Parergon: On the Unity of the Sacraments

— By polemical reasons which the war against the Church made necessary, theologians in more recent times have been led to defend more the external ramparts of the Church, and to explore less her interior riches, with which she has been enriched by her Spouse, much less to show and preach the same to the faithful. The analytic consideration of things also has had this inconvenience, that things were proposed and considered as too separate. Thus, too much in the understanding and practical judgments of the faithful, the sacraments have been separated from the Eucharist, the common priesthood of the baptized from the ministerial priesthood of those who are ordained for doing sacred things, actions called natural from supernatural ones, the life of Christians from the passion of Christ, man from his exemplar and new Father in whom he has been regenerated, Christ from the Church, which continues Christ.

But by a wonderful unity all the sacraments converge toward the Eucharist. For every man now exists for this purpose, that he may be converted into Christ. This is done formally through the Eucharist, which alone, according to itself, communicates the life of Christ. But the other sacraments either prepare the Eucharist: thus Baptism, Penance; or render it more certain, as Confirmation; or complete it, as Extreme Unction; or confect it, as Order; or beget for it other worshipers and participants, as Matrimony, which also "by its signification touches this sacrament, insofar as it signifies the union of Christ and the Church, whose unity is figured by the sacrament of the Eucharist" (cf. St. Thomas, III, q. 65, art. 3, On the Excellence of the Most Holy Eucharist).