SACRAMENTS
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sacraments by trustfully casting oneself upon God's word as the only basis of assurance and not by seeking to influence God by offering him good works to gain his mercy. In responding to the Reformers, the Council of Trent (1545.Q2), impressed on Catholic consciousness the conviction that there are in fact seven sacraments in the Christian dispensation, even though Scripture's witness to each of these is not of the same clarity. The Council also reaffirmed that sacraments are not simply stimulants to our weak faith, but are the means or instruments by which God confers upon the devout recipient his gift of grace and new life. Trent also -¡formulated a number of answers to particular questions about the sacraments raised by the Reformers, for instance, the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the effectiveness of.baptism in really removing original sin, and the necessity of telling all serious sins in receiving the sacrament of penance. But most of all, the Catholic response to the Reformation was a strong affirmation of the importance of the sacraments over against the eventual Protestant tendency to greatly subordinate them to the preached sermon.
6. How are the sacraments being understood In the Church today? The word "sacrament" is again being applied more widely than to just the seven principal rites of sanctification and worship in the Church. Christ himself, both as the Incarnate Word of God and as the man so totally "for others" that he gave his life, is seen as the primordial sacrament of our encounter with God. In Christ, God's loving kindness becomes visible in a great sign and God's saving mert?Y becomes effective in the world of men and women needing salvation. Also, the church, as the community of believers in Christ, is grasped as the fundamental sacrament by which God both reveals in sign and effects in action the unity of all mankind. The people of God show forth already that ultimate unity of mankind toward which all of God's works are tending. In her mission of witness and service, the church is actively engaged in promoting this reconciliation that anticipates the final Kingdom. Thus the church is both sign and cause (as instrument) of what is to be God's ultimate gift to mankind. This wider use of the term "sacrament" is but one indication of a manysided movement of integration by which the ecclesial sacraments are being understood less as detached "events of grace" between God and man and more as meaningful moments within God's universal dispensation of salvation. Because Scripture reveals this dispensation as a many-splendored reality, we must look at it from a series of different viewpoints or perspectives. The following five questions will indicate the place of the sacraments within five different perspectives or frameworks.