The Latin word sacramentum means "a sign of the sacred." The Catholic sacraments are ceremonies that point to what is sacred, significant and important for Christians. Members of the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican/Episcopal traditions call seven of their religious ceremonies sacraments. Most Protestants count only two rituals—Baptism and Communion—as sacraments. Nevertheless, Protestants have ceremonies that are similar to Catholic sacraments, for example, weddings and ordinations.

Sacraments are celebrations of Christian tradition, of Christian life and of Christian hope. They share the dimensions of past, present and future that give ordinary celebrations meaning. Sacraments, though, are no ordinary celebrations. They are special occasions for experiencing God's saving presence. It is important for people to be in touch with what the sacraments celebrate if the rituals are to be as meaningful as possible for them. Sometimes people who participate in a sacramental celebration do not fully appreciate one or another of the dimensions of a sacrament's meaning. In this case, the sacrament speaks its meanings, as it were, to those attending the ceremony and invites them to find out more about them. The sacrament also calls people to get in touch with the sacred realities it celebrates. The more people respond to this call (for example, Reconciliation's call to forgive and accept forgiveness), the more they will find meaning in the sacrament.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church ties together the many meanings of sacraments thus: "The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions" (#1131).

We often hear people talking about the meaning of the sacraments as though it were a simple thing, as though each sacrament had a single simple meaning. We see now, however, that the actual meaning of any sacramental celebration is rich and complex, for it has multiple dimensions.

A sacrament's meaning is multidimensional because it points to three different time dimensions: past, present and future. A sacrament also has multiple levels of depth because it can be personally meaningful for an individual at one level, it can have a shared meaning for a particular group at another level, it can have a general meaning for the whole Church at yet a third level.

When people talk about the meaning of a sacrament, they may be referring to its general meaning or to its meaning in the life of the institutional Church. Yet sacraments are celebrations of God's gift and gracious action in our lives.

The fruitfulness of a sacramental celebration is strongly dependent on the connections among the people and to what the dimensions of past, present and future bring to the celebration. In order for sacraments to be meaningful celebrations for us, we need to be grounded in Scripture, involved with our faith community and working toward God's reign.

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0895.asp

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CAT/aj0207.asp