“The gift of the Spirit [at Pentecost] ushers in a new era in the ‘dispensation of the mystery’—the age of the Church, during which Christ manifests, makes present, and communicates His work of salvation through the liturgy of His Church, ‘until He comes.’ In this age of the Church Christ now lives and acts in and with His Church, in a new way appropriate to this new age. He acts through the Sacraments in what the common Tradition of the East and the West calls ‘the sacramental economy’; this is the communication (or ‘dispensation’) of the fruits of Christ’s Paschal mystery in the celebration of the Church’s ‘sacramental’ liturgy.” (CCC, 1076)

There are seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance or Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. They were instituted by Jesus and entrusted to His Church. The Sacraments are visible rites which are efficacious signs, i.e. efficacious channels, of the God’s grace, imparting His life, to all those who receive them
with the proper disposition.

The seven sacraments touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian life they give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christian’s life of faith. There is thus a certain resemblance between the stages of natural life and the stages of the spiritual life. In short, God gives the Sacraments to initiate us into Himself and to equip us for the grand mission to which we are called, continual growth in holiness until we are perfectly united with Him as well as instrumentally assisting Him in sanctifying the world, by proclaiming in word and deed, that Jesus Christ is Lord, The Way, The Truth, and The Life, within Whom, and only within Whom can be found peace, happiness, joy and eternal life.