- Sacraments
- Getting Married?
Baptism - Eucharist
- Marriage
- Holy Orders
- Confirmation
- Reconciliation
- Annointing of the Sick
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Detail from "The Delivery of the Keys"
Pietro Perugino
The term sacrament is derived from the Latin sacramentum, meaning "a consecrated thing or act," i.e. "something holy"; '"to consecrate", which itself was a Church Latin translation of the Greek mysterion, meaning "mystery."
Christ instituted the sacraments of the new law. There are seven: Baptism, Confirmation (or Chrismation), the Eucharist, Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony. 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.
[…] the sacraments form an organic whole in which each particular sacrament has its own vital place. In this organic whole, the Eucharist occupies a unique place as the "Sacrament of sacraments": "all the other sacraments are ordered to it as to their end."
-Catechism of the Catholic Church 1210-1
The Seven Sacraments
Official Name - Alternative names
- Baptism
- Eucharist - Communion
- Marriage - Matrimony
- Holy Orders - Ordination
- Confirmation
- Reconciliation - Confession, Penance
- Annointing of the Sick - Sacrament of the Sick, sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Last Rites"
