Joy: The meaning of the sacraments

Sacraments are eruptions of divine joy. They happen when human actions or other signs—a word of forgiveness, a piece of bread—become the form of Jesus' action in the world today. They open up our destiny, and move us towards it. They are the ways in which Jesus lays hold of ordinary lives and ordinary things, revealing them as even now charged with the hope of glory.

Yet the sacraments have been radically neglected in some areas of contemporary church life. Sometimes even the eucharist is presented as an optional extra, for old fashioned people who like religious rituals. We are spurning some of God's greatest gifts.

In Joy, Peter Waddell celebrates the seven sacraments—baptism, confirmation, eucharist, marriage, ordination, reconciliation and anointing—as ways in which the joy of Jesus surges into our lives.