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The
two central sacraments: Baptism and Eucharist |
While we
speak of seven sacraments, the two most important sacraments are
Baptism and Eucharist. Other denominations often see them as the
only two sacraments. It is in Baptism that we enter the covenant
with Jesus Christ and become a member of God’s People. We
receive a mission, a ministry from this sacrament to serve the Lord
with all our heart and all our strength and all our soul. It is
in Eucharist that we eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ
and commit ourselves to live the life of Christ.
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Two
More Sacraments:
Christ and the Church |
While they
are normally not counted as part of the traditional 7 sacraments,
we do believe that Christ is the very sacrament of God, a sign of
his presence among us. We also believe that the Church is a sacrament
of Christ, a sign of Christ’s ongoing mission in the world.
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The
Seven Sacraments: |
The
seven sacraments touch all stages and all the important moments of
the 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. One way to view the Sacraments is to divide them into three
basic groups:
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The
Sacraments of Christian Initiation |
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The
Sacraments of Healing |
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The
Sacraments at the Service of Communion and the Mission of the Faithful |
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By viewing the sacraments in this manner we are allowed
to see that the sacraments form an organic whole in which each particular
sacrament has it 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.
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