The Most Holy Sacraments
The seven sacraments touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian life: they give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christian's life of faith. There is thus a certain resemblance between the stages of natural life and the stages of the spiritual life.
-Catechism of the Catholic Church 1210
The Seven Sacraments
The sacraments are the hallmark of Catholic life. The sacraments flow from Christ, who became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and who is himself the sacrament of God.
St. Thomas Aquinas said that we need the sacraments now in our lives on earth, because we are human beings who strive for understanding of the mystery of God and the beauty of the world through the tangible, visible, and audible things of this world.
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God uses His creation to communicate with His creation! Christ is present to us in every moment of our lives, particularly those significant moments transformed by the special presence of Christ in the sacraments.
The sacraments of Christian initiation - Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist - lay the foundations of every Christian life. The sharing in the divine nature given to men through the grace of Christ bears a certain likeness to the origin, development, and nourishing of natural life.
The Lord Jesus Christ, physician of our souls and bodies, has willed that his Church continue, his work of healing and salvation, even among her own members. This is the purpose of the two sacraments of healing: the sacrament of Penance and the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.
Holy Orders and Matrimony, are directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so. They confer a particular mission in the Church and serve to build up the People of God.