The Power That Makes Children of God
The Catholic Mirror of January 26 says:— “The Catholic Church never ceases to watch over her children. From the cradle to the grave she never loses sight of them. By baptism she makes man a child of God, a co-heir of Christ; in penance she cleanses him from sin, and she prepares him by the sacramental grace of extreme unction to enter on immortality.” The only power that can make a “man a child of God, a co-heir of Christ,” is the creative power of God, of which baptism is only the sign. The only thing that “cleanses him from sin” is the blood, or life, of Jesus Christ; and the only thing that can prepare him “to enter on immortality” is an incorruptible character, wrought out in Jesus Christ by living faith. To trust in some mere act, to make “it” the thing, is as truly the worship of a fetish as ever heathen bowed to in his blindness. We are not by this discounting any ordinance of Christ, but no mere forms will suffice.