Sacraments

Father Hardon’s writings on the sacraments explore the channels of grace instituted by Christ for the sanctification of souls. These articles examine Baptism, the Eucharist, Confession, Confirmation, Matrimony, Holy Orders, Anointing of the Sick, and the spiritual life nourished through the sacraments.

Understanding the Sacraments

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The present issue of The Catholic Faith is on the single most crucial issue in Christianity today. In the two millennia of the Church’s history, it has always been some aspect of the sacraments which has been challenged or denied by those who then separated themselves from Catholic unity. […]

The Sacraments: Divine Channels of Grace

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of understanding what we mean by the sacraments as channels of divine grace. We might almost say that Christianity is divided into two classes: those who believe that Christ instituted the sacraments as instruments of His grace and those who do not. […]

The Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. From the dawn of Christian history, Baptism and Confirmation have been very closely associated. To this day, Catholics belonging to the Eastern rite receive both sacraments in infancy. Pope St. Leo I makes this relationship very clear. He compares the natural life of our bodies with the supernatural life […]

Assigned Penance in the Sacrament of Confession

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The penance assigned by the priest is an integral part of the sacrament of confession. According to the Church’s Code of Canon Law, “the confessor is to enjoin salutary and suitable penances in keeping with the quality and number of the sins, but with attention to the condition of […]

Examination of Conscience

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. If there is one part of the spiritual life that St. Ignatius stressed, it was the daily – and even twice daily – examination of conscience. As we read the Spiritual Exercises, we may be overwhelmed by the minute detail of St. Ignatius’ treatment of what he calls the […]

Penance, The Sacrament of Forgiveness and Peace

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. During his first visit to the United States, Pope John Paul II pleaded with the bishops to do something about the drastic drop in confessions in many American dioceses. In the face of a widespread phenomenon of our time, namely that many of our people who are among the […]

Anointing, The Sacrament of Healing and Mercy

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The sacrament of Anointing is the new name given by the Second Vatican Council to the sacrament of Extreme Unction. As might be expected, all the founders of Protestantism denied that Christ instituted this sacrament. At most, they would admit that Anointing of the Sick was a charism of […]

Baptism, the Sacrament of Regeneration and the Supernatural Life

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. As we begin our conferences on the seven sacraments, our plan is to introduce each conference with some of the modern misunderstandings on each sacrament. I say misunderstandings. But they could better be called blatant errors that we used to call heresies. What makes these errors so serious is […]

Eucharist as Presence – Sacrament

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. …The Mass and Holy Communion derive all their meaning from the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament . …We shall draw on the irreversible teaching of the Council of Trent about the Real Presence. The original doctrine is worded in the form of anathemas. What follows […]

The Eucharist as Communion Sacrament

by Father John Hardon, S.J. There is generally no difficulty speaking about the Holy Eucharist as sacrament. In fact, this is the way most Catholics think of the Holy Eucharist. However, our perspective will be more specific. We will reflect on the meaning of the Holy Eucharist as a channel of grace and how Holy […]

Holy Orders – A Channel of Grace

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Among the sacraments, none is more distinctively Catholic than the sacrament of Order. The plural, Orders, is commonly used because there are three levels of this one sacrament, namely the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate. In the Church’s own language, this sacrament is described in the new Code of Canon […]

The Priesthood and the Eucharist

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The priesthood in the Catholic Church is identified with many things because over the centuries in the Church’s history there have been priests engaged in a variety, a bewildering array of enterprises. As I look over the roster of the great Jesuits in the last four centuries it is […]

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