9. The Sacraments at the Service of Communion

Two priesthoods, one Christ

Before treating ordination, the Catechism sets a distinction that prevents two opposite mistakes. Every baptized person shares Christ’s priesthood — the "common priesthood of the faithful," exercised by offering one’s whole life to God. The ministerial priesthood conferred by Orders differs from it in essence, not merely degree — yet exists entirely for it: a means by which Christ builds up his priestly people. Clericalism forgets the first priesthood; a purely functional view of clergy forgets the second (CCC 1546–1547).

The claim at the heart of Orders is that the ordained man acts in persona Christi Capitis — in the person of Christ the Head. When the priest absolves or consecrates, the "I" of "I absolve you" and "this is my body" is Christ’s. The Catechism immediately adds the sobering corollary: the minister’s guarantee extends to the sacraments, not to his character — ordination confers power and demands holiness, but does not confer it. History has made the Church honest about the difference.

Holy Orders: bishops, priests, deacons

The sacrament — conferred by a bishop’s laying on of hands and consecratory prayer, and imprinting an indelible character — exists in three degrees. Bishops receive the fullness of Orders: successors of the apostles, they carry the threefold office of teaching, sanctifying, and governing a local church, in communion with the pope and the whole college. Priests are the bishops’ co-workers, ordained to preach, celebrate the sacraments — above all the Eucharist — and shepherd the portion of the flock entrusted to them. Deacons are ordained not to priesthood but to service: of the liturgy, the word, and especially charity — the order that keeps the Church’s diakonia, its servanthood, visible in her structure (CCC 1554–1571).

The Catechism roots the whole institution in a lineage: the priesthood of the old covenant — Aaron, the Levites — prefigured it; Christ, the one true priest of the letter to the Hebrews, fulfilled it; the apostles received his mission; and the laying on of hands has passed it down in unbroken succession since. In the Latin Church, ordained priesthood is normally received by celibate men — a discipline embraced "for the kingdom," while many Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men; and the Church teaches that she is bound by Christ’s own choice of the Twelve to reserve ordination to men. John 13 stands over all of it: the office is a towel before it is a title (CCC 1577–1580).

Matrimony: the covenant made sacrament

The Catechism begins marriage not at the altar but at creation: the intimate community of life and love between man and woman comes from the Creator’s hand, ordered from the beginning toward the spouses’ good and the gift of children. Scripture opens with a wedding and closes with one — Adam and Eve, then the marriage supper of the Lamb — and the prophets spent centuries describing God’s covenant with Israel as a marriage survived: betrayed, grieved, never abandoned (CCC 1602–1611).

Christ raised this created covenant to a sacrament. At Cana he blessed a wedding with his first sign; pressed on divorce, he appealed past Moses to the beginning — "what God has joined together, let no one separate." Between the baptized, the Catechism teaches, valid, consummated marriage is indissoluble; the spouses themselves are the ministers of the sacrament, conferring it on each other by their consent, and the bond they forge becomes a real participation in Christ’s covenant with the Church: their fidelity is a sign the world can read (CCC 1612–1617, 1638–1642).

The Catechism does not romanticize. It names the essentials — unity, indissolubility, fidelity, openness to children — and it names the hard cases with pastoral gravity: separated spouses, civil divorce and remarriage (whose members remain part of the Church and are owed her attentive care), annulment rightly understood as a finding that no valid bond existed, and the domestic church — the family as the first place where faith is professed, the first school of prayer and virtue, the Church in miniature around a kitchen table (CCC 1643–1666).

Sacramentals and the Christian funeral

Part Two ends with grace’s overflow. Sacramentals — blessings, holy water, ashes, palms, medals, the sign of the cross — are not sacraments; they do not confer the Spirit’s grace the way the seven do. They are the Church’s prayer extended over the whole texture of life, preparing hearts to receive grace and sanctifying meals, journeys, homes, and work. Almost no honest hour of a day falls outside their reach (CCC 1667–1679).

And the Christian funeral gathers everything this course has covered so far into one liturgy: the body that was washed in baptism is honored and commended; the Eucharist is offered for the one who can no longer offer it; the community grieves in hope, not as those who have none. The Catechism’s treatment is brief and unafraid, because for the Christian, death itself was covered back in the Creed: the funeral is initiation completed — birth, at last, into the life the sacraments were feeding all along (CCC 1680–1690).

Key terms

Common priesthood

The share in Christ’s priesthood belonging to every baptized person, exercised by offering one’s whole life to God — the priesthood the ministerial priesthood exists to serve.

In persona Christi

"In the person of Christ": the ordained minister acting with Christ’s own "I" in the sacraments — Christ the Head working through his priest.

Diaconate

The order of deacons — ordained for service of liturgy, word, and charity rather than priesthood — keeping servanthood visible in the Church’s structure.

Indissolubility

The permanence of a valid, consummated marriage between the baptized: a bond the spouses forge and God seals, which no human authority can dissolve.

Domestic church

The Christian family as the Church in miniature — the first school of faith, prayer, and virtue.

For reflection

1. Every baptized person is a priest, offering ordinary life to God. What, this week, is actually on your altar — and what have you been withholding from it?
2. John 13 defines authority with a towel. Where do you hold authority — home, work, church — and what would washing feet look like there?
3. The prophets pictured God as a spouse who stays. How does that image challenge — or heal — what you learned about love from the marriages you grew up watching?
4. The "domestic church" makes the kitchen table a sanctuary. What is one practice — a blessing, a shared prayer, a kept ritual — that could consecrate your household’s ordinary time?