Baptism ... the sacrament of incorporation into the Church. ... This incorporation, as adherence in faith to the sacred community of the Lord, in which the protestatio fidei is from the first not the enunciation of an individual and private view of the world, but the proclamation of acceptance of the Church's belief, ahherence to a belief already there and manifestly exercised in the Church, is not only one effect in fact of baptism, but is itself a sacrament, a sign of the other effects of the grace of baptism.
To be incorporated into the Church is, therefore sacramentum et res in tis sacrament of Christian initiation. That full membership of the Church as the Body of Christ is vivified by the Spirit, provided no obstacle is put in the way of the influence of the Spirit of the Church, can bring with it all the other effects of baptism, so that this membership can therefore be regarded as sacramentum et res, needs no lengthy proof after what we have said about the nature of the Church. It should also be remembered that in the old testament and in the new, the subject of redemption to which God's mercy is addressed is in the first place always the people, the nations, the Church as the partner in the covenant (which the individual as such cannot be), and the individual only shares in grace as a member of such a people of the promise.
It is sufficient to ask why through the baptismal character a human being shares in the priesthood of Christ and how this participation can be distinguished from the one that derives from grace. The answer must surely be that it belongs to a man in as much as he is a member of the church and remains in relation to the Church: because the Church as the visible Church in the world of space and time (not only in the depth of the conscience sanctified by grace) continues the priestly funciton of Christ the high-priest.
Karl Rahner, The Church and The Sacraments, 1963
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