REVIVAL OF THE SACRAMENTS. - In modern theology, a Sacrament which, although validly received, did not produce Grace because of a moral indisposition (lack of the state of Grace or of attention), and which afterward, once the moral impediment is removed, confers Grace by virtue of the rite administered previously, is said to revive.
From this principle it is deduced that for reviviscence several conditions must be verified: 1) on the part of the subject, the removal of the obstacle or moral indisposition; 2) on the part of the Sacrament: a) that it be valid and unfruitful (validum et informe), that is, without the supernatural effect which is Grace, because if the Sacrament is invalid, it does not exist, and what does not exist does not act; if, moreover, it is fruitful, then it is no longer a case of reviviscence, but of the immediate conferral of Grace; b) that the external rite (matter and form of the Sacrament) be past, because if the sacramental sign still remains (for example, if one repents of mortal sins before the rite of Confirmation is finished), there is no reviviscence, but the ordinary conferral of Grace; c) that the external rite, already completed, leave some effect in the soul, because reviviscence implies a true and proper efficiency of the external rite, which would be inconceivable if this, at the moment in which it is administered, did not leave some ontological imprint or vestige: only a reality that exists can produce an effect; 3) on the part of God, it is required that He will to confer Grace also by this extraordinary means.
Therefore reviviscence belongs only to those Sacraments in which the aforesaid conditions are realized; since three of them are verified in all the Sacraments (except Penance): the removal of the moral impediment, the validity of the unfruitful Sacrament, the cessation of the external rite, it remains to be examined whether the other two as well (the permanence of some effect and the will of God to give Grace by an extraordinary means) are realized. The permanence of a real effect (the character) is verified in Baptism, in Confirmation and in Order; likewise the positive will of God to confer Grace by an exceptional means is inferred from the fact that otherwise the original sin could not be remitted in one who receives Baptism unworthily (in this sense St. Augustine and St. Fulgentius already expressed themselves: cf. Rouet de Journel, Enchiridion Patristicum, nos. 1621, 2269; St. Gregory the Great: cf. Denz-U. 249) and that in Confirmation and in Order the faithful would remain deprived of those Graces which are morally necessary for the fulfillment of the duties of their state.
Also as regards Extreme Unction and Matrimony, while on the one hand the persistence of an "interior unctio" and of a "vinculum coniugale" is noted, which have an effect on the soul (in fact, in every act voluntarily performed a modification of the soul takes place), on the other hand the divine will is inferred, since on the hypothesis that there were no reviviscence, the faithful would remain deprived of helps necessary at the moment of death and in married life.
Only Penance and the Eucharist probably cannot revive; the former because, according to the more probable opinion, it cannot be a Sacrament "valid and unfruitful," the latter because it would derogate from the norm of divine action. In fact, on the hypothesis of the reviviscence of the Eucharist, a faithful person who throughout his life receives Communion sacrilegiously would, at the end, by a simple act of attrition, emitted in the Sacrament of Penance, receive as many increases of Grace as the sacrileges committed: the repugnance of this inference is evident.
The Sacraments that revive produce Grace "ex opere operato" (v. SACRAMENTI). It is debated whether such production occurs by physical or moral causality; the Thomist doctrine of a physical efficiency seems more probable, all the more so since in the five Sacraments that revive there is found an ontological element (character or real modification of the soul), which can become a physical instrument of God, the principal cause of Grace.
In 1925 Marin-Sola gave a more elaborate theological explanation of reviviscence, starting from the Thomist principle of the baptismal character as a "receptive power" in relation to the other Sacraments. Every sacramental administration, validly performed, implies, according to the principle laid down, an actuation of the "potentia receptiva," which therefore remains ontologically modified. Such modification follows the nature of the Sacrament received: perpetual in the non-repeatable Sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Order), temporary in Extreme Unction and Matrimony, momentary in Penance and the Eucharist. Thus it would be explained why the three Sacraments of the character always revive; Extreme Unction and Matrimony only in the same illness or during the same conjugal bond; the last two never. This theory, although presenting weak points, has been accepted by distinguished theologians.
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Antonio Piolanti