SACRAMENTS IN GENERAL

CHAPTER FOUR
SACRAMENT AND GRACE*
A sacrament is a prophetic symbol, in and by which the Church
proclaims, realizes and celebrates the presence of grace. Now grace is a
common theological word, but not necessarily as commonly understood. The
English word grace derives from the Latin word gratia which, in the Vulgate,
translates the Greek word charis. Grace has acquired many secondary
meanings in theological history, but its prime meaning still derives from its
Scriptural source, where its meaning reduces to three main ideas:
“condescending love, conciliatory compassion and fidelity. The basic sense of
Christian grace, whatever its later technical or non-Scholastic connotations,
should always remind us that God first loved us.” 1 John insists that this sums
up the secret of grace: “In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He first
loved us” (1 Jn 4, 10).
God: Uncreated Grace
In technical theological language, God giving Himself in love is called
uncreated grace. The effect of this personal love which transforms men and
women and their world is called created or sanctifying grace. Grace,
therefore, has two traditional theological meanings: first, God giving Himself
in love,2 and, second, something other than God, a transformation produced in
men and women. These two meanings are, of course, not unrelated, but the
exact nature of their relationship has been for centuries a matter for
theological dispute.
In the Eastern Catholic tradition, the idea of uncreated grace has
dominated, created grace remaining a practically unknown concept. Even in
the West no clear formulation of created grace was known for eleven hundred
years.3 But the Reformation disputes placed created grace so squarely in the
forefront of theological discussion in the West, and post-Reformation Roman
Catholic theology made it so much the primary reality of grace, that the use of
the word grace without addition came to mean created grace, a reality
different from God. Uncreated grace, God’s gift of Himself to men and
women, was lost sight of as the source of created grace and, instead, became
a consequence or necessary fruit of it. Created grace became the primary
reality of grace, and was assumed to yield as one of its fruits the indwelling of
God or uncreated grace.
How may this Western view, in which a reality different from God yields
the presence of God as its necessary consequence, be harmonized with the
view of the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, in which created grace
appears as the consequence of God’s prior Self-communication to men? An
effort to solve this thorny question has been made in modern theology, and

1
*Cf. Michael G. Lawler, Symbol and Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology (New York: Paulist, 1987), pp.
51-63.
?
Piet Fransen, The New Life of Grace (Tournai: Desclee, 1969), p. 15.
2
Rahner calls this notion of grace the primary one. Cf. K. Rahner and H. Vorgrimler, “Grace” in Concise Theological
Dictionary (London: Burns and Oates, 1965), p. 194.
3
Fransen, The New Life of Grace, p. 87. See pp. 87-96 for a brief sketch of how created grace came to be the
dominant reality of grace in the Western Church.
 2

has won wide acceptance.4 It begins with the consideration of the relationship
of the state of grace to the ultimate vision of God which is salvation.
It is common Western teaching that in heavenly glory there is an
intimate union between God and the saved. This union is of an interpersonal
kind, that is, it is achieved in knowledge and in love. But this creaturely
knowledge and love of God are not achieved in the normal way, that is,
mediately. Rather, God unites Himself immediately to the creature and moves
him to know and love God. This union of God and His human creatures in
glory is of an ontological nature, that is, it is a union of beings before it is a
union of conscious knowledge or love. In the vision of God creatures are
ontologically assimilated to God before they reflexively know or love God. In
fact, it is only because they are ontologically united to Him that they can
know and love Him immediately, face to face.
This analysis of the presence of God to creatures may be applied
analogically to the question of how to articulate humanly the presence of God
to them in their human lives, that is, to the question of how to talk in human
terms about the presence of uncreated grace. For the union between God and
men and women in their earthly life is presented in the Scripture and
tradition of the Church as the seed and root of their union in heaven.
Theologians, therefore, take the theory and concepts relating to the presence
of God to His creatures in heavenly glory, their being possessed by Him and
their possession of Him, and relate them to the presence of God as uncreated
grace in human life.
God, who is Himself uncreated grace, creates men and women and their
world, and offers Himself to them at their creation. It is this offer, which is
above and beyond the needs of their human nature, that Karl Rahner
characterizes as a supernatural elevation or supernatural existential. 5 In this
theory, men and women live always and everywhere in an economy of grace;
they live in a radically graced world. Creation is but the beginning of grace,
the first grace, in which God makes creation in and with whom He dwells as
uncreated grace, and whom He seeks to draw into personal, loving,
transforming, and therefore gracious, dialogue with Himself. As in the vision
of God in heaven, so also in human lives God dwells in His creatures prior to
their personally knowing or loving Him (Jn 14, 23; 1 Jn 2, 6, 24, 27-28; 3, 6,
24; 1 Cor 6, 19; Rom 5, 5; 8, 9-16; Gal 4, 6; 1 Thess 4, 8). The presence of
God, of uncreated grace, is not a consequence of the transformation in men
and women that is called grace, but rather a cause of it. For that
transformation, created grace, exists only when God is actually present and
acting to transform.
The Necessity of Sacraments
This, then, raises the question: if men and women live in a
fundamentally graced world, what is the specific contribution of Christian
sacraments to the living of a life of grace, a life of relationship with God? The
answer is not difficult to find, certainly not for anyone who followed and
understood the discussion on the functioning of symbols in chapter one. Boy,
for instance, meets girl; boy and girl fall in love; boy loves girl and girl loves
boy. There is only one problem: it is not obvious to the boy that the girl loves
4
Cf. M. de la Taille, “Actuation crée par acte incrée,” Revue des Sciences Religieuses 18 (1928): 252-268; Karl Rahner,
“Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” in Theological Investigations I: 319-346; Robert W.
Gleason, Grace (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), cc 9 and 10. For a critique, see C. Kiesling, “The Divine Indwelling
in R. W. Gleason’s Grace,” The American Ecclesiastical Review 150 (1964): 263-284.
5
Rahner and Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, p. 161.
 3

him; he does not recognize the love for him that is really in her, nor does she
recognize the love for her that is in him. And so it remains until they make
love in some symbolic action of loving. When they do, their mutual love is
drawn into mutual and personal realization, and thereafter their relationship
is one of ever-growing love to the extent that they continue to make love in
the symbols accepted by them. The case of grace and sacrament is almost an
exact parallel to the case of love.
Uncreated grace, the loving self-giving of God to all men and women,
exists long prior to any sacramental action. Every man and woman created by
God is enveloped in grace, for grace “is God Himself in His forgiving and
divinizing love.”6 Because of this offered uncreated grace, history for every
person is a history of possible grace and salvation, quite apart from any
sacramental activity. But, as with the boy who does not recognize the girl’s
love for him, so neither do men and women always recognize the presence of
God who is Grace. To realize the possibility of grace, they need to make
grace, as he needs to make love, in some symbolic action. Christian
sacraments, though they are, of course, not the sole or exclusive ways to
make grace, are nevertheless ways to do so. When men and women engage in
sacramental action, they proclaim and realize and celebrate in it not only the
presence of grace as offered by God, but also the presence of grace as
accepted by them. The gracious offer of God and the faithful acceptance of
that offer by believers together, in and through symbolic and sacramental
action, make grace. The Grace which is made is primarily, and none other
than, God Himself; only secondarily, and as a consequence of God’s presence
and action, is it the justifying transformation of men and women that is known
as created or sanctifying grace.
If all this is so, it is no longer possible adequately to describe grace in
impersonal terms like created quality, accident, habitus. Personal terms are
required, such as God, Christ, Spirit, Love, Lover, Self-communication.7 This
personal characteristic of grace, at least from the human point of view, is
included in the definition of sacrament in the phrase, for believers who place
no obstacle. When grace is understood in the context of God’s personal offer
seeking men’s and women’s personal response, the mere avoidance of serious
sin cannot be considered adequately faithful response, dogmatically
recognized as minimal though it be. Men and women are saved only as free,
responsible persons. This is as true within the sacramental context as without
it. Free, personal acceptance of offered grace is as essential to justification
and salvation as the most careful and exact performance of rite. Again,
sacraments are not things. They are prophetic symbols in the Church, the
Body of Christ, in which the free, self-giving of God in Christ is answered with
free acceptance by believing men and women.
The foregoing analysis enables us to understand a traditional statement
about sacraments, namely, sacrament is a cause of grace. Again, the analogy
we used earlier will be helpful. Boy meets girl; boy and girl fall in love; but
neither yet knows that the other loves him or her, and so it remains until they
make love in some symbolic gesture or other. He writes her a letter, he takes
her hand, he kisses her, he gives her flowers. In these symbolic gestures he
proclaims his love for her, realizes his love, not only for her but also for
himself, and celebrates it. And in symbols she is confronted by his love,
enriched by it and moved to respond personally to it. The symbolic actions not

6
K. Rahner, “History of the World and Salvation History,” in Theological Investigations V: 98.
7
K. Rahner, “concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” Theological Investigations 1: 316.
 4

only signify love, but is wholly due to the boy and the girl as principal causes
and to the symbols of love-making as instrumental causes. As it is with love
and the symbols of love, so it is also with grace and the sacramental symbols
of grace.
God, uncreated grace, creates men and women and, over and above
what is required of their human nature, offers Himself to them. Most of His
creatures, though, do not recognize this offer of self that is Grace. Before they
can recognize it in practical concreteness, they need to make grace as the boy
and the girl need to make love. They do this in symbolic actions called
sacraments, which not only proclaim the presence of grace, but also realize it
in the concrete and celebrate it. As with love and the symbols of love-making,
this effect is due not only to God-Grace Himself as principal cause, but also to
the sacramental actions as instrumental causes. The causality of sacraments,
then, is quite correctly called symbolic instrumental causality. 8
If the notion of symbol being presented here is grasped, there is no
problem explaining the causality of the sacraments. It is necessary only to
recall the specific difference between simple sign and symbol. The former
announces that it signifies is present; the latter proclaims and realizes and
celebrates the presence of what it symbolizes. To say symbol, therefore is
already to say cause. And to say sacrament is already to say instrumental
cause, for only God and His Christ could ever be the principal cause of His
gracious presence. Sacraments cause grace “in the sense that in the Church
God’s grace is given expression and embodiment and symbolized, and by
being so embodied, is present.”9
The Valid but Fruitless Sacrament: Proper Disposition
But there is a theological problem in defining sacrament as a cause of
grace, raised by what is known as the valid but fruitless sacrament. The
problem may be stated simply. A reality should always verify its definition. If,
therefore, a sacrament is defined in terms of causing grace, it should always
and everywhere cause grace each time the symbolic action is done. But there
are sacraments which, by common theological agreement, do not confer
grace, namely, those which are received without the proper disposition. How,
then, can a sacrament be defined essentially as a cause of grace?
An initial answer to this question underscores that it is not a good
question, for it is rooted in a false presupposition. It assumes a very physical
and mechanical notion of both sacrament and grace, as if the sacramental
action alone were involved in the conferring of grace, with no personal
contribution from those celebrating the action. Such a view is, as already
shown, hopelessly inadequate to deal with genuine human sacrament.
Sacrament is defined not merely as a symbol which symbolizes and by
symbolizing causes grace, but also as a symbol which confers grace on
believers who place no obstacle to it. That final, qualifying phrase is intended
to be an essential element in the definition of sacrament, so that if that
element is lacking, the sacramental symbol does not effect the concrete
presence of grace.
The Council of Trent distinguished carefully between what it called
containing grace and conferring grace. “Sacraments contain the grace they

8
Although our approach is different, the theory presented here is the same as that presented by K. Rahner, The
Church and the Sacraments, pp. 34-40, by E. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, pp. 73-79, and by Piet Fransen,
“Sacraments: Signs of Grace,” in Readings in Sacramental Theology, ed. C. Stephen Sullivan, pp. 67-73.
9
Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, p. 34.
 5

signify and confer that grace on those who place no obstacle.”10 Sacraments
always contain grace, in the sense that they always symbolize the presence of
grace, but they do not always cause grace. They do not cause grace absolutely
and indiscriminately and against a person’s will. They cause it, that is, they
proclaim, realize and celebrate it in representation, only for those who
provoke the necessary personal climate for it. This climate is described by the
Council of Florence as worthy reception, by the Council of Trent as placing no
obstacle, and by the classical theological tradition as opus operantis. A free,
positive, cooperating, personal contribution on the part of believers who
celebrate sacraments is an essential requirement to cause grace in them.
We have sought to show that a sacrament is a prophetic symbol in the
Church. That is, it is an action which, on one level of reality, is quite ordinary
and natural action which, on another level, is a far from ordinary symbol
which proclaims and realizes and celebrates in representation what it
symbolizes. What transforms ordinary action into prophetic symbol is, in the
first place, the faith of the Church which, in the second place, is shared by
believers. Without this social and personal faith, this comprehensive yes to
God, as we have described it, ordinary action remains just ordinary action:
washing with water, anointing with oil, eating bread and drinking wine. It
does not become prophetic symbol, neither does it proclaim and realize and
celebrate that presence and action of God and His Christ which is called, and
which causes, Grace.
The sacrament which is a prophetic symbol “is not only the visible
manifestation of Christ’s redemptive act... but (is) also the visible expression
of the recipient’s desire for grace.”11 Only when the gracing action of God is
matched by the accepting faith of a believer is prophetic symbol created and
grace caused. In sum and in fine, the definition of a sacrament as cause of
grace includes not only God’s and Christ’s and the Church’s gracious opus
operatum, but also the believer’s faith-filled opus operantis. Sacrament is not
a magical imposition of grace, but a free offer of grace which is freely
accepted or rejected by a free human being.
Sacrament as Communal and Personal
`Symbols, we have seen, function to inform and to provoke action. They
function not only for individuals, but also for communities. In and through its
symbols, a human community proclaims its vision to the human world; it fixes
the parameters of that world; it assigns roles and goals and patterns of
believing and acting and reacting in that world. In and through its symbols, a
human community proclaims and realizes and celebrates not only what it
ultimately believes in, but also what kind of community it wishes to be, and
what kind of individual it wishes to have as member. Sacramental, prophetic
symbols function that way within the Christian community. They proclaim,
realize and celebrate in representation not only the presence and action of
God and His Christ, but also the Church as a community which believes that
God’s presence is mediated to believers in symbols called sacraments.
The standpoint of the Church, therefore, with respect to the presence of
God in the world is a standpoint that is thoroughly sacramental. It is a
standpoint that is taught to members in their ongoing interactions. The
Christian world is a world in which God is present, not abstractly but very
concretely because sacramentally. Such a world and such a person are
fashioned and sustained in the ongoing symbolic interaction which takes
10
DS 1606
11
Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, p. 134.
 6

place within the Christian community. God and humans and their various
interactions are elements of the Christian world that are taken for granted.
Sacramentality is a bedrock of Christian tradition.
Several times we have insisted that symbols are made to be used, and
that they are used in a community to inform and to provoke action and
interaction. To repeat Whitehead’s phrase: “symbolism makes connected
thought possible by expressing it, while at the same time it automatically
directs action.”12 Sacraments do that within the Church. They inform
Christians, in general, of the sacramental nature of their relationship with
God and, in particular, of the nature of God and of His Christ, of the nature of
the Church, of the nature of the believer, and of what the believer should do
about it all.
Sacraments inform believers that the encounter between God and
them in this world is sacramental. They say in actions that both God’s
offer of gracious presence and the believer’s acknowledgement and
acceptance of that offer are proclaimed, made real and celebrated in ritual
actions. In and from the sacramental practice of their Church, Christians
learn that God and His grace are first concretely proclaimed, realized and
celebrated by them (not, however, first offered to them) in the ritual waters of
Baptism. They learn that the gift of grace called the Holy Spirit, first
proclaimed, realized and celebrated in the waters of Baptism, is symbolized
again in the anointing in Confirmation. They learn that when they have cut
themselves off from God and from grace, forgiveness and reconciliation may
be proclaimed, realized and celebrated in the ritual of Reconciliation. They
learn that they celebrate the Body of Christ, both His personal and
sacramental Body, the Church, in the sacrificial meal of bread and wine. They
learn that special moments in their lives are Graced and graced, moments of
sickness and death, of marriage, of ordination to ministry. They learn, in
short, that the presence of God in the world is proclaimed and realized and
celebrated in sacramental symbols, or not concretely at all.
Sacraments also inform believers about God. They portray Him
insistently as trinitarian, confessing Him from the first moment of Baptism to
the healing moment of Anointing as Almighty Father, Only Son, and Holy
Spirit. They portray Him as an active God: as one who “at the very dawn of
creation... breathed on the waters, making them the well-spring of all
holiness;”13 as the one to “give you a new heart and place a new spirit within
you and make you live by His statutes” (Ez 36, 26-27); as the one who is “the
Creator of the universe, maker of man and woman... source of all blessing;” 14
as “the source of every honor and every office;” 15 as the one who “brings
healing to the sick through His Son Jesus Christ.”16 Sacramental symbols
inform believers that God is Creator, Life-giver, Source of every blessing, and
invite them to believe and trust and hope and be grateful in a life patterned
after the life of Jesus, His Son.
As they provide information about God, sacraments simultaneously
provide information about men and women. If God is Creator, men and
women appear as His creatures; if God is Father, they appear as His children;
if God is Source of all blessings, they are recipients of His blessings; if God is
the Giver of a new heart, they stand in need of a new heart; if God is the One
12
Whitehead, Symbolism, p. 66.
13
Rite of Baptism (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 1970), p. 8.
14
Rite of Marriage (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1970), p. 19.
15
The Ordination of Deacons, Priests and Bishops (Washington: NCCB, 1969), p. 29.
16
Rite of Anointing and Pastoral Care of the Sick (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1974), p. 49.
 7

Who Forgives sins, men and women are the sinners who stand in need of
forgiveness. This latter piece of information, in particular, is ubiquitous in
sacramental activity. Baptism demands an explicit renunciation of sin and of
“Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness,” 17 a renunciation which is
demanded again in Confirmation. The ritual of Ordination prays: “From all
sin, Lord, deliver us... Be merciful to us, sinners.” 18 The sick are anointed that
they may be freed from sin “and made well again in body, mind and soul.” 19
Insistently, the Christian who lives into sacramental symbols learns that he is
a sinner.
But if prophetic symbols present man and woman as sinners,
simultaneously they offer them hope by presenting Jesus as Saviour.
He is the one whom God has sent into the world to cast out the power of
Satan, to rescue men and women from the spirit of darkness and bring them
into the Kingdom of Light.20 Confirmation further emphasizes that those who
have been freed from sin by dying and rising with Christ in Baptism should
reflect in their lives, not the life of sin, but the new life of Christ in the Spirit.
And Eucharist, of course, is the great symbolic paradigm of Jesus’ self-
sacrifice for, and transformation of, the sinful condition. If men and women
are informed in sacraments that they are sinners, they are equally informed
that there is a Saviour, and are invited to believe in Him and live according to
that belief.
Sacraments, finally, inform about the role of the Church. Those to
be baptized are signed with the cross of Christ and, in the name of the
Church, are claimed for Christ the Saviour. Those who have been baptized are
made sharers in the faith of the Church, which confesses the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, and rejects Satan and sin. Confirmation in the Church
proclaims and celebrates the Spirit, who is first given to the Church;
Reconciliation reconciles with God by first reconciling with the Church; the
prayer of the Church, made in faith, saves the sick person (Jas 5, 13);
Marriage is celebrated in the Church and is witnessed by the Church in the
person of the Church’s minister; deacons, priests and bishops are ordained to
minister in the Church, to proclaim forgiveness in the name of the Church, to
celebrate Liturgy in the Church, to console the sick in the Church. If the
Trinitarian God saves men and women in Christ, that gracious salvation,
sacraments announce, is proclaimed, realized and celebrated in the symbolic
actions of the Church.
What is critical about the information provided to believers by
sacraments is that it is absorbed, not logically, but personally, in the way that
was claimed earlier for all symbols. The knowledge acquired through
sacraments is not scientific knowledge in clear and distinct ideas, but
personal knowledge in confused sensation, images, intuitions and ideas. Such
personal knowledge is, in Whitehead’s judgment, vague and, in Ricouer’s
opaque. But it is no less informative for being vague and opaque, nor does it
provoke any less to action and reaction. On the contrary, precisely because
symbolic knowledge is vague and opaque, it is powerful, for its vagueness and
opaqueness are perceived to bespeak not emptiness, but inexhaustible
richness and fullness. Sacramental symbols, as do all symbols, open up depths
of reality that cannot be adequately grasped or adequately understood in

17
The Rite of Baptism, p. 9.
18
The Ordination of Deacons, Priests and Bishops, pp. 27, 28, 25.
19
The Rite of Anointing, p. 50.
20
The Rite of Baptism, p. 6.
 8

clear and distinct ideas. Sacraments speak more to the Eastern than to the
Western lobe.
Because the knowledge absorbed from sacraments is personal and self-
involving, not logical and detached, it is very much value-laden. Of its very
nature it provokes the selection of some realities and some forms of actions
over others. Symbols are always nomic.21 They put a definite construction
upon events through which people live, enabling them to orient themselves
within the constant flux of their experience. Prophetic symbols do the same.
When Christians have successfully internalized the information that God
graces them with new life in Baptism, with forgiveness and reconciliation in
Penance-Reconciliation, with personal healing in Anointing, this information
puts reality in order and evaluates it. Following internalization, it makes no
sense to ask whether God and Christ are present in sacraments or not. The
answer is given prior to the question: of course, they are. Unfortunately, the
temptation is always there and has not always been resisted in popular
preaching and belief, to give a stronger answer, namely, that God is
encountered only in sacraments. That has never been an orthodox Christian
position, not even an orthodox Catholic Christian position, and it has been
firmly excluded already in this exposition.
The explanation of symbols proposed in the first chapter lets God and
believers and their inter-relationship be ultimately important. It lets
sacraments be important, but not ultimately; they are important only as
symbolic instruments of this relationships within the Church. God and
believers relate not exclusively in two or nine or even 29 sacraments, but in
many prophetic and symbolic ways—not exclusively within the Christian
community, but also outside it. Sacraments do not grace and justify and save
ultimately; only God does. And God graces and justifies and saves all those
men and women, Christian and non-Christian alike, who place no obstacle to
His saving action. But for the moment in our human life, faith and
symbolically-mediated presence is all there is; only in the end will both faith
and sacrament give way to being possessed and possessing. “For now we see
in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I see in part; then I shall
understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Cor 13, 12).

21
Customary, ordinary.