Since love is convey through signs: words and actions. Jesus became the sign of the Father’s love for us. It was hard for human beings to experience the visible sign of God’s love in a way that would convict us and convince us beyond a shadow of doubt that God loves us unconditionally. When someone says to you: I love you. You are not sure if this is just mere words or they are a genuine reflection of truth. Words along are not sufficient. We look for external signs or manifestation of that love.

Jesus on the cross becomes such a sign. Jn 15:13 “Greater love....” But that happened 2000 years ago. What about today? What tells us today that God loves us. Jesus left us the sacraments as signs of his eternal love manifested personally to us today, here and now. “Sacraments are outward signs, instituted by Christ, which gives grace.”

He communicates his real love through the sacraments, which are real signs of his love. To bring us into a share of his divine life, to free us from the alienation of original sin, to hold us in his creative hand and to say, you are my son or daughter, I love you with an everlasting love, he recreates us in the saving waters of baptism. We are reborn, no longer dead in sin, but reconciled and restored to our original beauty and goodness. He feeds us with his Body and Blood so that we may grow in his love. When we sin and are repentant, he forgives us and heals us in the core of being through the sacrament of reconciliation. As we grow as disciples, he commissions us as witnesses of his love through the anointing power of the Holy Spirit through confirmation.  When we are in need of physical healing, he shows his love by anointing us in the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. When we choose to celebrate the gift of married love with another, he sacramentalizes our committed, exclusive, perpetual love through his sign of love in the Sacrament of Marriage. When he calls some to be to offer the sacrifice of the Mass, to forgive sins and to proclaim the Gospel all in his name, he ordains and consecrates them for the sake of the  Kingdom of God.

In the words of CCC #1116 Sacraments are “powers that come forth” from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in His Body, the Church. they are “the masterworks of God” in the new and everlasting covenant. (To be continued)