What Are Sacraments?

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The Church lives the new Life of the Risen Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Although, in this world, we live mystically between the fulness of God’s Kingdom and the awaiting of its coming in the day-to-day of our lives, we believe and trust that, in the Sacraments, Christ acts fully and definitively in our lives.

The Church recognises seven Sacraments: three are Sacraments of Initiation and Belonging (Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist); two are of Healing (Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick); and two confer the Grace and Power of the Holy Spirit on those called to Matrimony, and to Holy Orders.

Whilst we recognise these as the greatest and most clear gifts of God’s Grace, which we celebrate through liturgy in which action and word are bound together, we receive God’s Grace in many ways in our lives and, as Christians, we are called to be open to these gifts in all our daily activities as well as in our prayer.

The following books may be of interest if you would like to learn more:

• • The Seven Sacraments, by Pope Benedict XVI, St Paul’s Publications, London, 2013
  • Meeting Jesus in the Sacraments, by Pope Francis, Our Sunday Visitor, 2015
  • The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, by Richard Conrad OP, Catholic Truth Society, 2009