It's a great joy to be with you, and I'm really happy to be going through teaching this material,

which is not my first order of expertise, but I find fascinating and interesting,

to look at Aquinas on the Sacraments in general, which is a famous little treatise of only about six questions,

but which had a massive effect on the history of theology,

because Aquinas said a lot of very, well, you might say insightful, in some ways, original things that helped focus the study of the sacraments for hundreds of years to come.

Not that he's the only major voice of the Middle Ages, but he is one of the major voices,

and he says some things in these questions that are quite original. Well, that had a, yes, that focused the conversation.

So we can't treat everything, but what I want to do is, in our four hours together, our four

sessions together, go through some of the main articles. Not exactly the

greatest hits, a little bit more than the greatest hits, but to look at some of the most

important articles and some of the things around it. And to think about it in terms of not only

the theological intelligibility of the mystery of the sacraments, but also a little bit about the practicality

and spiritual depth of it for our own lives. Now, we're starting, and I want to try to make

progress today, and talking about the first two questions 1661, and as you can see from the

handout, I'm not going to treat everything. The question 60 is, what is the sacrament?

That's very basic and also really hard.

And then the second question 61 is on the necessity of the sacrament.

So we're in the third part of the Summa Theologia, question 60 through 65, starting with 60.

And question 60 is composed of a whole slew of articles.

One through eight.

Now, there's a way you could get, you could start the whole thing by talking about

historically.

...