Sacraments & Grace

In the past couple of months, our parish has celebrated many Baptisms, Confirmations, and weddings. Weekly, we celebrate Eucharist, Reconciliation, and anointings of those who are sick or dying. We truly are a sacramental people.

Growing up, many of us learned that a sacrament is "an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace." The Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1994, updated that definition, saying, “The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.” The definition definitely got a little more complicated, so let’s break it down!

Efficacious means effective or successful in producing the desired outcome. In everyday life, we see signs everywhere. However, when we approach, for example, a stop sign, there is no power in the red metal octagon that makes us put on the brakes; it is our own effort that makes us stop. Most of the time, our efforts are effective!

Sacramental signs are different in that God is the one doing the action, transmittting His unseen grace into our souls through material symbols. These objects, words, and gestures, including water, oil, and laying on of hands, are perceptible to our five senses, and through them we are given God’s life and grace.

We know that no human power could attach an inward grace to an outward sign: only God can do that, which brings us to the next part of the definition: "instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church." While Christ the one who instituted the seven sacraments, it has historically been the Church who was given the responsibility of identifying them and specifying how they are celebrated. Jesus did choose the matter and form of some of the sacraments, like Baptism and the Eucharist, which is documented in Scripture. But for other sacraments, like Confirmation, He left it to His Church, the keeper of His sacraments, to specify how.

Coming now to the final element in the definition of a sacrament, we have its essential purpose: to give us divine life or grace. Theologians speak about sacramental celebrations as “encounters with Christ.” This is grace, and it strengthens us to live as disciples of Christ. The sacraments allow us to become aware of a great gift: the creative, sustaining, loving presence of God. This is why the Church encourages us to receive the sacraments as often as we can, and why so many Catholics who leave the Faith for whatever reason often return – because this is where they feel the sacramental presence of our loving God who sustains us.