The Universal Sacrament Of Salvation
By DON FIER
The one true Church, as we saw last week, is a mystery of our faith, a mystery that was revealed first of all to the apostles when our Savior said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables” (Mark 4:11). In the mystery of the Church is realized the divine design for humanity’s salvation, a plan revealed by the word and life of our Lord Jesus Christ. She is a mystery inasmuch as “in her visible reality there is present and active a divine spiritual reality which can only be seen with the eyes of faith” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 151).
Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, the servant of God who labored so tirelessly in defense of the Catholic Church and to propagate the truths of our faith far and wide, expertly summarizes the ways in which she can be seen to be a mystery: the Church is part of human history, yet surpasses our rational comprehension; she is a structured, hierarchical institution, but also the Mystical Body of Christ; she is both a visible convocation and a spiritual community; she is both an earthly society and a heavenly reality; she is both human and divine; and she is the divinely established means for the sanctification of her members (cf. The Faith, p. 87).
Last week’s column closed with an affirmation that the Church can be and often is referred to as the “universal sacrament of salvation.” Three Vatican II documents, Lumen Gentium (n. 48), Ad Gentes (n. 1), and Gaudium et Spes (n. 45), include this precise phrase.
The Constitution on the Church is especially clear in its pronouncement: “Christ, having been lifted up from the earth has drawn all to Himself. Rising from the dead He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established His Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is continually active in the world that He might lead men to the Church and through it join them to Himself and that He might make them partakers of His glorious life by nourishing them with His own Body and Blood” (LG, n. 48 § 2).
As defined by the Council of Trent, a sacrament is “a sign of a sacred reality and the visible expression of invisible grace” (cf. Denzinger, n. 1639; as cited by St. Pope John Paul II, general audience, November 27, 1991). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) gives the following definition: “An efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us through the work of the Holy Spirit.” With these authoritative definitions in mind, how is it that the Church can be called a sacrament?
The origin of the word sacrament is from the Greek mysterion, which is translated into two Latin terms, mysterium and sacramentum, where “sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation which was indicated by the term mysterium. In this sense, Christ himself is the mystery of salvation” (CCC, n. 774). In the Latin Church, however, as explained by St. John Paul, “sacramentum has acquired the more specific meaning of designating the seven sacraments,” and it is in this way that most people think of the word.
So it is apparent that the conciliar definition of Trent for the word sacrament, along with the definition given by the Catechism, can be applied only analogously to the Church. St. John Paul holds that these definitions do not “suffice to express what the Church is. She is a sign, but not only a sign; in herself she is also the fruit of redemption. The sacraments are means of sanctification; the Church, instead, is the assembly of the persons sanctified; thus, she constitutes the purpose of Christ’s saving action (cf. Eph. 5:25-27).”
In other words, Christ acts to continue His salvific mission in the world through the Church as a sacramental means.
The grace won by the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, who is Head of the Church, is spread by the Holy Spirit throughout the members, who form her Body, through the means of the seven sacraments. It is through the Church, the Body of Christ, that the sacraments are conferred. “The Church, then, both contains and communicates the invisible grace she signifies,” teaches the Catechism. “It is in this analogical sense, that the Church is called a ‘sacrament’” (CCC, n. 774). As stated in the third sentence of the very first paragraph of Lumen Gentium, “The Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race.”
The Catechism amplifies the constitution’s words on the sacramentality of the Church in the following way: “The Church’s first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God. Because men’s communion with one another is rooted in that union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race” (CCC, n. 775).
We can see a foretelling of the full realization of this unity which will take place at the end of time in the “heavenly Jerusalem” in the Book of Revelation: “A great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, [stood] before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev. 7:9).
The Catechism goes on to state clearly that “as sacrament, the Church is Christ’s instrument” (CCC, n. 776). She is a sign and instrument of the union between God and man, the efficacious and mysterious presence of Christ in the world today. “Established by Christ as a communion of life, charity, and truth, [the Church] is…used by Him as an instrument for the redemption of all, and is sent forth into the whole world as the light of the world and the salt of the earth” (LG, n. 9 § 2).
The single intention of the Church is that “God’s kingdom may come, and that the salvation of the whole human race may come to pass” (GS, n. 45 § 1). The Church is the sacramental instrument through which Christ simultaneously manifests and exercises the mystery of God’s love. This stems from the teaching that she is the “universal sacrament of salvation.”
The One Mediator
This examination of why the Church can accurately be called the “universal sacrament of salvation” leads to a question that many consider irrelevant in our enlightened and tolerant age: “Is the Church necessary for salvation?” This, of course, is a direct reference to an infallibly defined or de fide magisterial teaching: extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation). The Catechism reformulates this dogmatic teaching positively: “All salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body” (CCC, n. 846).
At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, during the pontificate of Innocent III, it was solemnly declared: “There is indeed one universal Church of the faithful outside of which no one at all is saved” (Denzinger, n. 802). In his bull Unam Sanctum of 1302, Pope Boniface VIII teaches: “That there is only one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church we are compelled . . . to believe and hold . . . outside of whom there is neither salvation nor remission of sins” (Denzinger, n. 870).
Many other Popes and Church fathers have confirmed this teaching throughout the ages.
The Vatican II fathers, likewise, affirm this teaching: “Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved” (LG, n. 14 § 1).
The Church, however, is attentive to state that “this affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church” (CCC, n. 847). As taught by Vatican II, in ways known only to God, “those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (LG, n. 16).
Much more, of course, can be said about this topic — it will be covered more extensively when the Church’s mark of catholicity is considered.
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
