- Details
- Written by John Wilson
- Category: Sacraments
This is the first of a series of short articles on the sacraments. It is intended for Catholics who want to reflect more deeply on their faith and practice and for non-Catholics who are curious about the Catholic faith and want to know more.
Before considering the individual sacraments in the life of the Church one needs first to develop some understanding of what the sacraments have in common, what the essence of a sacrament is. In the simplest terms, sacraments are effective signs of God’s love – they not only point to God’s grace they communicate it to us. But this simple statement hides the full richness of the Church’s teaching.
The word, “sacrament”, comes from the Latin, “sacramentum”, which simply means, “to make sacred”. The Latin term is a translation of the Greek, “mysterion”, used by Paul to refer to God’s plan of salvation which was fulfilled in Christ. (This is why we often refer to the sacraments as mysteries – the term used by the Eastern Churches.) For centuries after Christ the Western Church used the term “sacrament” to refer to this great “mystery” of God’s self- revelation in Christ. Gradually the Church came to associate this great mystery with specific actions by which God’s love and redemptive work is communicated to us. These are the seven sacraments of the Church.