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Sacraments Defined

Explore the definition, symbolism, and spiritual significance of sacraments in Christianity, highlighting their role as efficacious signs of divine grace and means of spiritual transformation.

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Sacraments Defined

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  1. SacramentsDefined The Basics

  2. Mysterion • A Greek term used to express the experience of some higher, spiritual power. This is how the early Greek Fathers describe “sacraments.” A transcendent mystery experienced.

  3. Sacramentum • A Latin word of many meanings (military oath) which Tertullian (another early church Father) began to use for ritual celebration of the Christians, especially Baptism and the Eucharist.

  4. Sign • Something that means what it signifies and points to another reality. • Efficacious Sign – A sign that does not simply point to another reality it makes that reality present to us.

  5. Symbol • A sign with more than one meaning; a multi-dimensional sign.

  6. Pneumatology • The study of the Holy Spirit and his work in the Church, the world, the human person.

  7. Ecclesiology • The study of the Church.

  8. Invocation • The act or process of petitioning for help or support. • A calling upon. • Pneumatology precedes Ecclesiology. Any meaningful discussion of the Church needs to begin with the Holy Spirit.

  9. Salvation • Wholeness achieved through liberation from sin and oneness with God. For a Christian, salvation is achieved through Jesus Christ by means of his gift of the Holy Spirit.

  10. Universal Sacrament of Salvation • The outward sign of salvation achieved or begin achieved. Vatican II called the Church “The Universal Sacrament of Salvation” meaning that it stands as a sign for all persons of all nations that salvation through Jesus Christ can be found.

  11. PrimordialSacrament • The term used for Jesus in his humanity to show that for Christians, Jesus is the foremost personal sign of God’s love for humanity, and that to encounter Jesus Christ is to encounter God. The foundation for this concept goes back to Jesus’ words in John 14:9: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

  12. The Sacramental Economy of Salvation • A term used by the Greek Fathers that says that God’s design for human salvation comes about through efficacious signs/symbols that we call sacraments. • *we might say that while salvation is a gift from God, it is mediated to people through the principle of sacramentality.* God uses things of the material world to minister to us spiritually. (Example: Eucharist).

  13. InformalSacrament • The recognition that for various reasons God, who generally operates in our world sacramentally, does not always do so through the Church’s formal sacraments (i.e. Prayer, Scripture).

  14. Sacramentals • Objects blessed by the Church to aid in one’s spiritual growths (personal piety).

  15. Sacraments (Catechism of the Catholic Church) • Sacraments are “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. • The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.” • St. Augustine: “Visible signs of invisible grace”.

  16. Sacraments (Merriam-Webster) • A Christian rite (such as Baptism or the Eucharist) that is believed to have been ordained by Christ and that is held to be a means of divine grace or to be a sign or symbol of a spiritual reality.

  17. 2 General Sacramental Principles • What Jesus did in his ministry on earth, he does for us today through the Holy Spirit. • God uses the things of this physical/material world as signs /symbols to impart grace to us.

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