"Opus Operatur" - The action does the work.
This is the traditional doctrine that the Catholic Church uses to say that priests miraculously transform the bread and wine in the Eucharist into the actual/real body and blood of Christ. It's like magic, regardless of the state of grace of the priest or the faith of the receiver. Which, honestly, makes no sense. There were several occasions when the Gospels say that Jesus could do no miracles in the situation where there was no one with faith in the crowd. Thus, even if a sacrament is a miraculous work, it requires faith to be effective.
In my own opinion, the transformation in the Eucharist can only occur for the person who receives it with faith, believing that it is changed. And if the priest performs the Mass in a state of mortal sin, or without faith, it is for him a detriment to grace.
But, if you believe that the sacraments are a means of grace, and you come in a state of grace, or in repentance, then certainly receiving them does benefit you by opening you to the action of the Holy Spirit in your heart and soul. And if you come to the sacraments unworthily... Don't. You would hurt God's feelings, and your own soul by further sin.
However, you can't profane the bread and wine by receiving them reverently, but in the belief that they are symbols of communion among the faithful. Your reverence, and holy intentions, are sufficient to please the Lord, because He can see your belief, and then add to your faith through the sacrament opening you to the effects of the Holy Spirit.
This goes for baptism as well. There must be faith for the action to be effective. BUT, in at least two cases, Jesus was able to heal/raise the dead because of another person's faith. Jairus' daughter had died, but for his faith Jesus raised her back to life. It was the same for the Centurion's servant. Thus, in extremis, if a child could die soon, it does make sense for them to be baptized, on the basis of the parents' faith, so that the infant's soul may not be lost. And it now becomes the parents' responsibility to teach them the faith as soon as they are able to understand. Then, when the child is of age, they can choose to participate in their own act of (re)baptism/confirmation and enter the Church as a fully active faithful participant.
This does not mitigate any need for a new convert to the faith to receive baptism, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In order for a new believer to join the Church, and ultimately the Kingdom of God, baptism is an imperative. Jesus told Nicodemus that unless you are born of water and the Spirit it is impossible to enter the Kingdom. This clearly has also a deeper meaning.
There are two kinds of baptism. John the Baptist baptized the crowds for the sake of repentance, in water, and said that the Messiah would come to baptize believers with the Holy Spirit and fire (zeal). Thus, both repentance and the Spirit are necessary for entering the Father's Kingdom. Baptism represents the change of heart, the contrite repentance of the new believer. It quickly became a rite of passage, a visible sign that a person was joining the Church.
Thereafter, the community would need to mentor the convert, to help him to become a disciple of Jesus, until the Holy Spirit would come down to teach. This is the process of learning how to renew one's mind by ever deeper immersion in the Holy Scriptures and righteous practices. By these means, the convert (or the child growing to adulthood) is to be transformed, or "raised from death into new life," so as to enter into the Kingdom. Without both, the Kingdom will remain invisible, and its doors closed. One needs to continuously grow in faith in order to truly become a Christian.
These are the actions that do the work of salvation, the "opus operatur," that open the hearts of believers to receive the Holy Spirit and its abundance of grace. It is the Spirit which transmits grace, and performs the work of transforming us into citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. The rites of the Church are sacraments, in the sense that they open us to the Spirit and thus are a means of grace, but they are also truly symbols of the deeper work that the Spirit is doing inside our hearts. The sacraments are a physical sign that the Spirit is bringing us ever more fully into God's grace. And this is done by faith, growing in us until we are transformed into saints, according to the will of God.
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