Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski presents the sacraments as divine remedies for fallen human nature, challenging modern reductions of them to irrelevant rituals or expressions of communal identity. Drawing on Hugh of St. Victor, she identifies their threefold purpose as humilitatio, eruditio, and exercitatio: material signs humble human pride, instruct the intellect in invisible realities, and train disordered desires through regular worship. Hugh’s account is both Trinitarian—linking these functions to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and medicinal, rooted in creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, and Christ’s Passion.

Peter Lombard, Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas receive and reshape this framework. The later Scholastics reorder or reinterpret Hugh’s categories psychologically, relating them to intellect, affections, bodily action, and the effective causality of sacramental grace rather than retaining his original Trinitarian structure. Against attempts to redefine rites according to social trends or personal experience, the article argues that the sacraments objectively conform believers to Christ. Liturgical participation replaces harmful habits with worship, integrates grace into moral life, and gradually reorients the person toward holiness.