself than he can un-birth himself. (Ironically, this court case is creating more of an uneradicable record of his baptism than anything of the Church’s that he could have stricken.)

But it does make me wonder — just in time to discuss the sacrament of Baptism tonight at RCIA — what happens on the spiritual plane when someone walks away from and rejects the grace of Christ. Certainly, the Catholic Church believes that you can fall from grace — that having participated in the sacraments, especially involuntarily as an infant, does not guarantee one’s salvation. Not even membership in the Church as an adult, frequent attendance, or participation in the Eucharist guarantees one’s salvation. The visible Church, the Vessel of Salvation, carries both the saved and the lost. Not participating in the Church, effectively abandoning ship, probably does get you overboard, detached, but as Fr. Kaslyn said, you are forever “marked,” forever welcome to come back.*

I do have to say, though, from my own experience in trying to verify my baptism, that striking whatever records there are of that event — particularly when it happened over seventy years ago — might make returning a little difficult.

* Addendum (9:28 p.m.): We had a very good discussion of this issue and this article tonight at RCIA — the best class we’ve had so far, I think. We are now in open waters, learning to be Catholic and not just about Catholics. I asked Father Joe about this question — whether it’s possible, through renouncing one’s baptism, through walking away, through “abandoning ship,” to truly leave the Church — if the initiation of baptism can truly be reversed. And I liked his answer. “You can leave the Church, but the Church will never leave you.” Like the prodigal son coming home, the Church will always welcome you with open arms. You can never make God stop loving you, or revoke his grace having been granted.

Broken Communion

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EucharistToday I’m troubled by the first major challenge from my parents to the Catholic Church: not so much, thankfully, to my personal journey, but ostensibly to the Catholic practice of closed communion.

My father feels offended to be excluded from the Catholic Eucharist. As a baptized Christian, he feels he is privileged to partake. He feels that in denying him communion, the Church is in effect saying he is not a Christian. He feels that the practice of closed communion perpetuates division in the Body of Christ. My mother is hurt that she could not come to my church and take communion with me, or I with her at her church.

Frankly, I had no expectation that this would be an issue. It had not even occurred to me that this would be upsetting to anyone until I googled and found that many Protestants were troubled by this matter. From the very first time I attended Mass some seven years ago, then a thoroughgoing Protestant, it seemed perfectly natural and reasonable to me for the Catholic Church to exclude non-Catholics from the Eucharist. I recognized, even then, that the Church held the Eucharist to be most sacred, was very protective of it, and didn’t offer it to just anybody.

Further study revealed that closed communion is nothing new; it’s one of the most ancient customs of the Church:

But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, “Give not that which is holy to the dogs” (Didache 9, ca. mid to late first century A.D.).

We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is thereby living as Christ has rejoined (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 65, ca. A.D. 150.).

So the Eucharist was closed to non-Christians; it was only open to baptized Christians who believed the truth of catholic teaching. Certainly, in those early days, when Christianity was outlawed and persecuted, an unknown stranger could not have simply shown up at a Christian meeting, professed to be a baptized Christian, and been received into the Mysteries; no, he would have to have been a known, accepted, and approved member of that community, or else commended to it by other known, accepted, and approved Christians. The Eucharist was closed for the Church’s protection. The unbaptized were not even allowed to be present at the Eucharist, let alone to receive it.

Pope Benedict distributing the Eucharist to a child

Pope Benedict distributing the Eucharist to a child.

What says, then, that communion should be open? My dad points out that there is nothing in Scripture that says explicitly that communion should be closed; but likewise there is nothing in Scripture that says that it should be open to all without restriction. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, is writing to the church at Corinth, a closed communion of Christian believers. He does not recommend that the church open its doors and its table to strangers from the street; he is advising the church in the context of its own private, closed Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharist, the Communion of believers with Christ and with each other, is the most intimate and precious of all the Christian Mysteries. It was closely protected and guarded.

But this is 2012. There is no longer the need for such protection, is there? The liturgy of the Mass is no longer a closely-guarded secret; there are no longer accusations of cannibalism in Christians consuming the Lord’s Body and Blood; there are no longer persecutions unto death in our country. My parents are both baptized Christians. Shouldn’t they, known, accepted, and approved Christians, be allowed to receive the Eucharist, too?

That depends on what you believe the Eucharist to be. Evangelical Protestant communities that practice open communion by and large believe that the Lord’s Supper is merely symbolic, a memorial gesture of communion with the Lord, with no sacramental value. When I questioned my dad, this is basically what he affirmed. Christ extends the offer of grace and salvation to all; so why wouldn’t communion in His Body and Blood be extended to all? This exclusivity, this seeming denial of grace to the uninitiated, is what offends my dad.

Eucharistic adorationBut if you believe, as the Catholic Church believes, that the Eucharist is a real, actual, physical communion, in body and spirit, with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, a sacramental commingling of our elements with His Elements, then it seems to me that you would have no choice but to be protective of that communion, and selective of who partakes in it. The Early Church allowed only those who believed and affirmed the reality of that Holy Communion. Why would the modern Church allow anyone who denies that reality? Should the Church offer the most intimate communion with our Lord to just anyone who walks in off the street, who doesn’t even have faith in Him? You may be a Christian — and the Catholic Church affirms that, if you have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you have a right to be called Christian (Unitatis Redintegratio I.3 § 1) — but if you deny His Real Presence in the Eucharist, it is you who are denying yourself full communion.

If you don’t share the Catholic belief in the Real Presence, why would you be offended at the closed communion? I think that is why it has never offended me: I recognized and respected that I believed differently. I think what offends my dad is the thought that since Christ’s death on the Cross was freely offered to all, why should participation in His Communion be offered to only a select few? This perception of exclusivity is in fact false. The Church has never excluded anyone from grace who sought it. She welcomes all Christians into full, Eucharistic Communion. But they must first affirm what she teaches: the reality of Christ’s presence in that Communion. What “perpetuates division” is Protestants’ continued denial of this core Catholic truth, the “source and summit of our faith.”

I think what offends my dad, even more fundamentally, is the idea that the Church has authority at all: the authority to tell anyone that they cannot celebrate the Eucharist when, where, and exactly how they wish. In the democratic and individualistic mindset that has ascended in modern evangelicalism, any individual is free to approach Christ outside and without the Church at all. It’s a misguided interpretation of the “priesthood of all believers,” taken to its furthest extreme: each believer individually is his own priest, and therefore needs no one else at all. And this gets into a whole ‘nother barrel of worms that I’ll have to deal with another time.

Suffice it to say that I am troubled. This will not stop the course I know I have been placed on; but I don’t want my parents to be offended or hurt. I don’t want them to feel excluded or rejected. But I’ve talked to my dad at length, and I don’t think there’s any getting past this; he’s unwilling to see the matter any other way.

The Real Presence

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The Four Doctors of the Western Church

The Four Doctors of the Western Church: Pope St. Gregory the Great, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome.

I have admired the Church Fathers for a long time, since my first serious introduction to them some eight years ago in Dr. G’s History of the Christian Church. I conducted my first study of them in depth five years ago. And yet through all that time and reading, my own bias never occurred to me, until just a couple of weeks ago. “What have I been thinking?” it hit me with a start. I had been honoring these men, for their faith, their erudition, their devotion; and yet I was discounting and dismissing most of what they believed.

Did I somehow consider myself above their “superstitious,” “archaic” beliefs? Did I believe that in this age of science, we had adopted a more “rational” view of faith? Did I suppose that we moderns were too “reasonable” to subscribe to such “foolish” doctrines as the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist?

Yes, reasonable like believing that the very Son of God would be born of a Virgin in a backwater Palestinian town? That he would make blind eyes see and the lame walk, with the power of his healing hands? That he would be crucified for the sins of humanity, and rise again from the dead in glory, to judge the living and the dead at the end of the age? That the Holy Bible is the written Word of God? If we believe all of this in faith, how is it any more “unreasonable” to believe that the bread and wine of our Eucharist become for us Christ’s Body and Blood? This is what Christ told us; this is what St. Paul affirmed; this is what every one of the Church Fathers believed.

One can (and has) written extended doctrinal treatises expositing this idea in Scripture and patristic thought; I don’t have time to go there, and you don’t have time to read it. So a few examples will suffice.

The key passage in the Gospels is in John 6. Jesus tells his listeners in the synagogue at Capernaum that he is the Bread of Life come down from heaven; that in eating him there would be eternal life. The Jews were incredulous, and wanted to take his words metaphorically; but rather than clarifying his statement, Jesus insisted:

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true [some translations, truly, indeed] food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (St. John the Evangelist, The Gospel according to St. John 6:52-55, ESV)

Many of his own disciples were confused and troubled by these claims — certainly outrageous, taken literally. “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (v. 66). But still he made no effort to correct them.

Similarly, at the Last Supper, Jesus spoke unambiguously:

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. (St. Luke, The Gospel according to St. Luke 22:19-20, ESV)

St. Paul, in describing the Eucharist, certainly understood it to be something more than a symbol:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (St. Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians 11:27-29, written ca. A.D. 56)

Eucharistic adorationThere is no doubt that the earliest Fathers of the Church believed the bread and wine of the Eucharist were the actual Body and Blood of Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Church at Smyrna, ca. A.D. 110:

[Speaking of those with “heterodox opinions”] They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, since they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father raised up again in his kindness. (St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Smyrneans 7)

St. Justin Martyr, in his First Apology (ca. A.D. 150), explains the Eucharist at length:

We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is thereby living as Christ has rejoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh are nourished, is both the flesh and blood of that incarnated Jesus. (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 65)

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, writing in the middle of the fourth century, declares:

Do not, therefore, regard the Bread and Wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the Body and Blood of Christ. (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 22, 6).

These are just a few of many, many examples I could have cited. From the very earliest witnesses, though the Middle Ages, the Real Presence was an accepted fact of the Christian religion. It was never seriously questioned until the Protestant Reformation. Since then, evangelical Protestants have insisted, with little justification, that the Eucharist is only a symbol or memorial. Most do not even consider that theirs is the new, unfounded doctrine, without scriptural or historical support.

[Sources for patristic quotations: Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 237-238; St. Ignatius quote supported by consultation of, and slight emendation from, Bart Ehrman, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 302-303]