He continues to respect our free will to the end. When Jesus died upon the Cross to redeem us from our sins, it did not mean that from then on everyone would have to go to Heaven whether they wanted to or not.

When Jesus died upon the Cross, He paid an infinite price for an inexhaustible flow of grace. That grace would enable each person to turn back to God and to remain united with God through this life and through eternity.

That brings us to a question: How would Jesus provide for this flow of grace to individual souls?

• Would the whole thing be invisible?
• Would God simply give to each person of good will a silent inner conviction of being saved?
• Each time that we felt the need of divine help, would we simply ask for it and immediately feel welling up within us a great surge of spiritual strength?

Consistent with how we are made
God could have done it that way, of course. But God chose to be consistent. He chose to deal with man, in this matter of grace, in the same manner in which He had made man—through a union of the material and the spiritual, of body and of soul.

The grace itself would be invisible, as by its nature it must be. But the grace would come to us through the visible things that we deal with daily.

And so God took the common things from the world about us—objects which we could taste and touch and feel, words that we could hear and gestures that we could understand—and made these the carriers of His grace.

He even matched the sign to the purpose for which the grace was given:

• Water for the grace which cleanses
• The appearances of bread and wine for the grace which nourishes and gives growth
• Oil for the grace which strengthens

To this combination of outward sign and inner grace, welded together by Christ, the Church gives the Latin name of sacramentum—a holy thing.

Outward signs...
The outward signs are God's way of treating us like the human beings we are. He conveys His unseen grace into our spiritual souls through material symbols which our physical bodies can perceive—things and words and gestures.

The outward signs of the sacraments have two parts: the "thing" itself which is used (water, oil, etc.), and the words or gestures which give significance to what is being done.

...To give grace
Coming now to the third element in the definition of a sacrament, we have its essential purpose: "to give grace."

What kind of grace do the sacraments give?

First and most important of all, they give sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is that marvelous supernatural life, that sharing-in-God's-own-life that is the result of God's Love, the Holy Spirit, indwelling in the soul.

• To the soul cut off from God by original sin, Baptism brings sanctifying grace for the first time. Baptism opens the soul to the flow of God's love, and establishes union between the soul and God.
• To the soul cut off from God by its own sin, by mortal sin, the sacrament of Reconciliation restores the sanctifying grace that has been lost. Reconciliation removes the barrier that has kept the Holy Spirit outside and once again gives entrance to God's life-giving love.

The other five sacraments—Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony—give an increase in sanctifying grace. They deepen and intensify the spiritual life of sanctifying grace which already pulsates through the soul. As each additional sacrament is received (and repeated, when it can be) the level of spiritual vitality rises in the soul—somewhat as the brightness of a fire increases as you add more fuel. (God's love does not increase—it is infinite to begin with. But the soul's capacity to absorb His love increases as a child's capacity for life increases with each meal that he eats.)