Catholic Church Sacraments

#1 How did St. Augustine define the term “Sacrament”?

        St. Augustine generally understood the term “sacrament” (sacramentum) as a sacred sign – “a sign of a sacred thing” (Letters 138,1). But these were not the only things that Augustine called sacramenta (plural). For him the Lord’s prayer, and the Nicene creed, the Easter liturgy, and the sign of the cross, the baptismal font and water, the ashes of penitence and the oil of anointing were all sacraments, for each of them is “a sacred sign” which, besides the impression it makes on the senses, has an inherent ability to bring some further idea to mind (Against Faustus II,1). Thus the number of possible sacraments was infinite: everything in creation was a reflection of God, and so in a sense even the universe itself was a sacrament , a sign of God.

        Furthermore, he taught that the number of “really important” sacraments in the church was relatively small, and he divided these into (1) sacraments of the word and (2) sacraments of action. The first division (sermons, prayers, reading of scriptures) awakens and enlivens the faith while the sacrament of action (water and wine, blessings and rituals) involves Christians in worship and other sacred mysteries. But all of them were sacraments  because they helped make divine realities present to those who understood the meaning of the signs.

        This definition of Augustine was an excellent partial definition of the “means of grace” in general but hardly a useful definition for the sacraments.

#2 Eliade on Sacred Space, Sacred time, and Sacred meaning

        A. Sacred Space

                When a person experiences a hierophany he no longer experiences himself in a place         which is just the same with any other space. Somehow, the space around him becomes         different. The person is transported, as it were, from ordinary unimportant space into sacred         space.

        B. Sacred Time

                Ordinarily, our experience of time is continuous. But on certain occasion, our awareness         of time is altered and we enter a special time; a sacred moment. When time seems to stand still,         when the then is now, it lingers, it does not pass; when we feel back in time or the past becomes         present. The moment is again with us and we are once again in it. And it can be repeated; over         and over again it is the same moment. Sometimes, the person is transfixed in another time         which is not his own. In a way, sacred space is spaceless space, and sacred time is timeless time.

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