Question

Dear Father,

I pose 3 brief questions to you:

1. Is someone who is not baptized not considered a child of God by the Catholic Church? Are they “merely a creature”?

2. Jesus said that one must eat His Body and His Blood to obtain eternal life. Does this mean that whoever does not eat the Eucharist or has never eaten it (perhaps because they are atheist or belonging to another religion) will not be saved?

3. According to Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, is a person who is not baptized, does not participate in the sacraments, or in general does not believe in Christ unable to be saved?

Thank you for your attention and for the time you will dedicate to answering me.

Answer from the Priest

Dear friend,

1. One becomes an active child of God at the moment when one receives that divine seed of which Saint John speaks in his first letter.

Ordinarily this divine seed is infused in baptism.

But, especially for an adult, it is also infused even before baptism, when one accepts the grace that the Lord mysteriously grants.

Saint John in the prologue of his Gospel says: “to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12, NAB).

Saint Mark relates that Jesus said: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mk 16:16, NAB).

As one notes, he did not say: whoever is not baptized will be condemned, but simply “whoever does not believe” – that is, whoever will not have accepted the seed of divine life that the Lord intended to give him.

2. For the second question, Saint Thomas Aquinas prefaces with an affirmation from Saint Augustine: “Saint Augustine writes: ‘You must not think that children cannot have life before they receive the body and blood of Christ’” (Summa Theologiae, III, 73, 3, sed contra).

Then he explains in what way it is necessary for salvation.

And here is the text: “In this sacrament we must consider two things: the sacrament itself and the effect of the sacrament.

It has been said that the effect of this sacrament is the unity of the mystical Body, without which there can be no salvation: since no one can be saved outside the Church, just as in the flood no one was saved outside Noah’s ark, symbol of the Church, as Saint Peter teaches (1 Pet 3:20ff, NAB). But we said above (in a previous question, editor’s note) that the effect of a sacrament can be obtained before receiving the sacrament, through the very desire to approach the sacrament. Thus before receiving the Eucharist, a person can be saved by virtue of the desire to receive it, as was said above.

However, there are two differences. First, because baptism is the beginning of spiritual life and ‘the door of the sacraments.’ The Eucharist instead is like ‘the crown’ of spiritual life and ‘the end of all the sacraments,’ as was said above: since the graces of all the sacraments prepare one either to receive or to consecrate the Eucharist.

Therefore, while receiving baptism is necessary to begin supernatural life, receiving the Eucharist is necessary to bring it to completion: and it is not even indispensable to receive it in fact, but it suffices to have the desire for it, just as one yearns for and desires the end.

The other difference lies in the fact that through baptism a person is ordered toward the Eucharist. Therefore with baptism itself, children are destined by the Church for the Eucharist. Thus, just as through the faith of the Church they believe, so through the intention of the Church they desire the Eucharist and consequently receive its effect. But they are not directed to baptism by a preceding sacrament. Therefore before receiving baptism only adults and not children can have the desire for it. The latter therefore cannot obtain the effect of baptism without receiving baptism itself.

This is why the Eucharist is not indispensable for salvation as baptism is” (Summa Theologiae, III, 73, 3).

3. For the third problem, the indispensable element for salvation is the grace of God, even if one had not received baptism.

Indeed one reads in Sacred Scripture that “God wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4, NAB) and that for the salvation of all it is necessary at minimum that one believe in God and that God is a rewarder for those who seek him. Indeed Scripture says: “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for anyone who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6, NAB).

I bless you and remember you in prayer,

Father Angelo

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