Mirabilia
“You've been invited to give a talk to those recently initiated (baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist) at the Easter Vigil. The focus of your talk is on the meaning of these three sacraments for the rest of Christian life. Using what you learned from Danielou around these sacraments, what would you say?” (This post is one of a series of six assignments in fulfillment of a sacramental theology course at the University of Notre Dame.)
N.B. The numbering of the Psalms and the spelling of “Melchizidek” have all been standardized according to the modern American conventions.
Far from being mere rites of passage (see the previous post), the contention of the earliest Christian writers—whose works are surveyed by Fr. Jean Danielou, SJ in his 1956 book The Bible and the Liturgy—was that the sacraments are in fact “the essential events of Christian existence, and of existence itself…the prolongation of the great works of God in the Old Testament and the New. In them was inaugurated a new creation which introduced the Christian even now into the Kingdom of God” (17). Stated another way, “the sacraments were seen as great events in sacred history, the mirabilia [wonders, miracles] which fill the space between the [glorious Ascension of Christ] and the glorious Parousia [His second coming], their course constituting that shining train of divine works whose splendor the very angels cannot endure, which fills them with wonder” (199).
It may come as quite a surprise to we moderns that, in the view of the Church Fathers, a single instance of receiving Baptism or Confirmation or the Eucharist was as big a deal as was the entire exodus of Israel across the Red Sea (cf. Exodus 14; CCC 1221), or the whole kingship of David the Anointed One (cf. 1 Samuel 16:13; CCC 695), or the mysterious sacrifice of bread and wine offered by Melchizidek the primordial “priest of God most high” (cf. Genesis 14:18; CCC 1333, 1544). But this is in fact the claim of the earliest Christians, one which we will investigate briefly here.
Baptism
Contrary to the misunderstandings of baptism common to many of our low-church Protestant brothers and sisters—namely, that they believe baptism to be merely symbolic rather than actually salvific, as Scripture attests (cf. 1 Peter 3:21)—evidence from the early Christian writers simply presumes that baptism actually remits sins and incorporates the baptized into the Church as the mystical Body of Christ, and then goes on to say that that’s not all! As St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313-386) writes: “Let no one, then, think that baptism consists only in the remission of sins or our adoption as sons, when we know with certainty that, while it is purification from our sins and the pledge of the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is also the antitype of the passion of Christ. This is why St. Paul said to us just now: ‘Do you not know that all we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?’” (44-45; cf. Romans 6:3). As a sacrament, baptism is a symbol, but like all the sacraments it is a symbol that effects what it signifies. And it signifies, as even St. Paul indicates, our individual participation in the greatest miracle in the history of the world: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! You who recently received this great gift of Baptism at the Easter Vigil did not simply get a little wet, but actually—mystically!—died with Christ and rose with him to new life.
Confirmation
The title “Christ” (from the Greek christos, from the Hebrew mashiach) means “anointed one,” and in the sacrament of Confirmation, you yourself received an anointing “with the oil of gladness, above your companions” (cf. Ps 45:7; Hebrews 1:9). As Danielou explains:
The sacramental anointing is connected with the priestly anointing of the Old Testament…[and also with] the royal anointing, and most especially to the anointing of the messianic king of Psalm 2:2…But the anointing with the oil of the Old Testament is only the figure of the spiritual anointing, by which the Son is anointed with the Holy Spirit. This anointing, finally is called a chrisma, and he who receives it, christos. This constitutes a new aspect of Confirmation: the oil is the chrism by which the baptized becomes a new christos, a christianos. (116)
As you can see, the very name of our religion—Christianity—comes from the fact that by this sacramental anointing we are sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, as Christ was, and can thus be called christianos—followers of the Christ, followers of the Anointed One.
Eucharist
“The bread and wine offered by Melchizidek were considered from a very ancient date to be a figure of the Eucharist” (143). Danielou cites such figures as Clement of Alexandra (c. 150-c. 215), St. Cyprian of Carthage (c. 210-258), and St. Ambrose (c. 340-397) in support of this typological fulfillment—not only that the bread and wine prefigure the Eucharist elements, but that Melchizidek is himself a type of Christ, our eternal High priest (cf. Hebrews 4:14-16, 8:1; Psalm 110:4). Quoting St. Cyprian, Danielou writes:
“Who is more a priest of God Most High than our Lord Jesus Christ, Who offered to the Father the same offering as Melchizidek, that is, bread and wine, which is to say, His Body and Blood?” Thus, as Melchizidek is a figure of Christ, so his offering is a figure of the oblation of Christ. And as Cyprian remarks, not only a figure of the sacrifice of Christ, but of the sacrament of the sacrifice. The sameness of the offering of bread and wine emphasizes this relationship: “Thus the figure of the sacrifice, consisting of bread and wine, has taken place in the past. And it is this figure that the Lord fulfilled and accomplished when He offered the bread and the chalice of wine mingled with water: He Who is the fulfillment accomplished the reality of the figurative image.” (144)
In establishing the ancient roots of this prefigurement, St. Ambrose goes so far as to call Melchizidek “the author of the sacraments” (144), noting that Genesis records Melchizidek’s priesthood contemporaneously with Abraham and antedating even the giving of the Mosaic law.
So just think: when you received the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine in the Most Holy Eucharist, you received the fruits of the sacrifice that God had been planning for and pointing towards since before Christianity, before Judaism, before even the history lost to the sands of time—before the foundation of the world, in fact! And the good Lord, who perceives all of creation (time and space) in one “eternal now,” thought that the world would be missing something without you in it. So much so that He planned from all eternity to give you a mission—namely, to be holy, to become a saint!—and instituted the Eucharist precisely as the food for the journey that you would need as you, and I, and all of us together make our pilgrimage through this life toward Heaven.
Conclusion
Having thereby been initiated into the fullness of the sacramental life of Christ’s Church, my brothers and sisters, I beg you to always remember the gravity of the sacraments—of these signs, these wonders, these mirabilia. What has only the outward appearance of water or oil or bread or wine can and does, by the grace of God who spoke all of creation into existence through the Word of His co-eternal Son Jesus Christ, become the very means of our salvation, restoring to us the likeness of Him whose image we bear.