Krist, sakramenat susreta s Bogom

Schillebeeckx starts from an anthropological and biblical approach: the encounter with God is not abstract, but always bodily, visible and human – because God reveals himself in history through the Incarnation. Jesus Christ is the primordial sacrament (sacrament par excellence): in Him God encounters man in the most complete way – visible, tangible, historical.

Christ's public action, death and resurrection make him the sacrament of God's love and salvation. He is the "image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15), where God's grace is incarnated and given. The Church and its sacraments are an extension of this: visible signs in which the encounter with the glorified Christ continues.

The sacraments are not "things" that mechanically distribute grace, but personal encounters – interpersonal events of faith between man and the risen Christ through the Church. Schillebeeckx emphasizes: sacramentality is the human way of encountering God – because man is a corporeal being, and God descends to us in visible signs.