Sacraments of the Church

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us (CCC 1131). Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptises, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies (CCC 1127).

A sacrament is often defined as “an outward sign of an inward grace”. This is because each of the sacraments rests upon an outward material sign that was designated by Christ as a way to gain an outpouring of God’s own divine life.