Quotes About Sacraments

Where the Word of God, the Gospel, is, there it demands to be preached; so there must be a ministry. Where the Gospel is, there people must come together for divine service in order to hear it. Where the Word is, there the cross must also be; otherwise how could the word of the cross be taken seriously? Where the Word and the sacraments are, there are God's holy people.

Francis seems familiar because Catholics have already known him in the Vatican II priests who have been their pastors and sacramental ministers over the years since that council brought new life to an old church. Catholics have known him in the bishops and priests who brought the spirit of the council to their dioceses and parishes.

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.

Every 'Oprah Winfrey Show' has about it the aura of Oprah's own life, just as the rituals and sacraments of a religion are suffused with the life of the religion's founder. Above the testimony of Oprah's guests hovers what viewers know about Oprah's experience.

The kernel is the belief that God is love and, in Catholicism, God's love is present in the world. It is in the sacraments, in the Eucharist, in our families, in our friends, in our neighborhood, and forgiveness in the touch of a friendly hand, in a rediscovered love God is there.

I know that the Reformers spoke of the sacraments as "visible words," but this was an unfortunate choice of words. The Lord's Supper is not a visible word but an edible one. Baptism is not a visible word but a tangible one. The only "visible words" are human beings, the images of God made after the likeness of the Word of God Himself. In other words, the only thing to look at in worship is other people.

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

Spener, along with later pietists and evangelicals, also regarded the sacraments more as occasions for fresh experiences of God within the heart than as the objective offering of grace, which had been the view of the major reformers.

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.

sacraments. I pray to gather density to survive and

Whenever the Lord speaks through her, it's very simple. He says do not fear but put on the whole armor of God. Repentance, sacraments, prayer, obedience. Love the Church with a great love and offer your sufferings for her purification

Day offers two equally necessary sacraments - the benediction of morning and the absolution of dusk. In the morning coffee blesses and in the evening wine absolves.

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.

The sacraments, especially baptism, confession, and the Holy Eucharist, are powerful antidotes to combat and suppress our concupiscence in a way reminiscent of how certain drugs, such as quinine and chloroquine, suppress the parasite that causes malaria.

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.