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What is a Sacrament?
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The Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church
In this course, Professor Lewis Ayres (Durham University) explores the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. In the first lecture, we introduce the concept of a sacrament and its significance. In the second lecture, we look at baptism. In the third lecture we explore two further important sacraments in Catholic tradition: confirmation and reconciliation. In the fourth lecture, we look at marriage, before turning to Holy Orders in the fifth module. In the sixth module we consider the Eucharist. In the seventh and final module, we discuss the final sacrament: anointing of the sick.
What is a Sacrament?
In this section, we explore the meaning of "sacrament" in Christian theology, highlighting several key points: (i) the historical origins of the term from the Latin sacramentum, originally meaning an oath taken by Roman soldiers; (ii) its use to translate the Greek mysterion, indicating rites that reveal divine truths; (iii) the dual role of sacraments as signs that both point to and make present theological realities; (iv) the early Christian context where many practices were considered sacramental, which later became defined as seven distinct sacraments in Western Catholicism; (v) the typical role of priests in administering sacraments, except in marriage; (vi) the theological significance of sacraments reflecting the goodness of creation and its relationship with God; (vii) how sacraments transform ordinary actions, like marriage and sharing food, into expressions of deeper spiritual meaning; and (viii) the necessity of viewing sacraments as part of a broader understanding of creation's purpose in relation to God.
My name is Lewis Ayres,
00:00:06and I am professor of Catholic and historical theology at the
00:00:07University of Durham.
00:00:11I'm going to talk about the meaning of the word sacrament.
00:00:13It has a very complicated history as a word.
00:00:18For example, in Latin, the word sacramentum,
00:00:21one of its earliest uses was as an oath.
00:00:25Roman soldiers took a sacramentum when they pledged
00:00:29their allegiance to the army.
00:00:32It was taken to be a sacred rite which changed the nature of their being.
00:00:34And when early Christians began to use the word sacramentum,
00:00:40part of what they were doing was identifying certain
00:00:45practices as things which set them apart,
00:00:48which made them sacred.
00:00:51At the same time, sacramentum was a word which
00:00:54translated the Greek word mysterion
00:00:58and mysterion, as you probably recognize,
00:01:02is quite a bit like the modern English word mystery.
00:01:06A mysterion was something that was a sacred
00:01:11rite or a saying which made present some
00:01:15teaching about the divine which otherwise was hidden.
00:01:21And Christians developed in the West in Latin the notion of
00:01:24a sacrament or a sacramentum meaning a
00:01:29rite or an action
00:01:33which made present
00:01:37the mystery that it spoke about.
00:01:39In order to make that a little bit clearer,
00:01:43let me divide that into two.
00:01:46On the one hand, the things that Christians call
00:01:50sacraments are signs.
00:01:55Signs come in many forms. Okay. A road sign.
00:01:59It points you in a certain direction.
00:02:02Sacraments are signs because they point to
00:02:07things that are really important for
00:02:11Christians.
00:02:16Usually they point to things about the action of God that
00:02:17are really important for Christians.
00:02:21But Sacraments for Christians are a very distinctive set of signs
00:02:25because the signs don't just point to those things,
00:02:32they actually make them present.
00:02:36I'll give you an example and we'll talk more about it in a
00:02:41later video.
00:02:44Baptism
00:02:46is a sign that the person who is baptized
00:02:48has been brought into the church.
00:02:52But it's not only a sign for Christians
00:02:56because by being baptized Christians believe that that
00:03:00person is brought into the church.
00:03:04So it's a sign which brings about
00:03:08that which it points to.
00:03:12And that's a very classical way of thinking about the nature of
00:03:15sacraments that's shared by many,
00:03:18many different Christian traditions.
00:03:20Now, in earliest Christianity all sorts of things could be
00:03:24counted as sacraments in some sense.
00:03:28The reading of the Scriptures is often presented in early
00:03:34Christian writings as a sacrament
00:03:38because merely by reading about these
00:03:41events, they become real for you.
00:03:44But over the course of hundreds of years,
00:03:47especially in the Western Catholic Church,
00:03:50there come to be seven sacraments that I'll talk about.
00:03:55Seven distinctive actions
00:03:59performed within the church which make present the reality
00:04:02they speak of.
00:04:07In every case except for marriage
00:04:09within the Western Catholic tradition,
00:04:13the person who performs the sacrament
00:04:17is almost always a priest.
00:04:20There are some exceptions in the case of baptism,
00:04:22but almost always a priest.
00:04:25In the case of marriage, as we'll see,
00:04:27the people who perform the sacrament are actually the two
00:04:30people getting married, but we'll talk a bit more about that.
00:04:34But the most important thing about sacrament then is that it
00:04:38is a sign which makes present that which it speaks about.
00:04:41But in order to understand
00:04:46why sacraments are so important for Christians,
00:04:49I think it's important to remember how they tell us
00:04:53something about the very nature of created existence.
00:04:56For Christians creation is a good thing.
00:05:01It's not something to be escaped and at the end of
00:05:03history creation itself is redeemed and restored.
00:05:07The fact that Christians themselves are changed and
00:05:12reformed through created realities,
00:05:16through things like bread and wine in the Eucharist or
00:05:19through things like the union of two people in marriage,
00:05:23there's a revelation of the true nature of creation
00:05:28as something which is a vehicle for drawing close to God and
00:05:33that creation itself will be will be restored.
00:05:37So the existence of the sacraments of particular
00:05:42actions or rites,
00:05:46within the created order is taken within the Christian
00:05:50tradition to be a sign of the significance of creation itself.
00:05:53Creation itself may be a vehicle
00:05:58for drawing close to God.
00:06:01And it's important to think about the seven
00:06:03sacraments not simply on their own as
00:06:07seven distinct things but as part of this overall vision
00:06:09of the purpose of the created order.
00:06:14And when we think about the importance of the sacrament as
00:06:17revealing something about the nature of creation,
00:06:22it's worth reflecting on the individual sacraments themselves,
00:06:26at least to take a couple of examples because often they're
00:06:30signs which take
00:06:33fairly normal actions within the creation and give them
00:06:36a new significance.
00:06:41And perhaps the easiest to understand in that regard is marriage.
00:06:43So in many many cultures,
00:06:48I hesitate to say in all cultures,
00:06:51but in many many cultures something like marriage is a
00:06:53fundamental reality of human society.
00:06:57A couple get together, they have children,
00:07:00and they have an extended network of relations on both
00:07:03sides, and that's one of the basic units of society.
00:07:07That doesn't marriage is not something which happens only in
00:07:11a Christian context or in a Christian and Jewish context.
00:07:14It happens in many societies even in parts of the world
00:07:18where people have heard nothing about Christianity.
00:07:21It becomes a sacrament within the Christian tradition
00:07:25because Christians see in it a new significance.
00:07:29They take something which is a natural part of creation and
00:07:35give it a new significance.
00:07:39We'll talk later about the Eucharist but the Eucharist is
00:07:41another example of the same thing.
00:07:45The bread and the wine used by virtually all Christian
00:07:48traditions in Eucharistic
00:07:51ceremonies
00:07:53are representative of the food and drink that all
00:07:56human beings need in order to survive.
00:08:00One of the fundamental realities of human existence is
00:08:03that we are not self sufficient.
00:08:07We don't just need family,
00:08:09we also need at that most basic level nourishment.
00:08:11Otherwise, very bad things happen quite quickly.
00:08:14The Eucharist takes the idea of food and drink in a very
00:08:17specific form and gives them a new significance,
00:08:23shows their importance in a new way
00:08:26by linking them to the way that God has acted in Christ
00:08:30in order to restore the human race.
00:08:34So sacraments are related to the creation
00:08:37in a number of ways,
00:08:41both showing that the creation itself is to be restored
00:08:42and also taking quite natural aspects of created existence
00:08:46and imbuing them, giving them a new significance.
00:08:53So when you think about what you mean by sacrament, yes,
00:08:57a sacrament is a sign which makes present the reality it speaks about.
00:09:01And if that's a difficult concept to understand,
00:09:07perhaps going through the examples of each sacrament will make it clearer.
00:09:10But at the same time,
00:09:13the sacraments as a whole reflect something
00:09:14essential to, intrinsic to,
00:09:19the Christian understanding of creation itself and that's
00:09:21where I think you should begin to think about what a sacrament is.
00:09:25
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Ayres, L. (2024, October 22). The Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church - What is a Sacrament? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/the-seven-sacraments-of-the-catholic-church
MLA style
Ayres, L. "The Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church – What is a Sacrament?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 22 Oct 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/the-seven-sacraments-of-the-catholic-church