Folia Theologica et Canonica 4. 26/18 (2015)
SACRA THEOLOGIA - Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem., A sacramental theology of the family: the unity and harmony of the sacramental order
A SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY OF THE FAMILY... 17 these signs (words, statements, etc.), it is difficult if not impossible for human beings to advance in knowledge. Words are sensible signs of our invisible thoughts which in some real way reveal even our own thoughts to ourselves.5 God also institutes signs. Jesus teaches that the Incarnation itself is intended to be a sign when he says to Philip: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”6 And if signs are important for the life of man in the natural order, they are even more necessary to enter into the supernatural order. Jesus says to Nicodemus: “If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”7 In other words, if we do not understand the meaning of the natural world which God has created (earthly things) we cannot come to understand the supernatural world (heavenly things). Every word of sacred Scripture is borrowed from the natural world, so that entering into the supernatural order presupposes a knowledge and love of the natural order. We have no alternative. Signs take on an even more essential role in the supernatural life than in man’s natural life, since no one in this life has a direct experience of that supernatural order: “No one has ever seen God.”8 9 Hence, that higher life is communicated to us wholly through signs. It follows that such signs are the only access man has to heaven. One might say that without these signs, the window to heaven is closed to us. These sacred signs are found in their most pristine form in the seven sacraments of the Church. And of these seven sacraments, the best known is the sacrament of matrimony. It is best known because it is closest to nature, standing as it were on the boundary between the natural and supernatural order. And so it is the natural beginning point by which souls are lead into the life of grace. Hence, it was the first sacred sign instituted by God at the origin of our race in paradise, when he united Adam and Eve in marriage.’ Moreover, we read in the Gospel according to St. John that it was at a wedding feast that Jesus first manifested his glory and his disciples first began to believe in him.10 This is not by chance. The natural beginning of the Christian Faith is in the Christian family, 5 Shakespeare puts this well in the words of Miranda to Caliban: “I pitied thee, took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour, one thing or other; when thou didst not, savage, know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like a thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes with words that made them known.” The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2. So important are verbal signs for the life of the mind, Aristotle observes, that one born blind from birth is better off as concerns the life of the mind than one born deaf, since words are the natural signs by which we learn. 6 Jn 14:9(1 use the text of The New American Bible, 1987). 7 Jn 3:12. s Jn 1:18. 9 Of course, at this point, marriage was not yet a sacrament in the full sense it would later have when Christ raised it to a sign which would communicate grace by his institution. 10 Cf. Jn 2:11.
