Chapter 19 2 min read
Sacraments and Miraculous Manifestation
From the minimally refined research manuscript
The sacramental economy and the miraculous economy intersect, but they are not the same. A sacrament is efficacious because Christ acts in it according to his institution, not because something empirically anomalous occurs.
One may distinguish this carefully from saying miracles are sacraments. They are not.
But Catholic metaphysics is naturally hospitable to miracles because Catholic Christianity already understands material reality as capable of serving as a bearer of intelligible and supernatural significance.
Thomas makes exactly this anthropological point. Human beings naturally come to intelligible truths through sensible effects. Therefore, he says, just as natural effects can lead reason toward knowledge of God, supernatural sensible effects can lead human beings toward supernatural truths. That is why miracles can make the preached word credible.
That gives us a deep anthropology of miracle:
we are embodied rational creatures, so God addresses us through embodied historical signs.
Sacramental theology. This is related to miracles but must remain sharply distinguished from them. A sacrament does not work because something medically or physically inexplicable occurs. Its efficacy follows from Christ's institution and action. Catholic teaching says the sacraments confer the grace they signify and operate ex opere operato, because Christ himself acts through them.
This means sacramentality and miraculousness are different categories.
Baptism remains baptism if nothing spectacular happens.
Absolution remains sacramentally efficacious if nobody experiences an extraordinary feeling.
The Eucharist is Christ whether or not a Eucharistic miracle occurs.
That distinction is crucial because otherwise Catholicism subtly turns sacramental realism into paranormal verification.
A hierarchy follows. The extraordinary may be more spectacular, but the ordinary sacramental economy is more central. Catholic life is constituted by Christ’s Paschal mystery communicated in Scripture, faith, Baptism, Eucharist, the sacraments, liturgy, prayer, charity, and the indwelling Spirit. Apparitions and miracles, even when authentic, serve that economy; they do not outrank it.
That hierarchy is especially important for apologetics. The absence of empirical anomaly does not imply the absence of supernatural reality. Grace and sacramental efficacy are ontologically real without becoming experimentally unusual, while a miracle is precisely an exceptional manifestation whose function may be beneficent, revelatory, or evidential.
CCC §§1127–1128; Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium §7; Aquinas, ST III, qq. 60–65; Vatican II, Lumen Gentium §11; CCC §§1324, 1997.
A closer look
Questions raised here.
Is everything supernatural a miracle, and is everything extraordinary supernatural?
No. The manuscript emphasizes Lambertini’s important distinction here. The Incarnation, sanctifying grace, sacramental efficacy, and glorification are supernatural realities, yet they are not therefore members of the particular class of miracles examined in canonical discernment. Conversely, something extraordinary may remain entirely within created powers. Thus extraordinary ≠ supernatural ≠ miraculous. The categories overlap in particular cases, but they cannot be identified.
What is the relationship between miracles and the sacramental economy, and why should sacraments not be treated as miracles simply because they are supernatural?
Sacramental efficacy and miraculous manifestation belong to different theological orders. A sacrament is efficacious because Christ acts according to his institution; it does not become real because an empirically extraordinary effect occurs. Baptism remains baptism without spectacle, absolution remains efficacious without unusual feeling, and the Eucharist remains the Eucharist without visible prodigy. A miracle may accompany or manifest sacramental reality, but it does not constitute sacramental efficacy. The manuscript therefore guards against turning Catholic sacramental realism into a theology of paranormal verification.