Sacramentality

Catholicism sees in Jesus Christ the full embodiment of God. Since God became human, then God is seen, touched and heard in the context of human living. This is the principle of Sacramentality. The Church celebrates certain rituals that make the saving presence of God tangible to believers in different ways. They are intended as moments of encounter with God that can deeply affect the lives of those who participate in them. In Catholicism, there are seven such rituals that are called the Sacraments, with the Eucharist as the core Sacrament.

However, the sacramentality of Catholic belief embraces more than our sacred rituals. Catholics also believe that humans live in a sacred world created by God. For this reason, every tangible element of creation, from the natural environment to human persons, provides an opportunity to encounter something of God’s presence. Hence, every tangible element of creation can be a “sacrament” of God.

Understood in this way, the principle of sacramentality affirms that as we study and explore the human condition and the natural environment, we are in actuality discovering more and more about the presence of God. Furthermore, our day-to-day activities, our service to others, our interaction with other people and ideas and our special celebrations can all be “sacraments” of God in our midst.

References:

From: On Catholic Identity: Sacramentality

An excellent book on the topic is Bernard Cooke’s Sacraments and Sacramentality (1994), Twenty-Third Publications: New York.