Swear to God, Hahn

Title: Swear to God

Author: Hahn, Scott Walker

Go back to Books list

Overview

Scott Hahn argues that every society—be it nation, neighborhood, family, or Church—is held together by the power of personal commitments. When we really want to change our lives, when we want to make love endure, we mark the transition by an oath. That's what people do on their wedding day, on the day they become citizens, on the day they enter the military, or on the day they assume public office. The words we say bind us to a course of action. But the most powerful oaths of all are those that mark the Christian Sacraments. In SWEAR TO GOD, Hahn restores the connection between sacred words and human action, promises and commitment.

As in his previous bestsellers, Hahn draws on the history of ancient Israel, the Gospels, the writings of the early Church, and the lives of the saints. He shows how God's covenant—the promises he made to Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses—became the driving force in history. When Jesus fulfilled all these oaths, he established a "new covenant," with its own sacrifices, but with greater power than ever before. In the Church's Sacraments—such as Baptism, Reconciliation, Holy Communion, Matrimony—each individual enters the covenant and swears the oath. In doing so, each individual calls down a blessing or a curse.

If Western society is eroding, perhaps it is because we, as a people, have not kept our covenants with God. SWEAR TO GOD helps us to break out of that cycle, forever!

Content

Chapter 1 "A Bore" I Swore

• God makes His covenant with Catholic Christians - as he dis with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David - using material signs: water and oil, bread and wine, a touch of the hands upon the shoulders, and an audible word of blessing.
• ...at he heart of every biblical covenant there is a solemn and sacramental oath. ... These oaths contained real power to change lives and history.

Chapter 2 Signs and Mysteries

• A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace ... the sacraments receive their power from God through the merits of Jesus Christ. Baltimore catechism
• Sacraments are powers that come forth from the body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in Hos Body, the church. They are the masterworks of God. In the new and everlasting covenant. ( CCC 1116)
• He made us, and so, He knows that we humans learn through sensible signs, sensory data.
• He established the Church on earth so that He could extend His incarnation through time and space. Thus He commanded his priests to celebrate the sacraments with Him - through all time
• Jesus Himself established the sacraments as the ordinary means of extending salvation to each and every person.
• a sign is something used to represent something else. A visible symbol of something that is invisible at the moment
• Ordinary signs convey an idea about something. Sacrament signs convey the sacred reality itself.
• ex opere operato - literally "by the very fact of the action being performed (CCC 1128)
• God does extraordinary things through ordinary means. He uses the natural to do the supernatural, the human to accomplish the divine. .

Chapter 5 What's the Big Idea? The Meaning of Covenant (and everything else)

• There is no idea more important to scripture - and no idea more important to your life - than the idea of covenant.

Other facts

• Used for:
• Purchased:October 2012

Bibliographic info

2003070006 LCCN permalink: http://lccn.loc.gov/2003070006 Type of material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.) Personal name: Hahn, Scott. Main title: Swear to God : the promise and power of the Sacraments / Scott Hahn. Edition: 1st ed. Published/Created: New York : Doubleday : c2004. Description: 232 p. ; 22 cm. ISBN: 0385509316 Links: Contributor biographical information Sample text Publisher description CALL NUMBER: BX2200 H24 2004