Quotes about Sacraments

Although the arms and kings of the world should serve the purpose of peace in the kingdom of Christ for the sake of teaching and propagating the Gospel, that kingdom should not be administered through laws. For laws do not make Christians. No, the Word and the sacraments — the Eucharist, Baptism, etc. — establish and build the kingdom of Christ.

There were some who clung to the right view of the Word and the Sacraments. These means cannot be contaminated. They remain divine regardless of men's opinion. Wherever the means of grace are found, there is the Holy Church, even though Antichrist reigns there.

But to reject, marginalize, trivialize, or be suspicious of the sacraments (and quasi-sacramental acts such as lighting a candle, bowing, washing feet, raising hands in the air, crossing oneself and so forth) on the grounds that such things CAN be superstitious or idolatrous or that some people might suppose they are putting God in their debt, is like rejecting sexual relations in marriage on the grounds that it's the same act that in other circumstances constitutes immorality.

But the sacraments are the very opposite of this. They are the celebration that Jesus has paid the price and that he has all power on earth and in heaven. They are the powerful announcement of his victory. They can and should be used, as part of a wise Christian spirituality, to announce to the threatening powers that on the cross Jesus has already won the victory.

A church without sermons will soon have a shrivelled mind, then a wayward heart, next an unquiet soul, and finally misdirected strength. A church without sacraments will find its strength cut off, its soul undernourished, its heart prey to conflicting emotions, and its mind engaged in increasingly irrelevant intellectual games.

Moral effort needs mental effort, and the mental effort needs to be focused on that victory and turned into prayer for the victory to be applied today and tomorrow. The sacraments will help here, but spiritual guidance and counsel will help a great deal too.

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.

Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.

Sacraments are that literal, that physical. Salvation is very physical. If the woman with the hemorrhage had touched the hem of St. Peter's garment instead of Christ's, her faith alone would not have healed her until it was joined to His body by her touch.—Unless God had willed to heal her that way, of course. God can work outside his sacraments, and often does. There

The second reason was to make public and visible an invisible spiritual reality. This is the purpose of all the sacraments. Indeed, it is the fundamental purpose of matter itself.

Christianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments.

The sacraments infuse holiness into the terrain of man's humanity: they penetrate the soul and body, the femininity and masculinity of the personal subject, with the power of holiness.