Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:13:29.379Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

What is the Church?—V

Penance, First of the Sacraments of Return

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In this article and the next I want to say something about the sacraments of penance and the anointing of the sick. What I have to say is more than usually tentative; where it differs from what is more commonly taught it should be regarded as an attempt to throw additional light on the topic, not to supplant accepted ways of thought.

First I must explain why I treat these two sacraments together: it is because I regard each of them as a sacrament of return to the eucharist. Each of them belongs to a situation in which the Christian is for one reason or another prevented from sharing fully in the mass. Penance deals with the obstacles created by sin, anointing with those due to sickness. As I have suggested earlier, we get the clearest view of any sacrament when we see how it is eucharistic, how it is related to the common meal that symbolizes Christian love. To see how a sacrament—or anything else for that matter—belongs to the eucharist is to see its function in the Church; for the Church is centred upon the Lord's Supper.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 For an excellent treatment of this question in English see Charles Davis, The Study of Theology (London 1962), pp. 276-298.

2 Life of The Spirit, June 1961.

3 Life of The Spirit, June 1962.

4 I use this term in a rather loose sense as I do not wish to enter into detail of canon law.

5 This ‘eucharist of desire’ is nowadays often called ‘spiritual communion’, a deplorable use of language which suggests that the actual eating of the host its not in itself spiritual. St Thomas uses ‘spiritual communion’ to mean reception of communion in good dispositions as opposed to an unworthy communion.

6 According to the Code of Canon Law in the Church punishment exists simply for the formation of the man who is punished.