What REALLY Happens When You Receive a Sacrament?

0:00Welcome to the morning offering, your daily call to prayer. Pray with us every day right here on the podcast and in your inbox. Learn more at morningoffering.com. Hey y'all, welcome to your morning offering. My name is Father Brad Dool and today is September 4th, Friday of the 22nd week in the ordinary time. Let's pray. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. O Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day. For all the intentions of your sacred heart and union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, for the salvation of souls, the reparation of sins, the reunion of all Christians, and in particular the intentions of the Holy Father this month. Amen. And the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. In church history, it's important to know that certain realities have had different names throughout Christian dumb. That's important.

1:00Well, it's understandable. Different languages started in the Semitic languages in Greek and then went to Rome and then went in the spread and then the romantic languages all kind of changed. There's connection but there might be different names for individual realities. An example of this. Confession. Confession is called confession. It's called reconciliation. It's called penance. Sacrament of penance. Those are just three aspects of it. You do confess. You do receive reconciliation and you do a penance. So you can call it all those three things. Something like for baptism. In the ancient time they called it illumination. That's cool. Maybe we can reclaim it. Yeah, we're going to get my baby illuminated. Maybe people would think you said laminated so don't go there. Just call it baptism. You know what else has a different name. We see it pop up here in Paul's letter.

2:01This is another reason you should know this. Because in the scriptures they might say like hagioi which is translated holy ones but we say because of the Latin song to those who are holy, the saints. So whenever you see hagioi holy ones you should hear the saints. Paul says brothers and sisters, thus should one regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Stewards of the mysteries of God. Now what does he mean by these mysteries? Well there's two ways to translate mysteries into Latin. Sometimes it's a Mysterium. Okay. But sometimes it's sacramentum. Sacramentum. So what Paul's talking about here is that the servants of Christ, the decans, the priests, the ministers of the church are stewards of the sacraments of God.

3:01That is the most basic definition of a priest. One who offers sacrifice and God's grace through the sacraments. What is a sacrament? Look, knowing the Greek word here, Mysterion is important because it makes us approach the sacraments differently. The sacraments are a mystery meaning mysteries aren't things you doubt that are there or real. It's things you can't understand completely. Mysteries are sometimes scary because we don't understand. Where the sacraments are, these physical things we can experience and yet there's a mystery behind it. There's a veil in between the veil of the sacrament of like the accidents of the bread and wine and the actions of baptism and the oil and stuff. These are all things we experience. But then there's a greater, deeper mystery that we receive which is God's grace, God's

4:03very life. Hopefully St. Paul and the church's use of the word mystery to mean sacrament helps you encounter the sacraments better this week. This has been your reflection for today. If it was helpful for you, go to morningoffering.com and sign up. We'll be in your inbox every morning. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad, then. Thanks for listening today. Be sure to like, share and subscribe to our YouTube channel. The morning offering is a production of Good Catholic, the media division of the Catholic Company. For more faith-filled podcasts and videos visit GoodCatholic.com.