THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE receive the sacrament of Penance, when, that is, with true sorrow for having offended God, we confess our sins to His priest, and from the priest, as God’s instrument, receive God’s forgiveness and the return of the Supernatural Life to the soul. Matrimony is the sacrament of the entry upon the married state. When two people marry, they take each other as husband and wife for life — this, whether they are baptized or not. If they are baptized, then their marriage is a sacrament — a means whereby God’s grace flows to their souls to give them the aids they need for the sanctification of their life together and the overcoming of such difficulties as may arise in it. It is to be noted that the priest does not administer this sacrament to the parties, they administer it to each other. Extreme Unction^ the Last Anointing, is the sacrament for grievous illness and the danger of death. But all these other sacraments draw their efficacy from their relation to the central sacrament, the Blessed Eucharist. And this is not a mere chance. Prayer and the sacraments are both means of life. In prayer man approaches God. I n th^^acr amenta Trbd approaches man. But both culminate in the same point. For i^e highest prayer is the Mass, and the highest sacrament is the Eucharist. Thus at the point where man’s approach to God reaches its uttermost intensity, God’s response is at its most measureless richness . It is to he noted in the sacramental system how 117