245. The place of sacraments in our historical story
245. THE PLACE OF SACRAMENTS IN OUR HISTORICAL STORY
In the Old Testament, prophets, priests and kings were the three holy offices instituted by God for His chosen people. When Christ came, the separate class of prophets ended (John the Baptist was the last), and so did the temple liturgies of animal sacrifice (after the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70), and so did the elaborate laws of the political system God set up in Leviticus, all for the same reason: they all pointed forward to Him and He fulfilled them all. Since sacraments also all point to Christ, why did they not cease too when Christ came? (Indeed, some Protestants argue that they should.)
Whether there was need for any sacraments after Christ came?
Objection: It seems that there was no need for any sacraments after Christ came. For the figure should cease with the advent of the truth. But grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (Jn 1:17). Since, therefore, the sacraments are signs or figures of the truth, it seems that there was no need for any sacraments after Christ’s Passion.
Reply: As Dionysius says, the state of the New Law is between the state of the Old Law, whose figures are fulfilled in the New, and the state of glory, in which all truth will be openly and perfectly revealed. Wherefore then there will be no sacraments. But now, so long as we know through a glass in a dark manner (1 Cor 13:12), we need sensible signs in order to reach spiritual things; and this is the province of the sacraments (III,61,4).
Christ came, and Christ is not incomplete, but His coming was, for it needs to be supplemented and fulfilled by His “Second Coming” at the end of time. There is indeed a radical difference between the age of the Old Law and the age of the New Law of the gospel; but there is also a radical difference between this second age, the age of the New Law, and the third and final age, the age of eternal Heavenly glory. In one sense Heavenly glory has already come to earth, for Christ is the essence of Heavenly glory. But in another sense Heavenly glory still awaits. We’re not in Heaven yet!
Sacraments are for this “between” time, as extensions of the Incarnation, to channel the life of Christ to us, to leap the 2000 year gap in time between us and Christ, to bring us to Christ and Christ to us.
This is the age of the gospel, of the Incarnation, of the Church and her sacraments, of the Mystical Body of Christ; and it is far more glorious than the age of the Mosaic Law, which in turn was far more glorious than the age between the Fall and God’s visible chosen people, His revelation to Abraham and Moses. The age of glory will be far more glorious than even this age. In fact, the excess of the glory of the age of glory over the glory of the age of the gospel will be even greater than the excess of the glory of the age of the gospel over the glory of the age of the Old Law. The excess is itself exceeded exponentially. To use a mathematical analogy, think of the age of paganism as 3, the age of the Old Law as 9, the age of the gospel as 81, and the age of glory as 6,561.
The whole truth came with Christ. But though the One Who came is complete, and there is no more in God than there is in Christ (Col 1:19), yet the mode of His coming to us is not complete. We live in the “already and not yet”. He is completely present but we are not; we can meet Him fully face to face only after we have full faces. He is completely present but we have not yet completely assimilated Him, for we now see Him “through a glass, darkly”, through sensible signs. That is why we need sacraments.
In glory we will all be mystics. We will see Him face to face. Incredible as it sounds, His Word tells us that “we will know even as we are known,” we will know Him as He knows us (1 Cor 13:12), since we will participate in His knowing, in His very subjectivity. Here, we know Him as personal object of our subjectivity, and this knowing is limited by our human nature. We must not be so proud or impatient as to quarrel with our need for sacraments. The only way to grow is to kneel.