As long as I'm talking about sacraments...

As part of my deacon formation process I'm taking a class called “Worship, Sacraments, and Liturgy,” and yesterday I turned in one of the major assignments for the class, a paper on the Eucharist. I'm still thinking about the Eucharist and other sacraments, which is much better than what a lot of the papers I've written leave me thinking about.

When it comes to numbering or prioritizing the sacraments, two things stand out to me. One is the primacy of Baptism, and the other is the centrality of the Eucharist. For those familiar with Catholic theology, I'm not saying anything new here (not trying to, at least). Baptism is “the door which gives access to the other sacraments,” and by it we “are incorporated into the Church” (CCC 1213), whereas the Eucharist, in the widely quoted words of Lumen Gentium, is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (cf. CCC 1324).

While everyone's sacramental biography is a little different, for nearly all of us one thing is common: Baptism comes first. This is true even for Protestants, even for those who do not view the sacraments as sacraments.

I was raised as a Southern Baptist and baptized in a Southern Baptist church when I was seven years old. This was a full immersion baptism, the kind that Baptists generally insist on, and it was not called a sacrament. To my Baptist family and friends, it was an ordinance, one of two. Soon after my Baptism I was allowed to participate in the “Lord's Supper” for the first time. For my Baptist church, this was the second ordinance. Its relative importance is seen in the frequency with which it occurs, which was about once every three months in my home church.

One blessing I received upon entering the Catholic church was the recognition of my Baptist Baptism as a valid sacrament. This impressed on me the significance of the words of Ephesians 4:6, “one Lord, one faith, one Baptism.” Not coincidentally, I believe, these words were among the first I ever heard proclaimed during Mass (see the Lectionary for the 17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B). Thanks be to God, the sacraments do work despite our imperfect understanding of them! And in Baptism there's a real, sacramental hope for Christian unity (CCC 1271).