what are the sacraments?

1. Sacraments
 Sacraments are all about relationships:
 Our relationship with the divine (God)
 Experiences of the transcendent
 Our relationships with each other
 Experiences of connectedness
 Our relationship with the created world
 Experience of time/place
 In the broadest sense all creation is
sacramental;
 All human life and experiences are open to the
possibility of sacramental encounter

2. Christian Sacraments
 The Church teaches that sacraments are the
 ‘visible expression of the invisible love and presence of
God.’
 Sacraments celebrate and ground the Christian belief that the
saving presence – grace - of God can be discerned in
 our lives
 our world and
 our history.
 They are the formal, public rites of identity and belonging
for the Christian community.
 Christian sacraments bring Symbol, Ritual Story and
Grace together in a moment – or a series – of human
experiences

3. Symbols and Signs
 Which are Symbols and which are Signs?

4. Symbols
 Symbols belong to the human world of
meaning.
 Symbols are:
 Multi-layered and Polyvalent
 Efficacious and Dynamic
 Sensate and Concrete
 Communicative and Relational
 Imbued with an inner reality
 It is through symbols that mind and body,
mind and heart, heart and body, unite
(Lonegan)

5. Sacred Signs and Events
 Particular signs or events that move beyond the
literal.
 Symbols bring ‘more than’ the immediate present into an
experience.
 Symbols:
 Communicate affective meaning.
 They engage the religious or transcendent imagination of a
community.
 They obey the law of imagination and feeling rather than logic
 Are subject orientated
 They invest ordinary signs or events with special sometimes
extra-ordinary meaning

7. Ritual
 Particular stylised actions or ordered repetitive
movements that reinforce meaning.
 Set, common repeatable actions that ground and
reflect the experience of the community
 Rituals order specific actions to both create and
transform reality.
 Rituals are necessarily Participative and Dynamic;
 They allow lived experiences to be communicated and re-
lived.
 They open communities up to the ‘experience’ of who they are
and so offer the possibility of growth and change

8. Order and Art
 Rituals celebrate moments of high cultic
significance by:
 Providing a sense of historical continuity
 Connecting Past, Present and Future
 Reinforcing the identity and belonging of people
 Imprinting doubly on human consciousness
 Offering insight into what people believe about
themselves
 Transmitting behaviours, values and norms

10.  Myth and Parable
 The ‘stories of our deepest realities.’
 Myth reminds us where we have come from and
where we are headed
 Myth is also trans-historical
 It connects the past, present and future
 provides a link between the wisdom of the past and
the hope for the future
 Myth enables our future
 Without the ‘dreaming’ of myth we would
 Myth and parable also shock us out of
apathy/paralysis
 they tell of a new or different future than the present
would suggest

12. Grace:
 Grace is the presence and activity of God:
 The reaching out of God to humanity and their world.
 A dynamic experience of love, belonging, invitation, acceptence
 Grace always starts with God
 Grace = gift (Charis)
 Grace is the belief that we are constantly invited into more
loving relationships with God
 In this sense we can say that grace is:
 That activity – or revelation – of God
 we come to know in and through the myriad of relationships that:
 Create;
 Nurture; and
 Sustain our lives.

13. Gift of God
 Grace invites humanity to more deeply
experience relationship with
 God, the world and each other.
 Grace is an ever-present reality
 Woven into creation at the beginning of time
 Grace invites response and thanksgiving
 Always freely given and freely available
 Grace is always the initiative of God
 Guides, nurtures and sustains human life and
the religious imagination.

14. Sacraments are about:
 Integration
 Of the physical and spiritual
 Wholeness
 Of persons and communities
 Transformation
 lives and histories
 Mediating and celebrating the presence &
activity of God
 They make real – and therefore make present –
the love of God.

15.  As THE sacrament of Christ the Church
must be prophetic;
 It must call and recall its people to covenantal
relationship
with God,
in Christ,
through the Spirit.
 The Church is not – & never will be – identical
with the Reign of God.
 It heralds the Reign in its scriptures and worship;
 it promotes the Reign in its service and mission;
 it anticipates the Reign in its liturgies and
sacraments