Do any of you remember the old, child-like game of describing a typical church? You start with interlocked hands and fingers to represent the church; then, you put your two index fingers together to form a steeple Finally, you turn your hands face up while wiggling your fingers around. During the whole routine, you are supposed to sing, step by step, “here is the church, here is the steeple, open the door and see all the people!”
Well, discussing the meaning of sacrament is like the above game. In this case, however, sacrament represents an unfolding of multiple theological and ecclesiological layers that signify the Catholic Church: your interlocked knuckles represent the mysteries of faith; your index fingers pointed up together represent God’s revelation and grace as fulfilling the meaning of the mysteries; and when your hands are turned face up, your fingers represent the sacraments: the visible signs of God’s grace.
In fact, the definition of sacrament is just that: it is the means by which God communicates his grace through Christ’s death and resurrection (Tkacik Module 1 Slide 14). And continuing with the interlocking hand analogy, sacraments also reveal the Church and its believers as sacraments themselves. After all, if the church, in short, is a worshipping community, then its primary purpose is to call upon God’s grace (for instance, during the Liturgy) while also communicating the theology and doctrines that it upholds (Power 463).
Therefore, the Church as a sacrament means it is also the living Body of Christ, with believers who not only live by the word of God, but also, as Power quotes from Karl Rahner’s description of the Church, abide by the “presence of the primal sacramental word of definitive grace” (464, 465). This means that, as a sacrament, the Church itself is a visible symbol of God communicating his revelation, through the power of the Holy Spirit, via the Word he has shared with, and sent to (in the person of Christ), to humankind (Power 465).
Augustine, one of several Church Fathers who elaborated on the role of sacraments in Catholic life, drew on two, rather interchangeable terms to explain why sacraments are necessary to Christian theology, worship, and faith formation all-around: sacramentum and mysterion. Using the secular view of sacraments to illustrate his theological points, Augustine likened sacramentum to a solider who pledges loyalty to a local dignitary. Tkacik points out that sacraments, in the secular sense, were common among Romans, as the soldier’s pledge to the ruling class guaranteed benefits or protections in return. (Module 1 Slide 14).
Sacramentum, in turn, relates to the Greek term mysterion, which is used in the New Testament and frequently in the first few centuries of Christian documents. As it pertains to the sacraments, mysterion was often used to describe the meaning of the two initial sacraments found in the New Testament: baptism and the Eucharist. Using Romans 16:25-26 and Ephesians 1 as specific examples, Power further points out that because the mysteries of God’s revelation were made visible in Christ, they are then made present in the visible sacraments (467, 468).
For example, in his works, Irenaeus of Lyons uses the term mysterion to explain baptism and Eucharist as a means to acknowledge the Word made flesh as key to salvation through Jesus Christ. Origen also uses the word mysterion in his writings to describe the Eucharist and baptism. As Power explains, the “mystagogy of sacrament takes the death and resurrection of Christ as the key manifestation and realization of salvation…” (468).
Now, although the New Testament and early Catholic Church documents continually reinforce why the two, more clearly mentioned sacraments — baptism and the Eucharist — are necessary for worship and reflecting God’s grace, this does not mean that Jesus directly instituted the other remaining sacraments. The seven total sacraments, as understood in Catholic Christian teaching, are Baptism, the Eucharist, Reconciliation / Penance, Confirmation, Marriage, Anointing of the Sick, and Holy Orders (Tkacik Module 1 AVP).
However, when excluding baptism and the Eucharist, the other five sacraments do not have as exact a connection to Scripture (Power 464). Rather, these sacraments, along with baptism and the Eucharist to some degree, grew organically over time, beginning with how the Apostles and first century Christians initially instituted baptism and the Eucharist. Then, as the Church Fathers continued to uphold the sacraments and further solidify them as necessary to Christian life, they often showed the relationship between the Old and New Testaments as theologically in-tune with each other. For instance, because the Church Fathers had a strong grounding in typology and mystagogical interpretation, events such as the wedding at Cana, Jesus walking on water, and water flowing out from Jesus’ side while he was on the Cross, all pointed to greater understanding of salvation through Jesus, as well as the sacraments representing this grace as a spiritual reality (Power 465).
Scholastics, and then eventually the Council of Trent, continued to evolve the sacraments’ role in Church. And while the Church can show a continuity with how the sacraments have been developed and upheld for about twenty centuries now, Scholasticism helped explain why the sacraments not only represent Christ’s grace, but also why the Church as an institution has had the authority to develop and carry out the sacraments. For the Scholastics, and the Church overall, justifying the Church’s hand in developing the sacraments also meant that the Church had the authority to institute and manage all seven sacraments. That is, because the Church was considered an institution from God, Christ was the authority that gave the Church the authority to institute all sacraments. A few centuries later, the Council of Trent reinforced the Church’s institutional authority, including showing connections between all seven sacraments and the early roots of the Church, all ultimately tracing back to Christ’s “saving power in each of these rites.” (Power 466, 467).
Yet largely beginning with the Reformation, and which continues to this day, there are now a multiplicity of views about the Sacraments. What started in the Reformation as a rally against pastoral abuses, mostly due to cringeworthy corruption involving indulgences, grew into major theological differences between sixteenth century Protestant reformers and the Catholic Church. These differences involved a wide range of views on the sacraments, along with the Reformers pushing to scrap all sacraments but the two that are more directly mentioned in Scripture: baptism and the Eucharist. In short, as the Protestant reformers had lost all confidence in the Church’s ability to be God’s institution on Earth, all of the sacraments instituted by the Church were under an ever-critical microscope. Moreover, because Reformers were already powering ahead to replace Church authority with Scripture as the primary authority, they created a grassroots type of return to baptism and the Eucharist as what they viewed as the only valid sacraments (Tkacik Module 1 AVP).
Meanwhile, and as emphasized in the Counter-Reformation, the Church doubled-down on its view of the sacraments by showing a clear relationship between apostolic succession, the Church’s continuity in upholding the sacraments, and the Church had the Holy Spirit imbued authority to offer all seven sacraments (Tkacik Module 1 AVP). Additionally, the Church stresses that the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders are all a grace that causes an ontological change in the believer receiving the grace. Once this immutable mark is made on the soul, the believer can then live out a sacramental life under the Holy Spirit’s guidance (Module 1 Slide 23).
Circling back to the beginning of this post, the theological, ecclesiological, and historical aspects of sacraments have had many twists and turns throughout Church history, and especially within the past years. Yet the concept of sacrament remains the same: it is a visible sign of God’s grace. Sacramental theology helps illuminate this definition by explaining how exactly the Church develops and participates in the sacraments (Tkacik Module 1 Slide 15).
And as the sacraments are also a means of communicating truth, sacramental theology also explains the value of symbol and ritual to make such truth known. A symbol, as Tkacik explains, has meaningful value when it clearly points to “God and His saving actions in the person of Jesus (Module 1 Slide 14). In turn, ritual communicates the symbol through ceremonial observances and other customs (Tkacik Module 1 Slide 4). Altogether, when the Church effectively uses symbol and ritual, it helps believers grow in character, it helps them construct a world view according to the truth communicated, and it even helps in the choices they make based on their convictions (Tkacik Module 1 Slide 7).
Works Cited
Power, David N., author. Fiorenza, Francis S., and John P. Galvin, eds. Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.
Tkacik, Michael J. Module 1 AVP. THY-513. Saint Leo University, 2023
Tkacik, Michael J. Module 1 Slides. THY-513. Saint Leo University, 2023.