The Sacrament of Church: the Church herself is an outward sign

If you grew up learning the Faith by using the Baltimore Catechism, you probably know the definition of a Sacrament (by heart!) to be thus: A Sacrament is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace.  Typically, and in one sense exclusively, when we use the term “sacrament” we are referring to one of the Seven sacraments which are administered and witnessed to by the Church for the outpouring of grace upon the world, informing, guiding, and marking the lives of Christians at every major life event.  It would be a surprise to some, then, that the Second Vatican Council and later Pope Saint John Paul II would refer to the Church herself as a “sacrament of the intimate union with God (Dominum et Vivificantem, paragraph 64)”.  Though different in sacramentality from the Seven Sacraments, the Church herself stands as an institution which by her very nature is an outward sign, pointing to the metaphysical reality that is the union between God and man.

JPII makes it very clear that the sacramentality of the Church is different in kind from the Seven: “The Church is… in the nature of a sacrament - a sign and instrument of communion with God… what matters and what emerges in an analogical sense… is the relationship which the Church has with the power of the Holy Spirit, who alone gives life (paragraph 64)”.  Thus, the Church is not something that stands with its own rite, in its own right - is not a sign which must be performed according to a ritual such that bestows grace ex opere operantis, but is a sign of the deeper connection God has with His people through the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  

Christ ascended into Heaven so that the Holy Spirit might descend onto the world and convince the world of sin, to call it by its name and remember our relationship with God.  This is the crux of why the Apostles did not recognize Christ on the road to Emmaus: it would seem curious that they would have spent so much of their lives with Him, loved Him, and yet did not recognize Him even after speaking to Him for hours, except when you consider that the Holy Spirit had not descended into the world so that man might recognize God once more when He is encountered in the world.  The Church stands as a witness to this descent: for just as the world has once more been introduced to the Holy Spirit by His own voluntary descent, so too in the same way, the Holy Spirit descended onto the Church at Pentecost and enshrined Himself once more into the hearts of man, truly embodying the title of “Lord, giver of Life” by revealing to man once more man’s own self.  Man has been made new through Christ in the Spirit.