I’m not a saint either, but here is what I suggest:
The most plain imagery of the feeding of the multitudes suggets the analogy of sacraments, for, how does Christ ultimately feed us? With sanctifying grace. And what the primary sources of this grace? The Seven Sacraments.
But also, already there is predestined the two forms of separation in the Body of Christ, schism and heresy, respectively. That is, the schismatic will stand apart from Peter and yet retain the validity of a general Apostolic Successor. Hence, in Schism, because there resides still the sense of the priesthood, therefore the seven sacraments remain.
But, of course, the other form is far worse, that is, the person or community which stands apart not only from Peter, but from the whole general collection of the glorious successors of the Apostles, is the far worse tragedy of HERESY.
But, then we come back to, seeing as all the five sacraments after Baptism and Marriage require the episcopate, the heretic must lose intrinsically these
five, and retain, as we have seen, merely
two, two that, incidentally, very much form the species to be twisted in such a manner that, after twisting, they become a sign of the foundational lies of all sin, sin appropriately being a “taking” of the Creation from God, in as much as “heresy” is synonymous with “to take.”
But wherein have we seen the numbers
five and
two? Or
seven?
A-ha, in the feeding of the multitudes! For behold, in all four Gospels, there is the story of how Christ feeds the
5,000 with
5 loaves and
2 fish, and in two of the four, he feeds
4,000 people with
7 loaves and a few fish.
So then I propose the following: just as schism and heresy are predetermined in any Creation, and since this very ecclesiology must be intimately connected with the sacramental life itself, so then the Scriptures are in fact communicating these two primary forms of separation precisely in the parallel stories.
Hence, in
schism, there are
7 loaves, and a few fish, in as much as loaves come from the earth, and the earth is the foundation of truth (see
1 Tim. 3:15), that is, the Church is. Hence, though the Orthodox are separated from the West, nevertheless, they are less prone to error, for they have the general foundation of the earth that is Oral Tradition. For if I approach an Eastern Bishop and say, what think you of this doctrine, he shall listen to argumentation not only from Scripture but also the Tradition, at least that which came in the millennium before the Great Schism.
But behold, the
five loaves and
two fish then reference
heresy, for the heretics reject the fruit that would come from the earth, they separate from that foundation of Oral Tradition, of the Bishops in general, and hence, they are ‘tossed to and fro by every wave of doctrine.’ But behold, even in the chaos of the sea, Christ does not leave them orphans. Rather, he can still feed them with the two fish, Baptism and Marriage, which do not require a priest, for behold, “the baptism of heretics is valid (assuming proper form and matter)”. And even those who do not use proper form might still get the sanctifying power implicitly, provided they are not culpable in the rejection of the form or do not intend to cleanse. Also, the priest does not confer marriage (in the Roman Rite). The man and the woman confer the sacrament upon each other, and the sign thereof is precisely their BODIES!
…continued below…
