ited jealousy of its quality and its power, than
it is to the conscious and determined rejection of the essential
philosophy of Christianity, which is sacramentalism.

The whole system was of an almost sublime perfection and simplicity, and
the formal Sacraments were both its goal and its type. If they had been
of the same value and identical in nature they would have failed of
perfect exposition, in the sense in which they were types and symbols.
They were not this, for while six of the explicit seven were
substantially of one mode, there was one where the conditions that held
elsewhere were transcended, and where, in addition to the two functions
it was instituted to perform it gave, through its similitude, the clear
revelation of the most significant and poignant fact in the vast mystery
of life. I mean, of course, the Holy Eucharist, commonly called the
Mass.

If matter is _per se_ forever inert, unchangeable, indestructible, then
we fall into the dilemma of a materialistic monism on the one hand,
Manichaean dualism on the other. Even under the most spiritual
interpretation we could offer--that, shall we say, of those today who
try to run with the hare of religion and hunt with the hounds of
rationalistic materialism--matter and spirit unite in man as body and
soul, and in the Sacraments as the vehicle and the essence, but
temporally and temporarily; doomed always to ultimate severance by death
in the one case, by the completion of the sacramental process in the
other. If, on the other hand, the object of the universe and of time is
the constant redemption and transformation of matter through its
interpenetration by spirit in the power of God the Holy Ghost, then we
escape the falsities of dualism, while in the miracle of the Mass we
find the type and the showing forth of the constant process of life
whereby every instant, matter itself is being changed and glorified and
transferred from the plane of matter to the plane of spirit.

If this is so: if the Incarnation and the Redemption are not only
fundamental facts but also types and symbols of the divine process
forever going on here on earth, then, while the other Sacraments are in
themselves not only instruments of grace but manifestations of that
process whereby in all things matter is used as the vehicle of spirit,
the Mass, transcending them all, is not only Communion, not only a
Sacrifice acceptable before God, it is also the unique symbol of the
redemption