Lesson 9 – The Elements of a Sacrament: Form & Matter

In a sacramental celebration, the liturgical elements prepare us and focus our attention on the key moment when the sacrament is conferred. In that essential moment, the ministers of the sacrament use particular physical objects or gestures, combined with the pronunciation of specific words, in order to signify Christ’s work of sanctification in that sacrament.

At that critical moment, what we call in Latin the sacramentum tantum, each of the sacramental elements is essential. A sacrament cannot be done if any of the essential elements is missing.

Course Reading

Summa Theologiae III q. 60, a. 7 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae III q. 60, a. 8 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Theology and Sanity, pp. 254-257 | F. J. Sheed

Excerpt from the Summa Theologiae III q. 60, a. 7:

[I]n the sacraments the words are as the form, and sensible things are as the matter. Now in all things composed of matter and form, the determining principle is on the part of the form, which is as it were the end and terminus of the matter. Consequently for the being of a thing the need of a determinate form is prior to the need of determinate matter: for determinate matter is needed that it may be adapted to the determinate form. Since, therefore, in the sacraments determinate sensible things are required, which are as the sacramental matter, much more is there need in them of a determinate form of words.

Course Listening

Between Animal and Angel: Human Nature According to Thomas Aquinas | Prof. Brian Carl

Bodily Religion: God, the Flesh, and Catholic Belief | Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P.