CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
IV. The Sacraments of Salvation
1127 Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify.48 They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies. the Father always hears the prayer of his Son’s Church which, in the epiclesis of each sacrament, expresses her faith in the power of the Spirit. As fire transforms into itself everything it touches, so the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life whatever is subjected to his power.
1128 This is the meaning of the Church’s affirmation49 that the sacraments act ex opere operato (literally: “by the very fact of the action’s being performed”), i.e., by virtue of the saving work of Christ, accomplished once for all. It follows that “the sacrament is not wrought by the righteousness of either the celebrant or the recipient, but by the power of God.”50 From the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the Church, the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through it, independently of the personal holiness of the minister. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.
1129 The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation.51 “Sacramental grace” is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament. the Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son of God. the fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption makes the faithful partakers in the divine nature52 by uniting them in a living union with the only Son, the Savior.
Exorcist Explains How Catholics/Non-Catholics Are Saved
Who Can Be Saved?
No salvation outside the Church
EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS
ONLY CHRIST SAVES BY MEANS OF THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST
ALL GRACE COMES THROUGH CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH
Does Salvation By Faith and Works Mean You Can Lose Your Salvation at Any Moment?
Can You Lose Your Salvation?
Many Protestants say once saved, always saved. The Bible doesn’t agree.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/can-you-lose-your-salvation
Can Salvation Be Lost?
The New Testament is clear that salvation can be lost, but that through repentance in Christ it may be regained
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-salvation-be-lost
Can We Lose Our Salvation?
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-we-lose-our-salvation
From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop
(Sermo Caillau-Saint Yves 2, 92: PLS 2, 441-552)
He who perseveres to the end will be saved
Whenever we suffer some affliction, we should regard it both as a punishment and as a correction. Our holy Scriptures themselves do not promise us peace, security and rest. On the contrary, the Gospel makes no secret of the troubles and temptations that await us, but it also says that he who perseveres to the end will be saved. What good has there ever been in this life since the time when the first man received the just sentence of death and the curse from which Christ our Lord has delivered us?
So we must not grumble, my brothers, for as the Apostle says: Some of them murmured and were destroyed by serpents. Is there any affliction now endured by mankind that was not endured by our fathers before us? What sufferings of ours even bear comparison with what we know of their sufferings? And yet you hear people complaining about this present day and age because things were so much better in former times. I wonder what would happen if they could be taken back to the days of their ancestors—would we not still hear them complaining? You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them.
It amazes me that you who have now been freed from the curse, who have believed in the son of God, who have been instructed in the holy Scriptures—that you can think the days of Adam were good. And your ancestors bore the curse of Adam, of that Adam to whom the words were addressed: With sweat on your brow you shall eat your bread; you shall till the earth from which you were taken, and it will yield you thorns and thistles. This is what he deserved and what he had to suffer; this is the punishment meted out to him by the just judgment of God. How then can you think that past ages were better than your own? From the time of that first Adam to the time of his descendants today, man’s lot has been labor and sweat, thorns and thistles. Have we forgotten the flood and the calamitous times of famine and war whose history has been recorded precisely in order to keep us from complaining to God on account of our own times? Just think what those past ages were like! Is there one of us who does not shudder to hear or read of them? Far from justifying complaints about our own time, they teach us how much we have to be thankful for.
[End of quote] (http://www.ibreviary.com/m2/breviario.php?s=ufficio_delle_letture#hymn)
In the Fullness of Time
Michael Pakaluk
A sacrament, as we learned from our catechism, is a visible sign of grace that does what it signifies. Its efficacy is bound up with its signification. Subvert the sign and you subvert its power (for efficacious natural signs, too, like the marital embrace).
The Passion of Our Lord is similar. The holy doctors teach that it would have been sufficient for Jesus to have shed a single drop of blood, for all of the sins of all of humankind to be forgiven – if he had so chosen. Yet, rather, he freely chose to endure his Passion. And why? Because of what was thereby expressed.
“To satisfy the divine justice,” St. Alphonsus Liguori writes, “it would be enough for him to have suffered any pain; but no, he wished to submit to the most galling insults and to the sharpest pains, in order to make us comprehend the malice of our sins, and the love with which his heart was inflamed for us.”
Like a sacrament, then, the Passion has an essential aspect of a sign. Our Lord freely chose that our redemption would be accomplished by this specific means, which was at the same time an expression of both the gravity of sin, and the depth of God’s love.
But to be intelligible, signs need a language and context. So, here arises an interesting question: What conditions were necessary for God to have been able to fashion a sign like this? It’s not so easy.
Follow me here. Suppose that God had wanted to apply a remedy for sin immediately after Adam and Eve had fallen. How could he have repaired things at the start, while expressing the correct truths?
Surely Adam and Eve needed to understand the gravity of sin. They looked upon eating the fruit as something slight, maybe even good (“to become like God.”). As for God’s love, they suspected, as the Devil suggested, that maybe God didn’t have their best interests at heart. What could God have done, right then, to save them, precisely through helping them understand?
He couldn’t have sent Jesus Christ just then. How would Jesus have come into existence? If through being born to Eve, this would have expressed, rather, the levity of sin. Suppose that Jesus was created de novo, a mature man, perhaps fashioned like Adam out of mud. But then why should Adam and Eve ever have believed that this third being, although like them, was God?
And how would this new being manage to die for them? If he killed himself, this would express the wrong things. But Adam and Eve didn’t seem particularly inclined to torture or kill anyone themselves. So, presumably, if Jesus were to die for their sins,
God would need to create another being de novo (this one not God), somehow representing themselves, tasked with torturing and killing him. The material, rational creation at this point – Adam and Eve, and then another pair of rational creatures, one tasked with torturing and killing the other, the other tasked with accepting it – if it expressed anything all, would teach that torture and murder are now part of Creation, and that God can be malicious.
Do you see my point? We take for granted that the Lord’s Passion, as depicted by a crucifix, signifies as it does. It’s only through something like a miracle, however, or many miracles, that it can do so. This marvel – that it signifies and that its signification is itself God’s work – has been sensed intuitively by millions of converts, who have recognized divine power already in “Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
If what happens to Jesus is to express anything about us, he needs to be one of us: he needs to be born of a woman, and yet in such a way as to make a new start. If it is to express something about the gravity of sin, what happens to him has to be a clear expression of our sin.
But since to sin is to go astray, he needs to be tortured and put to death exactly because everything good and strong about us has gone astray – our best expression of administration (Rome), our best expression of the priesthood (Judaism), our best expression of popular acclaim (the festival crowd), our best expression of friendship (his disciples).
For it to express something about God’s love, he needs to be identifiable as God. He needs to be placed in a tradition that has established incommunicable signs for God, such as a name, “I am,” and incommunicable acts of God, such as forgiveness and rescue (the pascal lamb). If it is to express the ultimate form of love, it has to be a genuine giving up of his life for us. That is, he must be fully open to being put to death, while doing nothing to precipitate or recklessly cause it.
And then the whole thing needs to be presented “in the manner of a sign.” Not everything is like that. If I separate my pointer and middle finger by accident, or in the dark, I cannot signify “victory” or “peace.” If I do so as if inadvertently, although in plain sight, it is not yet a sign – someone needs to see that I am intending to convey something.
And just try getting executed as a madman by public authorities and see if you succeed in “saying anything” at all. Another miracle, then: the crucifixion occurred within the short time when the great secular power of Rome and the great spiritual power that was Israel coincided in one place. And another miracle: it was for Rome to provide the final condition and seal.
Jesus was not simply crucified but crucified publicly, “under Pontius Pilate.” In “the fullness of time,” Pilate, through his use of those three great instruments of meaning, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, as a public act made it clear to all that this death of the King of the Jews was intended as a sign.