Sacraments

The saving words and deeds of Jesus Christ are the foundation of what He would communicate in the Sacraments through the ministers of the Church. Guided by the Holy Spirit, the Church recognizes the Sacraments instituted by the Lord and through the Sacraments, God shares His holiness with us so that we, in turn, can make the world holier.

We recognize that the Sacraments have a visible and invisible reality, a reality open to all the human senses but grasped in its God-given depths with the eyes of faith. When parents hug their children, for example, the visible reality we see is the hug. The invisible reality the hug conveys is love. We cannot "see" the love the hug expresses, though sometimes we can see its nurturing effect in the child.

For information on a specific Sacrament, see the column on the left.