St. Peter did not mince his words on that first Christian Pentecost. ““Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Yes, St. Peter clearly understood and boldly preached that faith in Jesus Christ is the first step in God’s plan for salvation. And the chief apostle, on Christianity’s very first public day, offered a brief outline of the sacramental system that through the centuries would nourish the believing community. “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Here Baptism, Penance and Confirmation, in rudimentary form, are tersely revealed among the steps that will lead to the fullness of life.
Certainly personal, interior faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is at the heart of Christianity. As Jesus insists in this Sunday’s Gospel passage, “I am the gate for the sheep.” Yes, Christ is the key to salvation. Notice carefully here that Jesus does not instruct his followers that he will point out the gate leading to life or open the gate lading to life. No, Jesus insists that he himself is the gate, just as Christ would later instruct the apostles, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The ancient prophets and the great church doctors and the zealous missionaries indeed taught the faithful to appreciate deeply the gate leading to life. And it was always Jesus himself who remained that perennial gate through which authentic life is attained. There is no going beyond Jesus into a greener pasture. The Christian faith is always a deepening of the believer’s mindfulness of Jesus, a broadening of the believer’s awareness of Jesus, a heightening of the believer’s attention to Jesus. There is no going beyond Jesus; there is just deeper and deeper involvement with him. Again, as Jesus insists today, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
Jesus himself is clearly the abundant life promised in the Gospel. But, as St. Peter briefly outlined in his first words at Pentecost, the authentic Christian life is matured through successive important steps that the later Church has come to appreciate as the seven sacraments. Jesus today also speaks of a successive system, a coming and going, whereby a believer appreciates ever more deeply the active presence of Christ in the spiritual life. Jesus promises, “Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” Yes, the Christian life is not one single step into eternal bliss, but a series of comings in and goings out, a sequence of steps that Catholics esteem as the seven sacraments that enhance the initial baptismal encounter with Christ through faith.
St Thomas Aquinas handily envisioned the seven sacraments as successive steps corresponding to the traditional stages of human life. Baptism clearly is a birth into the Christian life and Confirmation might easily be understood as a maturation of that initial spiritual encounter with Christ. The Eucharist nourishes and strengthens the faithful believer throughout life. Matrimony and priesthood are clearly adult sacraments oriented toward the good of the community as well as the believer. The sacramental anointing might often be related to the heartening needed in old age. And of course the celebration of Penance is the healing and redirection often needed in any state of life. Yet, whether it be a confession privately heard in a darkened church or the ordination of a bishop solemnized on broadcast television, each event reveals an encounter with Christ, intensifying and extending the place and power of Christ in the believer’s life.
The Christian believer, like any other person of good will, may encounter and intensify a relationship with Jesus certainly through personal prayer and through works of charity. Yet Jesus promises a fuller and richer life to those who will fully follow him: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” The sacraments, by their very celebration, successively celebrate and successfully increase a believer’s appreciation of Jesus. By the worthy celebration of the sacraments, especially Penance and Eucharist, the promise of Jesus is fulfilled, “I know my sheep, and mine know me.” Through the sacraments, earnest Catholics indeed grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, deepen their experience of Jesus Christ and appreciate all the more the saving graces won by Christ and made available through the Church and the sacraments.
