Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942), 250-251.

[E]very sign unites spirit and matter to carry a message through the sense of a man to his mind. It is within the capacity of the most illiterate of men to give material things this dignity and power simply because every man can understand and express understanding; every man has the power to give and to grasp meaning. This is man’s unique privilege in the physical world, a privilege which he has, not by reason of his state in life, his wealth, his fame, his education, but simply by reason of his humanity. Of course, when the power of God is behind them, signs exceed in mystery and dignity anything that man is able to produce in this line. The touch of the hand of Christ exceeded the gestures of any of His contemporaries; it did not stop at binding up a wound, it cleansed lepers. His word did not merely commiserate sinners, it forgave sins.

In other words, the signs of men penetrate to the intellect of others, and this is a marvel in the physical world; but the signs of God penetrate to the will, to the very essence of the soul. They not only signify, they actually accomplish what they signify. We grasp something of this if we can imagine a mother’s counsel, “Now be good,” changing a malicious child into a little saint. It is only in this way that we shall see that Christ’s short sentence, “Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee,” was not merely a statement of hope, not a vague promise, not a word of counsel, but an effective destruction of sin.

If the divine signs had stopped short at mere meaning, at the articles of faith, for example, that alone would not have been sufficient to melt the hearts of men. It would have been a great kindness: a great Master’s careful choice of words simple enough for a child to grasp. We are material as well as spiritual, while God is pure spirit; it would be generously thoughtful of Him to stoop to our level, using a medium accommodated to our lowest of intelligences, softening the bright glare of pure intellect for our weak eyes, by beginning His great actions in the field of the sensible.

But God does not stop at the merly kind; He constantly goes on to the surpassingly generous. He does not stop at mere meaning with His signs, He pushes them on to a really divine causality. He takes our familiar, tangible, homely things—like bread, water, and oil—both to signify and to accomplish the divine things that must be done to our soul if we are to live the life of God.

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Return to Lesson 4: Why Sacraments are Signs