Seven Sacraments

There are seven sacraments in the church.  For most of my life I was unaware of these as a group, although I was familiar with baptism and the lord's supper.  I have since learned how central these practices are to the life of the church and the life of the follower.  A few weeks after Steve died I met with my priest and she brought it to my attention that Steve had participated in all seven sacraments.  That in fact, she had had the privilege of participating with Steve in five of the seven of them:

our baptism
the holy eucharist
confirmation
ordinatiion
holy matrimony
reconciliation of a penitent
and unction, or the anointing of the sick.

John Westerhoff writes:

"The purpose of a sacrament is to make us aware of a truth that is not self-evident so that we might benefit from it. Sacraments are symbolic, ritual acts of revelation. Sacraments, importantly, make something that is already true and available, real for us so that we might fully benefit from it … When an invisible reality is realized, or made real, that is a sacrament.

Or to put it another way, a sacrament is a point of connection between the invisible and visible - an outward and visible material sign of an inward and invisible nonmaterial reality."