Sacraments prefigured in the fall?

[awfulthings9]

I know I’ve been starting a few of these “I’ve been thinking” threads lately, but … I guess I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently (don’t ask me what goes on in my head the rest of the time).

As an RCIA sponsor, I was talking to my candidate about the sacraments and the need for us to be brought back into a good relationship with Christ after the fall of Adam and Eve.

I know there’s a lot of writing done on the sacraments and the number seven and all of that, but my mind started to go in another direction: if the sacraments are designed to bring us into a perfect relationship with God (eventually), then wouldn’t the fall from grace serve as an anti-sacrament in that the consequences of the fall mirror one of the eventual seven sacraments. (In other words, if the New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New, can we see the Sacraments prefigured in the fall).

This is probably a stretch, but here’s what I came up with:

Consequences and corresponding sacraments (in no particular order):

• Because of the fall, our bodies are resigned to become dust once again, the father of sin is to slither in and feed on dust, and our work causes us to sweat - yet, through the cleansing waters of Baptism, this “dust” is washed away from our souls.
• Because of the fall, we have to toil for our food, yet the groung produces brambles, thistles, and wild plants - yet, through the Eucharist we receive the perfect food, one that gives everlasting life.
• Because of the fall, we have been banished from the garden, where Adam and Eve walked and talked with God - Yet, through reconciliation, we can once again “talk” with God through the person of the priest, who serves in the person of Christ. In addtion, because of the fall, Adam and Eve tried to hide their sins from God - yet, through reconciliation, we humbly name them off for him.
• Because of the fall, man fell into a cycle of pride and despair - yet, through Confirmation we ask God for his guidance and his gifts and acknowledge our dependence on him.
• Because of the fall, childbirth is filled with pain - yet, through sacramental Marriage, children are an expression of the parents’ love, which overshadows the pain.
• Because of the fall, Adam lost his position as the steward of the garden (the temple, as Scott Hahn explains it) and men become power-hungry as husbands began to dominate over their wives - yet, through Holy Orders, men once again have the opportunity to become stewards of the temple and become servants to others.
• Because of the fall, we grow old, get sick, and “will surely die” - yet, through the Annointing of the Sick, we no longer fear these things because we look for everlasting life.

Probably a stretch, but I’d be curious to get further insight or disagreement.

 

[Crumpy]

Your observations are interesting. Here’s my nitpicking, I guess. I don’t think I’d use the word pre-figured, because they’re not, plain and simple. There’s no prefiguring, in my mind of little imagination.
I can’t see exactly seven sacraments foretold or foreshadowed in the incident of the fall.

What you’re saying though, is that each of the seven sacraments has some connections, they perhaps “lift us up” from some aspect of the “fall.” We get grace, as they say, just when we need it and where we need it and how we need it.

The Church teaches that scripture is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Your ideas are quite interesting. What we need because of our fallen nature is Jesus Christ, who is God, and as Scott Hahn and others would say, has expressed His Word in a liturgy, the Eucharist and all the rest.

Comment: In the few instances where I thought had derived a novel insight in scripture, I found that it had already been expressed in apostolic times. But, keep up the good work.