The Catholic Church as a Sacrament of Salvation

[choliks]

What does this mean? Is it the same as Cardinal Henri de Lubac’s “If the world lost the Church, it would lose the redemption, too” ?

 

[CatholicZ09]

I think it means that the Catholic Church is an institution here on earth that leads us to Christ, and therefore, our salvation since the Catholic Church was started by Christ; therefore, she cannot err; therefore, she leads Christ’s people to salvation through her sacraments.

 

[floresco]

When I’ve come across this before it meant that the Church reflects the definition of a sacrament - "an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.” The Church is a visible and outward sign that is efficacious for salvation.

 

[twf]

I think it means that the Catholic Church is an institution here on earth that leads us to Christ, and therefore, our salvation since the Catholic Church was started by Christ; therefore, she cannot err; therefore, she leads Christ’s people to salvation through her sacraments.

More than that, the Church, as the mystical extension of the incarnation, is truly the body of Christ on earth. Jesus established His Church to continue the work He began - to be His instrument of salvation and sanctification for all the world. We define a sacrament as a visible sign, instituted by Christ, that confers grace. All grace that we receive, including all 7 sacraments, come to us through the Church - thus, in that sense, the Church is herself a sacrament. In holy communion we receive the Lord into ourselves and enter into his divine life - we come to share his very being as, in the words of St Peter, partakers of His divine nature. Through this sacrament of His body and blood, offered to the Father on the Church’s altars as the Lord’s, perfect sacrifice, His sacrifice, his worship, pleasing in every way to the Father, becomes the Church’s sacrifice and the Church’s worship; the Church is thus transformed into the image of Christ and becomes herself the sacrament of His love for and in the world.

 

[iohanne]

The Church, as a divine society, is iconic of the heavenly Jerusalem at the end this age. She is in the world but not of it and she exists only for its salvation. She is a foretaste of the world to come, a place where the right ordering of society as willed by God has already happened, is beginning to happen, is currently happening and will happen. She is the seed of the age to come and her existence announces that we are in the in-between times. An old world is passing a way and a new and transfigured one is coming.

All the sacraments are exactly the same thing and the Eucharist is the queen of them all. They are all pledges of future glory. A sign that the future glory is coming. And by their nature, they are iconic of what that future will look like: redeemed and sanctified matter. Be it water, oil, bread, wine, sexual union, etc. They give us a glimpse into the future reality by redeeming and sanctifying the reality that exists now. The Eucharist is chief of them all because through the Eucharist Christ Himself comes to us. His second coming and the ushering in of the age to come is made manifest and a reality already.

The sacraments are eschatological. They draw all things to their final end.