Thomas Joseph White, The Light of Christ (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 193.

The sacraments are a beautiful mystery because they address human beings simultaneously as animals (who have need of our senses to encounter others) and as spiritual beings (who can live inwardly by faith in the spoken word of God). Although some say that the sacramental organism is a purely human construct, the truth is that the sacraments were instituted by Christ as a mercy, so that the Church might always remain God-centered, in spite of all our human limitations and moral frailties. It is not the clergy who maintain the sacraments in being, at least not principally, but God and Christ, alive at the heart of the Church. The sacraments are sources of grace ex opere operato, that is to say, by the very working of the sacraments. This means that lay recipients of the sacraments who are well disposed can receive grace from their celebration whenever the minister simply has the intention to do what the Church intends in celebrating a sacrament correctly. Thus the sacraments never depend upon the moral worthiness or supernatural faith of the minister. This may seem like a cynical view of the ministers of the Church, but in fact it simply underscores a basic distinction. It is one thing for a priest to be an instrument of grace, and another for him to be personally holy. All those in holy orders should tend toward personal holiness, and the grace of the sacrament of holy orders can always assist them in this. But the Church’s continued existence does not depend per se on their holiness. It depends upon God who continues to act in the sacraments, drawing human beings to himself and sanctifying them down through the ages, over and above any and every limitation of men.

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Return to Lesson 10: Can Angels Administer Sacraments? Can Sinners?