Significance of the Catholic sacraments

Answer 1

Catholic AnswerThe Sacrament of the Eucharist is Our Blessed Lord, Jesus Christ, Incarnate, and appearing fully, Body and Soul, Humanity and Divinity, under the appearances of Bread and Wine for the purpose of our salvation. The other sacraments are the means by which He gives us grace in order to come to the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist and to profit by it in our lives. Some of the sacraments are sacraments of service, like Holy Orders and Matrimony in which we are to give the grace to others, but they all come down to receiving sanctifying grace from God so that we may live with Him eternally. And they are the way that he set it up for us to do that.

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from The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, English translation 1994

1084 "Seated at the right hand of the Father" and pouring out the Holy Spirit on his Body which is the Church, Christ now acts through the sacraments he instituted to communicate his grace. The sacraments are perceptible signs (words and actions) accessible to our human nature. By the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit they make present efficaciously the grace that they signify.

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1131 The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.