sacrament
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sacrament, religious sign orsymbol, especially associated with Christian churches, in which a sacred or spiritual power is believed to be transmitted through material elements viewed as channels of divine grace.
The Latin wordsacramentum, which etymologically is anambiguous theological term, was used inRoman law to describe a legal sanction in which a man placed his life or property in the hands of the supernatural powers that upheldjustice and honoured solemn contracts. It later became anoath ofallegiance taken by soldiers to their commander when embarking on a new campaign, sworn in a sacred place and using a formula having a religiousconnotation.
Nature and significance
Whensacramentum was adopted as an ordinance by the earlyChristian Church in the 3rd century, the Latin wordsacer (“holy”) was brought into conjunction with the Greek wordmystērion (“secret rite”).Sacramentum was thus given asacred mysterious significance that indicated a spiritual potency. The power was transmitted through material instruments and vehicles viewed as channels of divinegrace and as benefits inritual observances instituted byChrist.St. Augustine defined sacrament as “the visible form of an invisible grace” or “a sign of a sacred thing.” Similarly,St. ThomasAquinas wrote that anything that is called sacred may be calledsacramentum. It is made efficacious by virtue of its divine institution by Christ in order to establish a bond of union between God and man. In the Lutheran and Anglican catechisms it is defined as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”
The term sacrament has become a convenient expression for a sign or symbol of a sacred thing, occasion, or event imparting spiritual benefits to participants; and such signs or symbols have been associated with eating, drinking,lustration (ceremonial purification), nuptial intercourse, or ritual techniques regarded as “means of grace” and pledges of acovenant relationship with the sacred order. In this way the material aspects have become the forms of the embodied spiritual reality.
Types and variations
Types
The several types of sacraments (i.e., initiatory, purificatory, renewal, communion, healing, cultic elevation) are well exemplified inChristianity, though they also may be found in other Western religions, the Eastern religions, and preliterate religions.
The word sacrament, in its broadest sense as a sign or symbol conveying something “hidden,” mysterious, and efficacious, has a wider application and cosmic significance than that used in Christianity. For example, the evolutionary process is viewed by some as a graded series in which the lower stratum provides a basis for the one next above it. The lower, indeed, seems to be necessary to the growth of the higher. This view has introduced concepts of new powers and potentialities in organic evolution culminating in the human synthesis of mindtranscending the process. The entire universe, therefore, can be said to have asacramental significance in which the “inward” (or spiritual) and the “outward” (or material) elements meet in a higher unity that guarantees for the latter its full validity. Thus, the sacred meal has been at once a sacramental communion and asacrificial offering (e.g., wine, bread, or animal as a sign or symbol of a divine death and resurrection for the benefit of man) in which the two fundamental and complementary rites have been closely combined throughout their long and varied histories.
Variations
Sacramental ideas and practices in preliterate societies
Inpreliterate society everyday events have been given sacramental interpretations by being invested with supernatural meanings in relation to their ultimate sources in the unseen divine or sacred powers. The well-being ofprimitive society, in fact, demands the recognition of ahierarchy of values in which the lower is always dependent on the higher and in which the highest is regarded as the transcendental source of values outside and above mankind and the natural order. To partake of theflesh of asacrificial victim or of the god himself or to consume the cereal image of a vegetation deity (as was done among the Aztecs in ancient Mexico), makes the eater a recipient of divine life and its qualities. Similarly, portions of the dead may be imbibed in mortuary sacramentalrites to obtain the attributes of the deceased or to ensure their reincarnation. To give the deadnew life beyond the grave, mourners may allow life-giving blood to fall upon the corpse sacramentally. In this cycle of sacramental ideas and practices, the giving, conservation, and promotion of life, together with the establishment of a bond of union with the sacred order, are fundamental. InPaleolithic huntingcommunities this sacramental idea appears to have beenmanifested in the sacramental rites performed to control the fortunes of the chase, to promote thepropagation of the species on which the food supply depended, and to maintain right relations with the transcendental source of the means of subsistence, as exemplified in paintings—discovered in the caves at Altamira, Lascaux, Les Trois Frères, Font-de-Gaume and elsewhere in France and Spain—that show men withanimal masks (illustrating a ritual or mystical communion of men and animals that were sources of food).
Sacramental ideas and practices in the ancientNear East
When agriculture and herding became the basic type of food production, sacramentalconcepts and techniques were centred mainly in thefertility of the soil, its products, and in the succession of the seasons. This centralization was most apparent in the ancient Near East in and after the 4th millenniumbc. A death and resurrection sacred drama arose around the fertility motif, in which a perpetual dying and rebirth in nature and humanity was enacted. In this sequence birth, maturity, death, and rebirth were ritually repeated and renewed through sacramental transitional acts, such as passage rites, ceremonies ensuring passage from one status to another. In passage rites the king often was the principal actor in the promotion of the growth of the crops and the propagation of man and beast and in the promotion of the reproductive forces in nature in general at the turn of the year.