Date of Award

12-12-1967

Degree Type

Master's Essay - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Theology

Abstract

In view of the body- soul context in which man is to work out his salvation with "graced-life", the Trinitarian God , having established a specific economy of salvation, entered Himself into that economy through the signs of grace necessary for an intersubjective relationship with man. The unfolding or evolution of this intersubjective relationship brought about a gradual, yet always more specific revelation of the inner life of God Himself. God first entered into human history by the act of creation, then from Eden to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses God spoke to man and in the speaking established a covenant by which He chose a people for Himself, and in the choosing gave this same people a "way of life". The living out of this way of life in its inner reality we call worship, the exterior expression of which is ceremonial or cultic worship. The divine revelations in the Old Testament were all directed to the "fullness of time" when God would send His only- begotten Son, Who , in living out His life through the Paschal- Pentecost Mystery, would complete the revelation of Trinitarian life. But God' s sacramental revelations of Himself to

Noah, Abraham, Moses and the Apostles is not sufficient for today' s man. He too must have his own personal encounter with the Living God. And so "God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days has spoken to us by his son" (Heb 1:1) now speaks to man in and through the Body of Christ, The Church. This leads us, finally, to mention in passing the sacraments in the narrow sense of the word. As God's saving acts to the men of the Old Testament were sacraments revealing Himself little by little; as Christ, the primordial sacrament is the Incarnation of the Trinitarian God; as the Church is the sacrament of the "on-going" mystery of the Word-made-flesh, now glorified; so the seven sacraments are signs of the inner meaning of the mystery of the Church.

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