According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us’ (CCC 1131). The word efficacious means ‘effective.’ This means that according to Catholic teachings, sacraments do what they say they do, because of God’s power.
According to the Catholic faith, the sacraments are a gift from God, given through the Church as an outpouring of His love. Through the sacraments, God justifies and sanctifies his people [i.e., he saves them and makes them holy), he meets his people where they are in order to draw them up to him, he pours out his grace, he builds up the Church and he receives worship.
We, as Catholics believe, then, that sacraments point to and are channels of God’s grace. They work as an effective means of communication between God and his people.
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