Christian sacrifice leads to salvation and this cheating of death is a spiritual gift from God. Christ preserves humanity as his death and resurrection atones for our sins. This notion of sacrifice translates into how the Church is structured. The concept of sacrifice is adopted to symbolize the Church as one worldwide Eucharistic community. It is asserted here that God’s loving sacrifice is one pivotal defining characteristic that is central to Christian identity. In short, sacrifice is as central to Christian identity as baptism and confirmation, two major doctrinal underpinnings. We need only to look to Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s works, as a primary source, to shed more light about how Christians are protected from death and from Satan. For Ignatius, the Church exists solely to promote members’ salvation as this endows them with eternal life. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that salvation is possible outside the Church, since the importance of God’s sacrifice, in the Christian identity paradigm, would have to be diminished or drastically altered.
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