Book 3, Celebration of the Christian Mysteries: Chapter 2, Sacraments of Initiation Summary and Analysis

In this chapter the first four of the Catholic Church's main sacraments are covered.

The Church likes to keep perspective by cultivating a sense of what in literary language is foreshadowing, and what in other traditions has been referred to as foresight.

In this case, the significance of water in the world is recognized as one major sign of God's handiwork and interest. Scientific knowledge supports this but not to the inaccurate extreme of a man called Parmenides who concluded that everything was constituted of water. The power of water to purify and to cleanse was also advanced by the flood and the time of Noah even though it was very destructive. Israel crossing the Red Sea and the River Jordan and arriving...