The most obvious relationship is that of their origins: Jesus in fact is the only author of the seven sacraments: they are not an invention of the Church, but the most precious treasure He has entrusted to it. Jesus Christ is the creator of Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penitence, Holy Orders, Extreme Unction and Matrimony".

But Jesus Christ has an even more intimate, deeper, more radical relationship with the sacraments, because He himself is a sacrament: the concept of sacrament belongs totally to Him. A sacrament in fact is a sensitive and effective mark of grace, which represents the gift of divine life. Now this gift of divine life to Jesus Christ took place in a personal manner. The incarnation is the sacrament par excellence: the humanity of Christ personally receives the gift of divinity, and hence becomes the beginning of our redemption.

As Saint Thomas explains, "the human nature of Christ was assumed so that it should operate instrumentally (instrumentaliter) those acts that belong to the only God, such as purifying sins, illuminating minds with grace, introducing mankind to the perfection of eternal life" (see C. Gent. IV, 41, n. 3798). Because, Saint Thomas adds, one really may compare human nature in Christ to an "instrument that is characteristic and joined with the Word, as the hand is joined to the man. But as Thomas Aquinas clarifies so well, the humanity of Christ is not a passive, inert instrument, but rather a free and intelligent instrument, and is therefore endowed with its own activity, that is associated to the activity of the Word: "In Christ therefore human nature has its own operative virtue and this also applies to the divine nature. Hence the human nature has its own operative action distinct from the divine one and vice versa. However the divine nature uses the operative action of the human nature as an instrument (instrumentaliter) ; and in turn the human nature participates in the operative action of the principal agent" (see Saint Theo. III, 19, 1)

Jesus Christ does not simply represent the voice of one who announces the encounter between God and mankind, like the Baptists and the Apostles, but rather He who creates it, becoming the visible image of the invisible God (Col. 1, 15)

Christ is sacrament because the union of an invisible grace of universal magnitude, and in a sensitive form through which this grace becomes manifest and is communicated. "He is the sacrament of redemption, because what He brings is reconciliation through His blood, a new and definite alliance, divine filiation within grace, hope for glory, deposit of our inheritance as children, intimate union with God, unity of all God’s children in a single people and in a single body" (Y. CONGAR, A Messianic people, Brescia 1976, p. 28)

It is therefore correct to state that not only is Christ also sacrament but that He is the first and primordial sacrament, the basic principle of all that is sacramental and original source for all other sacraments: the sacramental dimension that permeates the whole Church and which finds its strongest moments in the seven sacraments is founded on Him.

Battista MONDIN