All creation is good, secondly, because it has been redeemed by the death and resurrection of Christ. "If Christ has not been raised," St. Paul writes, "your faith is futile and you are still in your sins..."(1 Corinthians 15:17).

Creation is good, thirdly, because it has been renewed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. "But you are not in the flesh," St. Paul insists, "you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you."(1 Corinthians 8, 9).

All creation is good, finally, because it has been destined by God for eternal glory. St. Paul writes to the Romans: "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God...[for it] will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (8:19, 21).

In Catholic and other Christian teachings, there are seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Marriage, Reconciliation, Holy Orders, and the Anointing of the Sick. These seven sacraments are signs of God's saving presence and activity on our behalf. The sacraments are also the means by which God enters into communion with us, and by which we render glory and thanksgiving to God, in and through Jesus Christ.

For Christians, it is the humanity of Christ that makes possible this holy communion between God and ourselves. It is because Jesus is human as well as divine that he is our one mediator with God. His humanity bridges the otherwise unbridgeable gap between God and ourselves.

Each one of the sacraments is an outward sign of the presence and activity of God on our behalf.

Baptism signifies and communicates the grace of God in Christ. It incorporates us into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. In his letter to the Colossians Paul writes: "When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead" (2:12).

Baptism makes us new creatures in Christ and initiates us into membership in his Church, which is his Body. St Paul again: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ" (I Corinthians 12:12).

But Baptism also has a more universal meaning. It is a reminder that everyone is given the opportunity of a new beginning, and that we are an integral part of the one body of redeemed humanity itself.

Confirmation completes the work of Baptism by signifying and communicating the Holy Spirit. On the first Pentecost, Peter ended his sermon with the words: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts of the Apostles 2:38). The sacrament of Confirmation is a kind of new Pentecost for those already baptized.

Through Confirmation we become temples of the Holy Spirit, "In him," St. Paul declared, "the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God" (Ephesians 2:21).

The gift of the Holy Spirit is but a foretaste and pledge of eternal life. God has prepared our heavenly dwelling and "has given us the Spirit as a guarantee" (2 Corinthians 5:5) -- a Spirit who is "in our hearts as a first installment" on the eternal glory promised to us (1:22).

But Confirmation also has a more universal meaning. Everyone is invited to be open to the presence of the Spirit, the principle of life, healing, and reconciliation -- gifts that each of us needs throughout our lives here on this earth.

The Eucharist is at the heart and center of the sacramental life. The Second Vatican Council referred to it as the summit and the source of the whole Christian life. The Eucharist not only signifies but actually contains the body and blood of Christ. At the Eucharist we gather together around a common table and partake of the banquet that Christ has prepared for us -- now and for all eternity.

The Eucharist also has a more universal meaning and significance. It is a reminder to everyone that we are one family under God and that our family solidarity is sustained and deepened by the ordinary things of life, especially through our eating together. We eat together not just for physical nourishment, but also to celebrate and strengthen the bonds of love and friendship that give our lives meaning, purpose, and direction.

In Jesus' world a shared meal was always a sign of peace, trust and communion. When Jesus shared meals with outcasts, tax-collectors, prostitutes, and others at the margins of society, he was doing more than simply eating with them. He was proclaiming something about them and about God's attitude toward them, namely, that the heavenly banquet is open to all -- women and men, poor and rich, slaves and free.

This same communal spirit is manifested for us in the sacrament of Marriage, which signifies and communicates the presence of a God who loves us without limit. Through this sacrament two people who are deeply in love with each other signify and manifest the love that God has for us and we have for God. In the words of Exodus: "I will take you as my people and I will be your God" (Exodus 6:7).

Of all the sacraments, Marriage is the one whose universal meaning is most obvious because it is common to every society and culture. The sacrament of Marriage reminds us all that the deepest and strongest human relationships are those held together not by social arrangement but by a generous, self-sacrificing love, even at the cost of one's own needs and security.

The sacrament of Reconciliation, or Penance, signifies and communicates the forgiveness of a loving and merciful God. It heals our breach not only with God, but with the whole Church, because in sinning we compromise the holiness of the Church and undermine its capacity to signify the presence of Christ to others.

But Reconciliation, too, has a more universal meaning, because every human being falls from grace at one time or another. As St. Paul acknowledged in his Letter to the Romans: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. (Romans 7: 15, 18). Who of us cannot identify with those words of Paul and with the human experience that lies behind them?

The sacrament of Holy Orders signifies and commuicates the grace of pastoral care to the Church. Those who receive this sacrament receive it not for themselves or for their own spiritual welfare, but for the spiritual welfare of the whole Church. The ordained become servants of the Church, providing the spiritual nourishment that comes from the word of God and the sacraments, as well as the inspiration to live the Gospel as Jesus intended us to live it.

Holy Orders also has a more universal meaning. Each one of us is responsible for the welfare of others. We are indeed our brother's and our sister's keepers. All human beings will be judged not by their loyalty to the religion they belonged to, but by the quality of their relationships with others. Nowhere is this clearer than in Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats,

At history's end, when all the nations will be gathered before the Son of Man in glory, "he will separate people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left" (Matt 25:32). Then he will say to those at his right hand: "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me"' (25: 34-36, 40).

Finally, the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, formerly called Extreme Unction, signifies and communicates the compassion and steadfast love of a God who never gives up on any one of us, no matter how sick or how useless in the eyes of the world we become. Through this sacrament the Church holds high the lamp of hope that God will, at the end, lead us all into eternal life.

This sacrament, too, has a wider, more universal meaning because no one of us escapes sickness in life. And no one of us will escape death. As a human family, we are expected to care for our brothers and sisters when they are too ill to care for themselves, and to give them hope when they have begun to lose hope.

At no time is this need to reach out more crucial than in the final months and days before death, for it is then that we are most vulnerable to fear and anxiety, even terror, as we face not only the final pain of final illness but the uncertainty of what lies beyond this life. We stand in those moments with one another, holding high the lamp of faith in the meaningfulness of human life and the lamp of hope in the compassion and mercy of a loving God,

May our eyes, our minds, and our hearts be ever open to the presence of God in the very texture of creation itself and especially in one another, for we have all been created in God's own image and likeness.

Lydia Talbot: Dr. McBrien, in your compelling message on the sacraments as visible signs of the presence of God in our lives, as you reflect back on your own spiritual journey, how are the sacraments a defining component of your personal relationship with God?

Richard McBrien: Well, being raised a Catholic—but it is not only Catholics who have this sacramental tradition—it was as natural as playing baseball or going to school. Baptism I don't remember. I was baptized as an infant, but mass was very important. I was an altar boy. Confirmation—preparation for it, and going to confession—was a very vital experience and very integral experience of young Catholics lives in those days, back in the 40's and 50's. We attended weddings and, of course, funerals, and as an altar boy I was involved in a lot of that. So it was not so much that I was consciously aware of some sort of a spirituality that I was ingesting, but it was a matter of a natural part of my life. I tell my students at Notre Dame that if you want to figure out why so many Catholics who are alienated from the government of the church—sometimes even the Pope, and the rules and regulations of the Catholic Church—stay in the church, they stay in primarily for the sacramental life of the church. They don't want to leave that behind.

Talbot: How do you discern the difference in understanding the sacraments from a Catholic perspective and that of a Protestant prospective.

McBrien: There are Protestants and there are Protestants, just as there are Catholic and there are Catholics. The Protestants and the Episcopalians and the Anglicans more broadly do have a very, very vibrant sacramental tradition. Other Protestant communities have very little sacraments. They have baptism, but the focus in the service is on the preached word and the music. The Catholics feel perhaps a greater affinity with Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians—the so-called main churches—although all Christians are our brothers and sisters. Since Vatican II, of course, we feel very much part of the same family even though we may have a different family tradition here and there. We feel very close to one another and that's a wonderful development that we can thank not only Second Vatican Council for, but especially the great Pope John XXIII.

Talbot: Talk about reconciliation for a moment. You said in your message there is a universality about the sacraments. In terms of reconciliation, we're all fallen creatures and I think you used the words "human beings all fall from grace at one time or another." But isn't grace unconditional? Do we really fall from grace?

McBrien: Well, maybe that's a question of just theological language. Grace meaning, when I say we fall from grace, that in certain moments and through certain actions we really turn our backs on God. And if you define grace as I would do, as the presence of God—the internal sanctifying presence, transforming presence of God—then to turn one's back on God by, in a sense, flaunting the Gospel by simply repudiating it in some action, we, in a sense, then open the gate to that presence of God. Now, of course, God is always present to us, but a fall from grace is a fall from the standard that Jesus set for us in the Gospel: to be people of compassion, justice, forgiveness, kindness, and mercy. To act other than that is to fall from grace. But the wonderful thing about our faith and especially about the sacrament of reconciliation, it reminds us all, not only Catholics but other Christians, that God never stops forgiving. There is no sin that God would not forgive except what they call the sin against the Holy Spirit and that simply means a sin that you don't want forgiven. God isn't going to force the forgiveness.

Talbot: So that we are already forgiven.

McBrien: We are already forgiven, of course, in Jesus Christ and that is the great satisfaction, the great comfort that we have as Christians.

Talbot:Talk about the anointing of the sick. You say that no other time is it as crucial as in the last stages before death. How did that become real for you or has it at any particular point in your life?

McBrien: Well, of course, I haven't had the experience yet of receiving the sacrament myself, but I have had the experience when I was doing parish work back in the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut. In my younger days, before I got into academic theology and teaching in seminaries and universities, that was an integral part of my ministry as a parish priest. But now on occasion, I will have the opportunity and the privilege really of anointing a close friend or relative that might be not just at the point of death. You see, that's another change in Catholic practice. It's not just at the point of death that that sacrament is offered. It's in the process of any serious illness, and that's another major positive change that has occurred in our sacramental life.

Talbot:: Talk about change. You are an ABC news consultant on papal matters including the election of the next pope. What's your prediction?

McBrien: My prediction is a generic one, that the next pope will be an Italian in his seventies.

Talbot: No names?

McBrien: Well, I can at least give you my favorite. My favorite is Cardinal Carlo Martini, who is the Archbishop of Milan. He would be the first Jesuit elected. By every standard he is, I think, the best qualified for the papacy, but you need two-thirds vote.

Talbot: Thank you so much, Fr. Richard McBrien. It's a joy to have you here.