Sacraments
When Catholic Christians hear the word sacrament, we most often think first of the Church’s seven Sacraments: specific “actions of the Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] 1116).
The adjective “sacramental” describes a particularly Catholic understanding of the world and forms the foundation for our understanding and belief in the seven Sacraments of the Church. Through links from this page you can find out more about each of the seven Sacraments. First, though, take a moment to read an overview of just what “sacramental” means to Catholic Christians.
As you can tell just by looking at the words, sacrament shares its roots with sacred, meaning “filled with the presence of God.” Catholics believe that the whole world is filled with God’s presence in everything from the majestic to the mundane. Whenever we respond to the gift of God’s presence (sometimes also called God’s grace), we call that mutual effort – God’s grace and our response – sacramental.
From this broadest definition of the sacramental, we believe that God’s most specific and important sacramental gesture toward creation occurred when God sent Jesus among us as himself, and yet human like us. The person of Jesus Christ brought God’s loving, personal presence into the world in an absolutely unique, unrepeatable way. It makes great sense, then, that Jesus himself instituted our seven Sacraments. Both his actions and his words during his life on earth prepared his apostles for the gifts he promised to leave us all.
“The seven sacraments touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian life … there is … a certain resemblance between the stages of natural life and the stages of the spiritual life” (CCC 1210)
And so we return to the seven Sacraments: the signs or symbols of the Church that make visible God’s unseen grace through our communal, liturgical actions. These Sacraments not only point to something we can’t see (God’s loving presence) through means we can see (rituals and tangible symbols), they also have a real effect on us, so for example, Baptism makes us a part of the Christian family and frees us from sin; Eucharist nourishes us with the very body and blood of Christ and unites us as the Body of Christ; Reconciliation heals broken bonds between ourselves, God and others.
To learn more about the individual sacraments, please follow the links below.