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Part One

The Profession of Faith

Day 11

CCC 26-30

Introduction and the Desire for God

So we begin the First Part of the Catechism. After an introductory paragraph outlining the structure of Section One in this First Part, these opening paragraphs remind us of our fundamental orientation to God. The human person is defined here as a “religious being” (italicized words and phrases often indicate the key point being made). The word “religion” is probably derived from the Latin “bond.” We are to understand ourselves, therefore, in the light of the bond God has “written in the human heart.” We are defined by our capacity for a relationship with the infinite, personal God who created us, the deepest truth about us being that we belong to God. Cross-references to CCC 27 explain that this is because we carry God’s image (355); that we are made in the image of the eternal Son, the only One who can truly claim to be the Image of his Father (1701); and that we find our happiness in conforming our lives to this truth of who we are (1718).

These paragraphs go on to speak about how we revolt against this basic truth of our belonging to God, straining against the bond, fearful of an imaginary god we make in our own image, and also out of a fruitless desire to hide ourselves in our misery and sin. On top of this, we are confused and scandalized by our broken world, a world in which sin is deeply set — even in the lives of believers. But the bond remains. It is unbreakable, even when rejected by us. The call of God is unceasing. This drama of our troubled, deepest relationship is the context for all of the teaching in the Catechism which is to follow. And the introductory text prepares us for the rigors of the journey that lies before us, a journey that will demand “every effort of intellect,” as well as a focused will and a firm heart.

Day 12

CCC 31-35

Ways of Coming To Know God

The opening line of CCC 35 summarizes this section: “Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God.” From the world around us we can gain knowledge of a Creator God (32), and from a reflection on ourselves as persons we can realize that the Creator God must be personal, for a Creator cannot be less than his creation (33). God is always greater.

The Final Explanation for the universe must be able to “contain” in itself, and account for, all that is in the universe, or it is no explanation at all. Where does beauty come from? It can only be from the Beautiful One, as Augustine said (32). What is the source and origin of my personal being? It must be from an ultimate Being that is itself Personal. Where does my moral sense come from, my capacity for indignation at wrongdoing, my attraction towards the unselfish act? I cannot be morally superior to the Source and Explanation of my own being. All that is in an effect must be in its cause.

Moment by moment, all that is flows from a Personal Source who contains all Beauty and Goodness. As the Catechism rightly insists, any reflection on the world and ourselves must take us in this direction. How, in each concrete instance, this conviction of a personal God takes root in each of our lives the Catechism sees as emerging through a series of “converging and convincing arguments,” a phrase from Cardinal John Henry Newman. A reading of a Gospel, the witness of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, a stunning sunset, the moment one knows the beloved must be immortal, a Church vibrating with the Real Presence in the reserved Host — all of these can make up, in a single life, the converging arguments that finally bring a person to “attain certainty” about this truth of God’s existence. The evidence lies all around us, its configuration in each life unique.

Day 13

CCC 36-38

The Knowledge of God According to the Church

Today’s reading makes two complementary points. First, God gives to each person the capacity to know of his existence and to know how to act well. The Catechism emphasizes that we can come by our own understanding, by the “natural light of human reason” (36), to a certain knowledge of the existence of a personal God and, together with this, to the understanding of fundamental principles of what is good and of how to act (the “natural law”). It is this natural capacity that makes it possible for us to “welcome God’s revelation” (36) — to look for his revealing of himself. God’s revelation is a crowning of our natural capacities. If our nature did not have this capacity, how could God reveal himself to us?

Second, the need for God’s revelation of himself to us is made clear. Revelation is needed because although we have this capacity, it is nonetheless challenging for us to reach this knowledge and to attain this certainty. In part, this is because we have to go beyond sensory knowledge to attain such truths, since God is spirit. We are capable of this, but it demands effort. The challenges in reaching these truths also lie in our disinclination to discover them: God’s existence complicates my desire to govern my own life, to live as I wish, to pattern my life after my immediate desires. If God exists, if there are objective truths, then I must give up control. These truths call for “self-surrender.” I must relinquish my kingdom.

God’s revelation is of things beyond our natural understanding, of course, truths about himself that we would not have been able to attain without him revealing them to us; but he also, alongside such truths, confirms those things of which our natural understanding is capable — for example, in giving us the Ten Commandments. He strengthens our natural understanding so that we can know these truths “with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error” (38).

Day 14

CCC 39-43

How Can We Speak about God?

These paragraphs are intimately connected to those we read yesterday. Then we examined what we can know of God; today we review how we can speak of God. The Catechism emphasizes the unity of the acts of knowing and speaking: “In defending the ability of human reason to know God, the Church is expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about him” (39). We speak as we know.

The Catechism emphasizes that our ability to speak of God is real, but very limited. “Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so” (40). The foundation of this limited, but nonetheless real, knowledge and ability to speak of God lies in his creation. Created things are the work of his hands. We can reflect on all that lies around us, on his creatures, and reach up from them to their Creator, who must be more than his creatures. Since we know creatures exhibit beauty, for example, we can speak of God as the All-Beautiful.

What we mean by “the All-Beautiful God” lies beyond our full comprehension; there is always more to know about God. The meaning of the words we use of God lies in proportion to the reality of who he is. God is the perfection of all beauty, and this perfection corresponds to his being which is infinite. Thus we are speaking of an infinite, unlimited, unbounded Beauty. We can be confident that we have said something true here, that we are indeed speaking of his reality; yet we hardly know what we are saying.

It is no coincidence that the Catechism, having begun this chapter with the definition of the human person as a “religious being” (28), turns at the end of the first chapter to the language of worship, with a quotation from the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. In the Liturgy we stand before the mystery and beauty of God, worshiping “the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable” (42).

Day 15

CCC 50-53

God Reveals His “Plan of Loving Goodness”

CCC 50 deserves special attention, for it introduces the whole of Chapter Two. If you leaf through this wonderful chapter you will see that it contains three articles: “The Revelation of God,” “The Transmission of Divine Revelation,” and “Sacred Scripture.” CCC 50 explains that the whole chapter describes “another order of knowledge.” Chapter One was concerned with the natural order of knowledge, with what we can know by using our senses, our imagination, and our powers of reasoning. Beyond this is the supernatural order, the “order of divine Revelation.”

The order of revelation cannot be grasped by our natural powers, for it lies far beyond them. Revelation exists because of God’s free and loving decision to give himself to us, introducing us to his mystery. In the case of human persons, we can only truly know others if they choose to reveal themselves; how much more this must be true in the case of divine Persons! God lies infinitely beyond us, yet he wants to introduce us into his own life. The Catechism employs the New Testament image of adoption here to remind us that this is an act of love lying far beyond what is natural (see 52).

The Catechism uses a beautiful word to describe this process of our introduction into his own divine life — “pedagogy,” which literally means leading the child. As children are gradually introduced to the adult world, so we are introduced to the world of the divine Persons, with the capacity to take the steps being given to us at each new stage (53). God lovingly prepares us for this new life through what he does and says in the history of mankind, a history which culminates in the full gift of himself in the Person of Christ. In each of our lives, today, God follows this same path, leading us through his actions in our lives and speaking to us, so that we can share in the life of his Son.

Day 16

CCC 54-64

The Stages of Revelation

As God the Father leads each one of us, gradually and in stages, by his “divine pedagogy” (53), so he leads all the peoples on the great platform of the world’s history. Today’s reading traces the major “stages” through which God leads human beings, as he prepares them to receive his full revelation of himself and the definitive act by which our salvation is won.

The ultimate purpose of God’s acts in history is to bring all peoples together into the unity of his kingdom. The self-exile from God’s care and solicitude at the beginning led to the shattering of human relationships, to disunity and mutual antagonism. Just as God calls each individual person to a life of integrity and wholeness under his grace, so he calls the whole human race into a unity of love after this shattering. The “stages” of which we read here all form part of this overarching plan.

The stages are marked by “covenants” — with Adam and Eve, with Noah, with Abraham, with the People of Israel under Moses, with David and his house — with God preparing people for “a new and everlasting Covenant intended for all, to be written on their hearts” (64).

More than simple agreements, these covenants are God’s pledges of his unwavering gift of himself and his love. When they are broken from the human side, God renews them — “Again and again you offered a covenant to man” (55). God’s plan for the salvation of humanity is thwarted by none of the disfigurements and distortions caused by human pride and sin.

Finally, there are always some, in every age, who respond, who understand something of God’s plan, who keep alive the hope of salvation. The last paragraph in each section of today’s reading (58, 61, 64) speaks of them, of the faithfulness of those who live, often in a hidden way, at the heart of history, responding to God’s loving pedagogy.

Day 17

CCC 65-67

Christ Jesus — “Mediator and Fullness of All Revelation”

God’s plan has a center. It is a stage in the plan so decisive in its impact, so full in its implications, that all subsequent history is simply an unfolding of this supreme act. The beautiful quotation from the Carmelite saint, Saint John of the Cross, speaks of this stage in the plan as being like an immense gathering together: all the parts of God’s plan, all the elements in his revelation, are brought together in one single Word — and the Word is a Person. The divine Person of God the Son appears in history to enact and seal the everlasting covenant, the final expression of God’s faithfulness to his plan of salvation, and the everlastingly fruitful source of grace to bring all the peoples of the world into the happiness and unity of God’s kingdom.

The whole of the Catechism can be seen as an extended meditation and teaching on this appearing of God among us, drawing together how the significance of this event has been grasped “over the course of the centuries” (66). While it is obvious that nothing further can be added to the very words and acts of God himself in human flesh, that this is the decisive point to which we return and the foundation of all meaning in history, CCC 67 writes of the value of what are called “private revelations.” These do not add to the public “deposit of faith,” but they can be helpful in assisting individuals in particular situations and periods of history.

Day 18

CCC 74-79

The Apostolic Tradition

In his self-revelation, God appears in a particular place and to a particular people, for all peoples. He appears in a particular time, for all times. God’s revelation of himself, which is particular, unique, and contained in time and space, is for all times and places. This next section of the Catechism explains how the precious deposit of faith is handed down in history, from one generation to the next, each one receiving and meditating upon the wonder of God’s visiting his people. There are four main points today’s reading makes:

• Because it is the transmission of divine revelation, it is necessarily God’s own continuing work. This transmission to all peoples in all times is the work of the Blessed Trinity themselves (79).

• Because God has revealed himself in order to save us, the transmission of this revelation is for the sake of the salvation of all peoples (74). The purpose of this transmission is to bring all peoples together, in unity as children, around their divine Father.

• Because revelation is of God’s personal nature, the transmission of revelation is centered on persons, those whom he personally called and sent (76-78). It is centered on the apostles and on their successors whom they in turn personally call and send.

• Because the divine Persons act by “deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other” (53), the apostles transmit divine revelation in the same way, through their life and teaching, through the institutions they establish and their writings (76, 78). In the Church, the pedagogy of God is continued, with his revelation and gift of himself being transmitted from age to age in the words of the Holy Scriptures and in the living Tradition of the Church.

Day 19

CCC 80-83

The Relationship between Tradition and Sacred Scripture

Christ promised to remain with his Church until the end of the age. Today’s reading beautifully explains how Christ is made present in his Church and is handed down from generation to generation.

Every new generation receives Christ in a twofold way: from Tradition and from the Sacred Scriptures. The two are intimately connected, since the apostles, and those closely associated with them, not only committed the message of salvation to writing (83), but also handed on the message through their lives, their prayer and worship, and their teaching (see Acts 2:42) — through what is described here as “Apostolic Tradition.”

Christ is fruitfully present in his Church because of this combination of sacred words and holy acts. Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition are both handed down in the Church, from age to age, under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, flowing from the witness of those who knew and touched and lived with Christ himself, in the flesh. We have already seen how the Catechism emphasizes that God’s saving work is characterized by the union of words with deeds. This is the unwavering pattern of divine activity. The two come together perfectly in the Person of Christ, who is the Word made flesh. Thus we can rightly expect Christ to be present in his Church today in this dual way.

Day 20

CCC 84-95

The Interpretation of the Heritage of Faith

We have been offered the beautiful image of Tradition and Scripture flowing together from a single source, intercommunicating with each other and making their way to the same goal. Their flow and communication are possible because of the banks that support and enable their movement. Without such necessary containment they would all too easily spill out and waste themselves. The importance of containment, which is, in truth, a service, is the topic of today’s reading: the Church herself receives and hands on the great stream of the Sacred Deposit, and she does so under the authoritative guidance of the Magisterium (from Latin, magister, meaning “teacher”). The great dogmas of the faith are placed like marker-points in the flowing waters — or, as the Catechism puts it, “lights along the path of faith” (89), making the travel secure. These three — Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium — belong together; they “are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others” (95).

This portion of the Catechism also deals with growth in understanding the faith (94), or what we might call the “development of doctrine.” This is a matter of the Church making explicit things that were once just held implicitly. The deposit of faith was given once, for all, in its fullness, and the Church has always embraced this fullness and taught it as a whole. She has always grasped what the Catechism calls “the whole of the Revelation of the mystery of Christ” (90). But only gradually does the Bride of Christ make explicit her understanding of different elements in this fullness. The text refers us to Jesus’ promise that the Spirit would guide the Church into all truth (Jn 16:13) — there is always “more truth” to discover. But Jesus also told his disciples that this would not be “new” truth — rather, the Spirit would be reminding the disciples of what Jesus had told them (Jn 14:26).

Day 21

CCC 101-104

Christ — the Unique Word of Sacred Scripture

Having established that Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium belong together, supporting each other like the three legs of a single stool, the Catechism now moves on to provide us with the Church’s understanding of the Scriptures.

The description of what the Scriptures are is a beautiful and moving one. Here we see God our Father wanting to speak to his children and accommodating himself to their language in order to do so. In eternity, God speaks just one Word; he says everything, all at once. This Word is Jesus, who is also everything that the Father wants to say to us. The Father speaks his divine Word to us, addressing us fully and completely, keeping nothing back.

God is not in time, so he holds all truth as a single Word. This is reflected in time in the multitude of words, syllables, phrases, and sentences that we find in the Scriptures. However, the Catechism says, quoting Saint Augustine, they are all part of the “one Utterance,” the same single divine Word that is beyond time. All of the words and phrases we find in the Scriptures, then, in both the Old and the New Testament, point to him (see Jn 5:39-40; Lk 24:25-27).

We might think of it this way: sometimes we “just know” that something is true — we have the “whole truth” in our mind; but we still have to take time and care to patiently spell this out, for ourselves or for others. Considered another way: if I fall in love, I “just know” that this love is everything and forever, and that is what my marriage vows then make explicit; but there is still the day to day living out what that “whole truth” of love actually means. We are creatures who live in time, and so God spells out for us the “whole truth” of Christ over all of the pages of the Bible so that we can come to know him gradually, day by day.

Day 22

CCC 105-108

Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture

In today’s reading we can find, first of all, a general truth about how God works with us, his creatures. God is described as the author of the Sacred Scriptures. How is he the author? He is so, in the first place, by his creation of human authors. The Christian writer George MacDonald put it like this: “Would God give us a drama? He makes a Shakespeare.” God loves to involve us as full agents in his creative work.

God’s authorship of the Sacred Scriptures must mean even more than this, though; otherwise every novel and poem would be on the same “level” as the Bible. In the case of the Scriptures, then, we find something more, something unique. The Catechism, following the Scriptures themselves (see 2 Tm 3:16; 2 Pt 1:19-21, 3:15-16), teaches that God “inspired” the human authors (106). Literally, the word means that he “breathed” into them. And in doing so, he does not make the human authors less human, as though they had to be robots to be used by him; rather, he makes “full use of their own faculties and powers” (106). When God works in our lives, he makes us more, not less, human. This is why we must study the Scriptures also as human documents, seeking to understand what the human authors intended to say in their writings.

Because the Scriptures are divinely inspired, in them we find whatever God wanted written, and no more, entirely free from error. We also find there the truth needed for the sake of our salvation (106-107). We find that kind of truth in the Scriptures — the truth that he needs to provide for us in order to save us; the truth that we need to hear and to receive in order to be able to respond to his loving invitation.

Day 23

CCC 109-119

The Holy Spirit, Interpreter of Scripture

The Christian Tradition gives us a beautiful phrase for the way we read this unique book: “divine reading” (in Latin, Lectio Divina). Reading Scripture is always a divine reading, since “Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written” (111). The Holy Spirit, who inspired the human authors to write the Father’s saving truth for his children, also enlightens us to understand that truth. Without the Holy Spirit’s assistance in interpreting the text, it remains a “dead letter.”

The Spirit’s interpretation builds on our human reading of the text. We use our natural faculties to try to understand what the human authors wanted to say. The many types of writing in the Bible — proverbs, poetry, codes of conduct, historical passages, prophecies, and so on — communicate truth in different ways.

Passages in Scripture always mean what the human authors meant to say. However, because God is the author of Scripture, passages can also mean more than this. The Scriptures — and the realities they convey — have a rich meaning within God’s loving plan. They can have many “senses,” or meanings: they can illuminate our faith in Christ and in God’s plan; they can encourage us to greater love; and they can inspire us by supporting our hope (116-118). These three virtues are connected to the “allegorical,” “moral,” and “anagogical” meanings, as you can see. The Catechism asks us to be guided by three overarching principles of interpretation as the Spirit helps us discover this richer meaning:

• the unity of Scripture: the single loving mind and heart of God has inspired the whole text, so we can read different parts of Scripture in the light of other passages;

• the unity between Scripture and Tradition: Tradition shows us how the Church has interpreted the Scriptures through the centuries;

• the analogy of faith: the teachings of the Church across the ages are grounded in the Scriptures and cohere with each other (see also 89-90).

Day 24

CCC 120-130

The Canon of Scripture

The center of the Holy Scriptures is unequivocally presented here: the four Gospels. Because Christ is the fullness of revelation and the center of God’s saving plan, the Gospels that narrate his life and teachings, death, Resurrection, and sending of the Holy Spirit are the heart of the Holy Scriptures (125-127).

The Scriptures have a center; but this does not mean that the “edges” are unimportant or merely peripheral. All Scripture speaks of Christ — the New Testament in an obvious way, the Old Testament more subtly. It is by and from Christ’s life and teachings, therefore, that the Church reads and interprets all of the Scriptures. Nothing is redundant. The Church uses “typology” to connect the Old Testament to the New; all of the realities in the Old Testament are images (or “types”) of Christ, his redeeming work, and the Church (128-130). Thus the waters of creation point to the recreating water of Baptism and the water that Christ turns into the wine of his new life, while David the Shepherd-King is an image, or “type,” of Christ, and Jerusalem an image of his Church-Bride. Why does the Church read the Scriptures in this way? In answer, we remember the unity of God’s plan, revealed across the centuries, in which his promises were fulfilled beyond expectation in the reality of his coming in the flesh. God reveals his plan gradually to us. The text uses the word “pedagogy” again (122) — God is leading us as his children who need to be introduced slowly into the full, glorious truth he wants to give us.

Having established the “Canon” of the inspired Scriptures, the Church has firmly resisted all attempts to add or remove any books. “Canon” means “rule” or “measuring point” — the Church used her ancient “rule of faith” to decide which writings constituted the inspired Scriptures (120). The books are listed here in detail since the full Canon, agreed upon around the year 400, is not accepted by all.

Day 25

CCC 131-133

Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church

As you read today’s paragraphs, notice how many words in these brief paragraphs convey the sense of how God’s transforming power is present in the Holy Scriptures. The Church “forcefully” (133) exhorts all of us to read the Scriptures regularly, precisely because of the “force and power” of those same Scriptures (131).

We are encouraged both to a personal reading of the Scriptures and to an attentiveness to hearing them read and explained to us in the liturgy and sacraments and in catechesis. We are being reminded that the Scriptures have been entrusted to the Church and that we are being invited into a reading and understanding of them that flows from our membership of the Body of Christ. It is as “children of the Church” (131) that we are fed with the inspired Scriptures.

We have already mentioned the Scriptural Index at the end of the Catechism. You may want to make it your practice, when reading a passage from the Scriptures, to turn to the Index and find the passage there, following the references found there to the paragraphs in the Catechism. For example, for Mark 1:1 you would go to CCC 422 and 515. In this way, you will find yourself being constantly referred to the way in which the Church has been “reading” the Holy Scriptures across the centuries, informing her prayer, her faith, and her life with this “pure and lasting fount of spiritual life” (131).

Day 26

CCC 142-149

The Obedience of Faith

Let us begin with the title. Through the use of this simple biblical phrase, “The obedience of faith,” we are gently steered beyond any thought that we should choose between faith and works. One who listens to the Lord is called to respond, to act (see Jas 1:22ff). Faith, if it is authentic, always seeks what the Catechism calls “embodiment” (144). It seeks to express itself, to “become flesh” (Jn 1:14).

Because of this, when the Catechism wishes to help us understand faith, it chooses to do so, not abstractly, but by presenting us with living examples — of saints from the Old and New Testaments and from the rich history of the Church. Here we find a great “cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1; see CCC 165) who help us to understand the nature of faith by the way they lived. Abraham and the Blessed Virgin are offered to us as the models of this faith.

The obedience of faith, therefore, involves our “whole being” (143). It entails both the assent of the mind and the determined commitment of the will. The mind assents to God as the supreme reality, as the firm foundation for our lives, while the will gladly embraces God as our supreme happiness.

The challenge of faith is that it seems too good to be true. Can we really trust that the bedrock of our lives is a heavenly Father who wills and can bring about our complete good if we place ourselves wholeheartedly into his hands — even if through sacrifice and suffering — since “with God nothing will be impossible” (Lk 1:37)? It is precisely this obedient faith that enabled Abraham to move towards the Promised Land and Mary to welcome the divine Savior into her life.

Day 27

CCC 150-152

“I Know Whom I Have Believed”

We might think that faith primarily means believing in certain true propositions. This short section reminds us that the truths of faith are ultimately about the divine Persons. We believe in the Father, in Jesus the only-begotten Son, and in the Holy Spirit.

This is not as strange as it might sound. All beliefs that something is the case ultimately turn out to involve belief in persons. For example, let us say that I have a belief that honey is a healing substance. Ultimately, this belief rests on my own experience and that of many others, together with various tests that have been performed; and the veracity of such tests lies, in part, in the reliability and honesty of the persons conducting them and in the human powers of unbiased observation and reasoning.

We rely on such natural faith in persons countless times every day, though we are also aware of the weaknesses that can afflict any part of this chain of evidence, so that — as the Catechism says — it would be “futile and false” (150) to entrust ourselves absolutely to any human person. Ultimately, though, we believe in the whole “system” of evidence collection, and in the capacity of the mind to discover truth, and such a belief must point us to the ultimate personal ground of the universe — to the One who finally says, “I am Truth. Believe Me.” All seeking must end in our finding the personal Being who is the Source of all truth-seeking and finding.

The whole Christian life, then, can be summed up as our daily walk of faith with each of the divine Persons. Notice how the Catechism describes the life of faith: it is only by sharing in the Holy Spirit that we are able to believe in Jesus (152), and only by faith in Jesus that we can come to the Father (151). Thus we are led to entrust ourselves “wholly to God” (150), the unshakeable bedrock of our lives.

Day 28

CCC 153-165

The Characteristics of Faith

In this rich section, the Catechism places three essential points before us.

First, faith is a divine gift (153). It must be so, because God is so far beyond us. Just as God’s revelation of himself is his gratuitous free act, so he lovingly cleanses our sight and gradually enlarges our heart so that we can respond in faith.

Second, faith involves the full use of all our powers (154-159). Faith is the work the Lord asks of us (see Jn 6:29), and it is work that stretches our mind and involves every ounce of will. There is immense satisfaction in this: just as physical exercise leaves us feeling tired but fitter, so the spiritual exercise of acting out of faith fittingly employs all of our natural powers of imagination and understanding, of desire and will. Through the exercise of the gift of faith, we experience God calling us forth and crowning all of the natural powers with which he created us.

Third, the exercise of faith is necessary for salvation (161-165). This is not an arbitrary requirement. The obedience of faith is our response to the Lord’s gracious invitation to us to share in his divine life. It is to the happiness of an eternity of trusting love and self-gift, mirroring his own gift of Self, that we are invited — what Jesus conveys to us in the image of a banquet of fine food (see Lk 14:15-24). God will not force us to enter the banqueting hall or to eat. Through the work of faith, he teaches us to want and to have the taste for the rich fare he has prepared. But what of those who have never heard of this invitation? Will they be denied entrance? No, there is a way — the way of conscience (see 162 and the cross-reference there) — and the Catechism will look at this later. The heavenly Father gives every person a means of responding to his call.

Day 29

CCC 166-169

“Lord, Look upon the Faith of Your Church”

Today’s reading helps us to grasp a simple, but essential, distinction: faith is a personal act, but never an individual one.

It is personal in the sense that I must freely believe for myself; no one can believe for me. Only I can give my heart, my very self, to God, in response to his gift of himself to me. My heart is mine alone to give (see 160, and also 368 and 2563).

But the personal nature of faith must not lead us to think of ourselves as isolated in this act of self-gift. It is not as individuals cut off from others that we come to believe. On the contrary, we are carried and supported by the faith of others. The text speaks of how each of us is “a link in the great chain of believers” (166), echoing the famous words of Blessed John Henry Newman in one of his meditations written in 1848: “I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons.” Or, as another great English believer put it, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Just as each of us receives life itself through others, and is then supported day by day by others in that life, so it is with faith — the new life of the soul is brought to birth in us through the Church, who then nourishes us and feeds us, raises us and educates us.

Day 30

CCC 170-171

The Language of Faith

In CCC 170, the Catechism helps us to understand how to think about the relationship between words about God and the reality of God himself. What it says here is paralleled in CCC 2132 in a passage concerned with religious images. When we look at an image of Jesus — a painting, or a statue, for example — we do not adore the statue itself. The statue is not Jesus, but rather points us to Jesus. It helps us to adore him. Just so in the case of words: we do not believe in the words themselves, but in what they point us to. Like images, they help us to “approach” divine realities and also help us to “express” these realities. Words and images are both precious to us for this reason. But they are not to be mistaken for God himself.

CCC 171 reminds us of how we learn language, how we learn to speak and express ourselves. In their home, children hear language spoken and gradually learn to express themselves; they realize how to use phrases and which words refer to different objects around them. In God’s adopted family, the Church — our spiritual mother — is the primary teacher of the “language of faith.” The language she teaches us comes from Jesus himself; it is God’s own language, expressed in human words. Received from Jesus by the apostles, this language of faith is now handed on to each new generation who are spiritually born in the waters of Baptism and raised in the household of the Church.

Day 31

CCC 172-175

Only One Faith

This short group of paragraphs has immense importance. Three of the four paragraphs are taken from a single Church Father, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, from his work Against Heresies, probably written around AD 180. Irenaeus could trace his spiritual lineage back to the first apostles — to Saint Polycarp and thence back to Saint John the Evangelist.

From the very birth of the Church, as we find in the teaching of those first apostles, the central proclamation was that God had worked in his beloved Son, Jesus, to restore the unity that had been lost since the world had preferred self to the loving will of the Father. Pentecost was the great event of the unleashing of the unifying power of the Holy Spirit so that the confusion reigning since Babel could be reversed and all could hear the one Gospel in their own language. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the diversity of languages and cultures was able to be united in a rich, single Tradition so that “the same way of salvation” (174) might be preached and received in all the nations.

The very opening paragraph of the Catechism, summing up the essence of the Gospel, makes this intention of God clear to us: through the sending of his Son and Spirit, the Father was calling together every person “scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family” (1). This was the Father’s work from the beginning: “The gathering together of the People of God began at the moment when sin destroyed the communion of men with God” (761). The work reaches its culmination in the death and resurrection of Christ and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. Now there is one “deposit of great price” (175) handed down through one unified Tradition “with a unanimous voice” (173), calling every person into the single home of the Church, to be united there with one heart and soul.

Day 32

CCC 185-197

The Creeds

This short section is particularly important for helping us understand all that will follow in the rest of Part One of the Catechism, because here we have the introduction to the Creeds, and it is on the Apostles’ Creed that the remainder of this part is built. If you glance ahead to CCC 199, 430, 456, and 571, you will see in each case that these paragraphs mark the beginning of “articles.” There are twelve in all, corresponding to the twelve divisions of the Apostles’ Creed. CCC 194 explains the origin of this Creed and that it is “rightly considered to be a faithful summary of the apostles’ faith.”

You will see that both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, reproduced in the Catechism alongside today’s paragraphs, are structured around the three Persons of the Trinity. When we profess our faith, we are professing faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The foundation of our faith is in the divine Persons. After that we profess our faith in their acts. The Persons make up the other main structuring principle of this part of the Catechism — it is divided into three chapters. You may find it helpful to spend a little time looking back over the contents pages for Part One and identifying the chapter and article headings.

This rich section explains the character of the Creeds. They are deliberate summaries of the faith — compact, memorizable syntheses needing unpacking and explaining. That is what the Catechism does for us here, in addition to showing that the elements in the Creed are connected — that they belong together. The word “article” derives from the Latin “articulus” — a joint or connecting part of the body. Notice how the Creeds are described in CCC 186 as “organic and articulated summaries” — they are summaries in which everything is linked together, making up a single whole. Finally, notice the emphasis placed on their immense spiritual importance: read CCC 197.

Day 33

CCC 198-202

“I Believe in One God”

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the King explains to Alice how to tell a story: “‘Begin at the beginning’,, the King said, very gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’” The Creed tells the story in just this way. It begins at the beginning, and the beginning is God; everything else flows from this. Notice that the same is said of the commandments: every commandment is an unpacking of the first one (see CCC 2083).

At the beginning, then, we find God. We also find his oneness. The remainder of today’s reading is concerned with this. First, the importance of this element of our faith is emphasized — believing in God’s oneness is “equally fundamental” (200) to believing in his existence. Why? The answer is given in the following paragraphs which present the two meanings of “one” God.

• “God is one” means that he is the only one (201). God has no rival; he is the “one and only God.” Because there is only one God, our lives belong entirely to him. We owe him everything. We do not divide our loyalties.

• “God is one” means that there is no division in him (202). We believe in three Persons — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — but that does not mean we have divided God into three parts and shared him among the three. In the case of human beings, we all share in the one human nature; none of us possesses human nature in its entirety. But each divine Person possesses the whole of the divine nature fully. The word in the Tradition which expresses this is the final word in our section — God is entirely simple — from the Latin simplus, meaning undivided, not made up of parts. In the created order we find qualities separated out — wisdom, love, beauty. But in God they are one — God’s wisdom is always loving and always beautiful because he is one.

Day 34

CCC 203-213

God Reveals His Name

When we wish to know another person, we ask his or her name. To give one’s name is to allow for friendship and intimacy. Because God wants to be known by us, he gives us his name. Because he is infinitely beyond us, his name is necessarily deeply mysterious, but it nevertheless allows us to know him in his unchanging majesty.

Out of reverence for the divine Name, it was replaced by the word “Lord” in the Jewish reading of the Scriptures, and so “Lord” came to signify God’s name (209). “Jesus is Lord,” therefore, became the way in which the first Christians expressed their faith in Jesus’ divinity (see Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11).

The Catechism gives us the literal rendering of the Tetragrammaton (206) and helps us see what this implies for our understanding of God.

First, we understand that he is faithful through time. He is the one who keeps his promises, who has remained steadfast in the past, who is present to us now and will be in the future. He is unshakably faithful (205, 207).

Second, we understand that this faithfulness remains even in the face of our sin and the death it deserves (210-211). Jesus reveals that, precisely as the one who bears our sins (see Jn 1:29; Mt 26:28), he is the bearer of the divine Name (Jn 8:28, 58), and is accused of blasphemy for this claim (Jn 8:59; Mk 14:62-64).

Third, we understand that God is eternal and unchanging (212-213). God is “beyond space and time” (205). As we have seen, he is entirely simple. He contains in himself all Being. All creatures are some-thing — they have a nature and a share in existence. God, on the other hand, is utterly beyond all created reality. As the Uncreated, he simply IS — without beginning or end — the fullness of Being.

Day 35

CCC 214-221

God, “He Who Is,” Is Truth and Love

The name of God, “HE WHO IS,” is now explained as being able to be expressed “summarily” (214) as Truth and Love. These two terms sum up who God is. They are explained separately, but the Catechism makes clear that they are inseparable in God. God is truthful love; he is loving truthfulness. What is finally true about God is that he is love (221).

When we look at the world God created, and at his revelation of himself, this notion of truthful love is the interpretative key we can always rightly use, because everything in creation and in revelation is an expression of who God is.

God’s loving truthfulness is explained in CCC 215-217. It means that we can always trust that God means and will do what he says; we should never doubt him (215). It means he made the world to be known by us, and for us to come to know him by this world — “for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator” (Wis 13:5). It means, finally, that he will lead us to understand who he is by sending his Son (216-217).

God’s truthful love is explained in CCC 218-221. It means that God’s choices are always and only the result of his love (218). It means that all earthly loves, however powerful or insistent, are only a shadow of his love. If we really want to understand his love, we must learn it from the most precious gift he has offered us, his only Son (219). Finally, his love is the unmovable reality in which each of us is called to share (220-221).

Day 36

CCC 222-227

The Implications of Faith in One God

Faith must be connected to life. What we believe must have consequences for our lives. If we do not live according to our beliefs, we cease to believe. Beliefs must be acted upon, or they wither. Beliefs take root and flourish only in the rich soil of our everyday choices, responses, and actions.

The Catechism makes this point the key to how we are to read it. We can recall that in CCC 18 we were given practical directions for reading the Catechism, and the single element highlighted there was to read across the Catechism, following the cross-references. This is because the cross-references link our beliefs together and link them also to our life, to our prayer and to our celebration of the sacraments. The cross-references show us the significance of our beliefs, helping us to take seriously their implications.

Often, as it does here, the Catechism will pause in its presentation of a doctrine in order to explore the implications of a belief. When it does this, the Catechism usually takes us to the life and sayings of a saint, because a saint is someone who did exactly this, who lived out the implications of faith. Look out for this feature in the Catechism — for example, you will find it at the end of the presentation on the Trinity (260), on that of God’s almightiness (274), of God as creator (313), and so on.

Spend time prayerfully with today’s text, pondering how believing “in God, the only One, and loving him with all our being has enormous consequences for our whole life” (222).

Day 37

CCC 232-237

“In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”

The title of today’s reading — the formula we recite when we make the Sign of the Cross — reminds us that the deepest mystery of the Christian faith is also the most common profession of faith that we make, and also that this most common profession of faith is the most profound entry into prayer that we have.

In the Sign of the Cross, all that is most profound in the Christian faith is translated into the simplest of all actions. This action is made over us at the very beginning of the Christian life, at Baptism (232), and so marks our entire life. It is thereafter the entry point into every encounter God wishes to have with us in his sacraments.

Through the wording of the formula, we express the profound truth that God is both One and Three, for we speak of three Persons with a single Name (233). This truth is the central mystery of our faith and of the Christian life (234), and we show its centrality for our lives by making the Sign over the body. Our actions, as well as our prayers and beliefs, are placed under the governing protection of the Blessed Trinity. It is he, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whom we ask to direct our ways.

The movement of the hand as it traces the Sign of the Cross over the body reveals to us not only the innermost mystery of the Blessed Trinity (the theologia) but also the economy (the oikonomia) of the Three-in-One (236). “Economy” is the term given to the loving plan of God (235-236). The descending hand evokes the sending of the Son from the Father, and then the tracing of the Sign of the Cross is completed — the costly work of our redemption — with the movement of the hand to the shoulders also expressing the sending of the Holy Spirit to strengthen and seal the work of Christ.

Day 38

CCC 238-248

The Revelation of God as Trinity

The final paragraph in yesterday’s reading explained the term “mystery of faith” (237), and this understanding underpins all that we discover today. When the Church uses the term “mystery,” she does not mean to signify a puzzle that is unclear. “Mystery” signifies, rather, the truth that God and his ways are utterly beyond us, are “hidden.” Mysteries “can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (237). The Blessed Trinity is the greatest of all mysteries.

The term mystery proclaims both the transcendent nature of God — that he is beyond us — and God’s personal nature. God’s mystery can be revealed, but only in a free relationship with us, a relationship of trust and faith into which we must choose to enter.

Today’s paragraphs are concerned with that gracious revelation of himself. They explain that the divine Persons do not reveal themselves, but rather each reveals the other. A beautiful “giving way” characterizes God’s revelation. The Son introduces us to the Father (238-241), while the Holy Spirit reveals the Son and his relationship with the Father (243-248). The Holy Spirit is sent to guide us into the whole truth about God, completing the revelation of the life of God (243).

Only One who is God can reveal God to us. We can trust Jesus’ revelation of the Father because Jesus is God (242); and we can trust the revelation given by the Holy Spirit because the Spirit is God (245).

The detailed account of this revelation in the Catechism may surprise us, but it is vital for us to appreciate, because the Son invites us to share in his relationship to the Father — we are to be adopted as children in the Son. Jesus wants to introduce us to “my Father and your Father” (Jn 20:17). Jesus has come to show us the face of the Father, to show us what his relationship is with the Father, so that we may enter into this same relationship (Jn 14:1-14).

Day 39

CCC 249-256

The Holy Trinity in the Teaching of the Faith

That which is most precious is what we love with the most passion and seek to guard the most closely. The faith of the Church in the Blessed Trinity underpins the whole of the Christian life. Nothing is more important.

This sense of having been entrusted with a priceless jewel is beautifully expressed in the quotation from Saint Gregory of Nazianzus cited in CCC 256. Saint Gregory “lives and fights” for this belief. It is his beloved “companion” whose dear company enables him to “bear all evils and despise all pleasures.” This apt quotation explains why so many councils of the Church appear in the footnotes to today’s passage. The bishops, gathered together, wanted to deepen their own understanding of this mystery and to defend it against error (250).

The question was, in part, how to do justice in language to the greatest of all mysteries which God had so graciously revealed. A renewed language was needed, and from this new language of the faith, as Christianity spread, a renewed culture took shape which expressed the central truths of the Holy Trinity. The terms “person,” “substance,” and “relation” took on new meanings as they were used in service of God’s revelation (251).

In today’s reading, the meaning of each of these central terms is, first of all, helpfully explained (252), and then a paragraph unpacking each of the terms is presented (253-255):

• Substance designates the Oneness of God and that each of the Persons is truly God.

• Person (Greek: hypostasis) designates the fact that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit really are distinct in God. It is not just that there are three human “ways” of looking at God.

• Relation explains that the distinctions between the Persons lie solely in their relation each to the other.

Day 40

CCC 257-260

The Divine Works and the Trinitarian Missions

We have seen that the Creeds are typically structured according to the divine economy, the divine plan. This plan is normally presented as having three main parts — creation, redemption, and sanctification (235). These three great works are then, in turn, associated with one of the divine Persons in particular. Thus the work of creation flows from the Father, redemption from the Son, and sanctification from the Holy Spirit. Such a presentation records the order in which the Persons were revealed (238-248).

Today’s reading reminds us that because there is only One God, the whole divine plan is in fact the common work of the three divine Persons (258). Creation, redemption, and sanctification all flow from the Father and are unfolded in the “missions” of the Son and the Holy Spirit, with each Person contributing to this loving plan of God according to what is “proper” to each (258-259).

What is this “common work” to which each Person contributes in a perfect union of love? The answer is given in a wonderful statement at the heart of today’s reading: “the whole Christian life is a communion with each of the divine persons, without in any way separating them” (259). The vision with which we are presented is that of a daily walk with each of the Persons, coming to know, to love, and to trust them more and more deeply. The whole Christian life, then, consists in the overflowing grace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each of whom is working to make in us their dwelling place on earth so that they might finally dwell in us as in heaven, forever (260).

Day 41

CCC 268-274

The Almighty

The importance of this core belief in God’s almightiness is stressed in the opening sentence. The Catechism draws our attention to the fact that this is the only attribute of God that we profess in the Creed. The final paragraph of this short section returns to this theme of the vital significance of this belief — once we believe this, all other beliefs follow easily (274).

Is it so difficult, then, to believe in an almighty God? No; this follows naturally from the accompanying belief that he is the Creator of all things from nothing (269). But what is more challenging — and life-changing — is to believe in an almighty Father, to believe in the all-powerful love of God; and that is what we profess in the Creed. We believe in God the Father almighty (270). God’s might is entirely fatherly.

His might is therefore mysterious to us, for we look for it in the wrong places. Like Elijah, we look for God in the earthquake, while he is to be found finally in the still voice (1 Kgs 19:9-13). The Catechism takes us to where the almighty love of the Father is most fully revealed: in the Incarnation, where God the Son comes among us as a little child, and then in “the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil” (272). The heart of the Father is almighty in love, and nothing can overcome him in this. It appears to be weak, but in fact nothing is stronger. The Catechism reminds us to look to the saints, who knew this, and especially to the Blessed Virgin who, in embracing the Child Christ, embraced the truth of God’s power being made perfect in weakness (273; also see the scriptural references to which this paragraph of the Catechism takes us).

Day 42

CCC 279-281

The Creator

Today we begin a major new theme in the Catechism, that of God as Creator. It is a theme that, in one aspect or another, will take us right up until the end of the first chapter in the Catechism (up to CCC 412).

These introductory paragraphs present us with what seems like a paradox. On the one hand, creation concerns the beginning of all things. The Bible opens with the account of the creation of heaven and earth. Creation is what comes first (279); creation is the foundation on which God builds his saving plan (280).

But then the Catechism reveals that there is, in fact, something that comes even before creation, something even more foundational. Creation itself is founded on the mystery of Christ: the Father creates all things through and for his beloved Son. For, ultimately, “no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:11). We understand what God created in “the beginning” only if we search for the purpose of creation in what is uncreated: the love of God that has no beginning. In the eternity of the Father’s loving will, creation was destined for glory in Christ (280).

The Catechism points us to the Scriptures and to the liturgy to learn these things, to Saint Paul who wrote of the glory awaiting the whole of creation (Rom 8:18), and, above all, to the central liturgy of the Church, the Easter Vigil. There, in the darkness and stillness of the night as the Church awaits the burst of the new life of Jesus’ resurrection, the beauty of God’s plan is unfolded for us in the readings that lead us from the first creation and garden to the re-creation of all things in Christ and the garden of the Resurrection. The seven days of creation are crowned with the “eighth day,” the eternal day of Christ’s victory (281).

Day 43

CCC 282-289

Catechesis on Creation

God speaks to every person, every day; every day “pours forth speech” from God (Ps 19:2). The mercies of the Lord are “new every morning” (Lam 3:22). God speaks to us in the creation around us; this is where every person can go to listen to God, as attested to in the opening words of the Bible. There we have a magnificent series of acclamations — “God said …” and the clear realities of light, earth, sun and moon, stars, trees, animals — and finally man himself — appear in their goodness (see Gn 1).

These words from God can raise in us the most basic questions of all, as the realities of creation force us to consider the source and meaning of our own existence (282-284). Saint Augustine says in his Confessions, “I have become a question to myself.” As the Catechism illustrates, the question concerning the “truth about creation is so important for all of human life” (287) that it has given rise to many different philosophies and attempted answers (285). And so God has provided another book to be read alongside the “book of nature,” the “book” of his revelation in Tradition and Scripture. This book provides a trustworthy interpretation of the “words” we find in nature. The two books must be read together (288).

Many scriptural passages on the subject of creation appear, therefore, in the footnotes of today’s reading. The Catechism reminds us of the principles for interpreting the Scriptures that it has already presented in CCC 109-119. Notice in particular the clear assistance given to us in CCC 289 on how to interpret the first three chapters of Genesis (the Catechism will return to this point in CCC 390). These chapters are “uniquely important” and “remain the principal source” for teaching on creation since they express certain key truths about creation: (i) its origin and end in God; (ii) its order and goodness; (iii) the vocation of man; and (iv) the drama of sin and hope of salvation.

Day 44

CCC 290-292

Creation — Work of the Holy Trinity

We are radically dependent on God. Every breath of air we draw into our lungs is given to us by God in his unceasing love, moment by moment. Every part of creation we see around us — the children playing in the street, the clouds above us, the humming bird outside of the window — is held in being, second by second, by God in his faithfulness.

The crucial point to which the Catechism draws our attention here is the thoroughgoing difference between God and his creation. The word “create,” it notes, is only ever used in relation to God. God’s relationship to us is one of creating. Our relationship to other things, on the other hand, is always one of making. We do not “create” anything, but rather “make” things from that which God creates. God is eternal. Unlike God, every created thing at some point began to be.

How are we to think of this absolute dependency? The medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich recorded in her Revelations of Divine Love a vision of the whole of creation as being like a small acorn lying in the palm of her hand: “I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it.” The Catechism draws on a similar image here, taken from Saint Irenaeus of Lyons: the Father creates and holds all things in existence in his two hands, the Son and the Spirit (292). We are held and loved every moment by the Father who creates and “holds us together” by his beloved Son and pours out upon us every good thing in his Holy Spirit (291).

Day 45

CCC 293-294

“The World Was Created for the Glory of God”

These wonderful paragraphs dispel the misunderstanding that is so prevalent, the idea that creatures can be of benefit to God, that God can gain from us.

That the world is made for God’s glory cannot mean that it increases his glory, for he is the fullness of every perfection and good: “And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace” (Jn 1:16). Our goodness adds nothing to God. Our praise cannot be useful to him.

What, then, is the “glory of God”? It is the “manifestation and communication of his goodness” (294). God, who is All-Good, wills to share his goodness. Our goodness, our love, and our praise, then, do not benefit God. But they are important to him because we are important to him. God longs to draw us to himself, nurturing our virtue and goodness; he longs for the beauty around us, and his own perfect beauty, to awaken our praise because he wants our happiness. He wants us to be “fully alive” (294). Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). The world was created so that it might point us to this abundance, through the natural glories around us and finally through being the home for the Incarnate Son who came to bestow his grace on us. The Father longs for us, to make us able to participate in every way in what he has to give — himself. This is why God creates, so that he can fill creation with his goodness and so draw us to himself, to become “all in all” (294).

Day 46

CCC 295-301

The Mystery of Creation

This section of the Catechism wants us to see that creation is a mystery: it is luminous with a spiritual, personal presence. It is not a flat, self-subsisting intricate mechanism, but has depth and carries meaning.

The Catechism speaks of creation being “addressed” to us (299), like a letter. And because God creates everything out of love (295), it is a love letter. Saint Augustine described creation as the ring given by the Beloved. Whenever we see creation, we also “see” the love of God. God did not have to write this letter or give us this ring. He chose to, because he loves us. And he needed no help to do so — it is a pure expression of who he is. Everything in it comes directly from him (296).

We can read the letter because, although we are creatures, he has made us in his image, with a share “in the light of the divine intellect” (299). When God wrote us the letter, he knew he would also need to teach us to read it, for it would be indecipherable otherwise, a mere jumble of symbols. But God has given us the ability to rise to a unified intellectual understanding of his world. In his poem “Frost at Midnight,” Samuel Coleridge beautifully expresses the hope that his sleeping child will come to be able to understand the language of God:

… so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

In the end, even love letters are not enough. The divine Lover and Letter-writer himself comes and finds us in the midst of his works. The letters are only meant to prepare us for that. But that is the topic of Chapter Two of this first Part of the Catechism (422).

Day 47

CCC 302-314

God Carries Out His Plan: Divine Providence

Today’s reading can give us great confidence. “Providence” refers to God’s plan and ability to bring us to the happiness for which he has created us. “He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (1 Thes 5:24).

God might, of course, simply have placed us in a position of perfection from the beginning (310); he might have planned to bring us to this state by himself, without involving us. But what shows his delicacy and utter respect for us is that he will bring us to everlasting joy only in, through, and with our free collaboration (306-307). He will never force us to be happy. But he has promised to give us everything we need to reach happiness (308).

The cooperation he seeks from us is simply our “childlike abandonment” (305) to his providence. This abandonment asks us to move forward, not because we always see the way ourselves, but because we trust the Father. The Scriptures were given to educate us in this trust (304).

If the way were easy there would be no need for trust. But as we know, trust is needed every day in the face of the evil and suffering which lies all around us in a world terribly disfigured by sin. The lure of compromise and the temptation to despair are always present. What enables us to patiently resist both of these dead ends is the conviction that in every situation God never for a moment abandons us. Nothing falls outside of his providence, or his ability to use all that happens to draw every person into the happiness to which he has called us (311). The central event of our faith demonstrates this. There we see the greatest of all evils — the murder of the Father’s beloved Son. There, in the midst of this sin, Christ bore all, forgave all, and triumphed over death, bringing us “the greatest of goods” (312).

Day 48

CCC 325-327

Heaven and Earth

These paragraphs introduce us to the two “orders” of creation — the invisible world of the angels (328-336) and the visible world (337-349).

Both orders of creation are equally real. Because reality received through the senses is so important for us, we have a natural tendency to measure reality by what we can feel and see and touch. And precisely because of that, God came to show himself to us in a way that accommodated the senses. The apostle John cries out in wonder and delight, “We have seen with our eyes … touched with our hands” (1 Jn 1:1). God the Son lovingly came among us in the full reality of visible creation. But the visible is not an end in itself, or the final word in reality. Rather, it is given in order to lead us to the invisible. The visible world is a great sign, pointing us on to the greater reality of what is spiritual. In the case of Jesus himself, the Catechism will explain that “what was visible in his earthly life leads to the invisible mystery of his divine sonship” (515).

As human beings, we live in both worlds — the angelic, invisible world and the corporeal, visible world (327). Our nature is made up of both orders. In the Church’s Tradition a term given to this understanding is that the human person is a “microcosm,” a small world, because in our nature we sum up all the levels and types of being — we share intelligence with the angels, the life of the senses and the capacity for movement with animals, simple life with the plant kingdom, and existence itself with all that is inanimate. When the Son of God took human nature to himself, he thereby embraced the whole of creation in that nature. In his redemption of our nature, he restored the whole world (see Eph 1:9-10).

Day 49

CCC 328-336

The Angels

This beautiful text takes us through the ways in which angels appear in the three main periods of salvation history, using a structure frequently used in the Catechism because it corresponds to the revelation of the Persons of the Trinity. The first period — when the Father is revealed, but the Son and Spirit are more hidden — is the time before Christ. It is described as the time of the Old Covenant, or Old Testament, or of “the promises” (since the Son, who fulfills all the promises of God, has not yet come). The second period is that of the Son, when he takes on flesh and dwells among us. It is often called the period when time was fulfilled, the time of the New Covenant. The third period is our own, in which the Spirit is fully revealed. It is the age of the Church, or the “end times.”

You will see that this section on the angels follows this basic structure. After explaining who angels are (328-330), we have teaching on angels in the time of the Old Testament (332), then the New Testament (333), and then the time of the Church (334-336). You will find this structure is used often to help us into God’s way of looking at things – by learning about different aspects of the faith in this way, we follow his timing of how he reveals himself and his plan of love.

One other point you will have noticed in this teaching on angels is that they are always to be understood in relation to Christ (331). The Church’s teaching, we remember, “speaks of God, and when it also speaks of man and of the world it does so in relation to God” (199). We are not so much learning about angels, as about God’s angels, Christ’s angels. CCC 331 makes this explicit: angels can be understood only in relation to him. We, also, can be understood only in relation to him, as we shall see.

Day 50

CCC 337-349

The Visible World

This passage helps us to understand the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis with its account of the seven “days.” The passage is to be read symbolically, not literally. Truths can be taught in many ways, and the passage is rich with truths “revealed by God for our salvation” (337).

The truths are divided into three: first, those associated with the account of the six days (338-344), each given to us in an italicized phrase; then the truths concerned with the seventh day, the day of God’s rest (345-348); finally, a paragraph on the eighth day — a day not included in the Genesis account, but a new day, towards which the original week is pointed, the day of the new creation and the fulfillment of all that God intended (349).

The seven days belong together. They are described as unfolding in interdependence, solidarity, and harmony, and in a “hierarchy” (342), which literally means a “sacred order.” It is a sacred order of value, moving from the inanimate to those creatures that have life; then to creatures that experience their own life, have emotion, movement, and sensation; and finally to the human person in whom the spiritual order is united to the visible order. On the seventh day, the divine Author of this order is formally acknowledged and worshiped.

The New Testament is the great account of the appearance of the eighth day, which is the fulfillment of the old order, the perfecting of its goodness (339, 349). And so the first chapter of John’s Gospel is presented as a series of seven new days, with the wedding at Cana appearing on the eighth day. Jesus comes as a bridegroom to win his bride. After the Resurrection is the period of espousal (see 1617), a period that is to find its fulfillment in the marriage feast of heaven.

Day 51

CCC 355-361

Man: “In the Image of God”

We now begin a rich set of teachings on the human person, the creature who is at once “distinguished” from all other creatures (343) and who is “unique” among them precisely because he sums up and unifies in his own person the whole of creation (327).

There are four fundamental relations that make up the human person, and these are introduced in CCC 355 and form the heart of the presentation that follows. They are: our relation to God; the relation we have in ourselves between soul and body; our relations to other human persons; and the relation we have to the rest of visible creation. It is the fact of these four relations that make the human person unique.

The great worth of the human person depends entirely upon his primary relationship, which is to God, his Father and Creator, in whose image and likeness he is made (356). It is this primary relationship that gives us our dignity and our basic identity. We call human beings “persons” because they are made in the image of the divine Persons (historically, the term was applied to human beings only because of this conviction). Our nature is God-like because God intends that we share his eternal life (356). Because we are God-like, each person is “capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons” (357).

There is a radical equality between all people because of their being made in God’s image. Parents and their children stand together to say “Our Father.” All are “truly brethren” (361), forming a unity (360) in Adam, and in Christ who came to share our nature (359).

Day 52

CCC 362-368

Man: “Body and Soul but Truly One”

You will have noticed the very careful way in which this is written. We are embodied souls — that is, souls who have bodies. Soul and body together make up the whole human being (359). So close is the relationship between soul and body that we are a single unified nature (365).

Yet there is a hierarchy of value here, too. “Soul” refers to that which is “of greatest value,” the spiritual principle (363, see also 2289). We are “most especially” (363) in God’s image because of the soul. In fact, the soul is so centrally who we are that the term is also used to refer to the whole person. Because of our being a spiritual soul, every human being is literally a “new creation” coming straight from the hand of God. The human soul is not “made” by creatures. Only God can make a soul (366).

We do not neglect the body, though. The body shares in human dignity precisely because it is united to the soul. In fact, the body is a temple, because we worship God in the body (remember CCC 28). We are the place where God is worshiped (see 1179, 1695, 2794), and physical churches remind us of this (1180). Temples are sacred places and are treated with loving reverence, and the Catechism will draw many implications from this point (for example, 2297-2298, 2300).

Finally, just as churches have a center, the altar, so human beings also have a center, the heart (368). As in a church, the new covenant — Christ’s sacrifice that saves us — is made present on the altar for us, so for each of us personally, that covenant is renewed in the heart (see 2563).

Day 53

CCC 369-373

Man: “Male and Female He Created Them”

God created us for communion, not only with himself, but also with other human persons. We have been created to need others and also to need to give ourselves in love and service to others. Our lives are not self-sufficient and closed in on ourselves. They are turned outwards towards others. The phrase the Catechism uses is that God created us to be a “communion of persons” (372).

It is because we are made in God’s image that we have this call to receive and give ourselves to others as the very heart of our nature, since God himself, as we have seen, lives as a communion of divine Persons in an eternity of loving self-gift (255, see also 1702). From God’s love flows life; love and life are united in him. Male and female mirror this as well, as new life is transmitted through their loving union (372). Just as the divine Persons are equal (242, 245), so also are male and female human persons made in his image (369). And just as the divine Persons are distinct, and their distinction lies in their relation to each other (254-255), so this, too, is mirrored on the level of creatures. The distinction between male and female is real and is willed by God as something good (369), and the distinction lies in the way in which male and female can be “for” the other, each a “helper” fitted for the other and finding fulfillment in this (371-372).

Finally, this section speaks of the fourth relation that makes up our nature — that of dominion over the earth. This is described as a sharing in God’s providence (373) — in other words, being intelligent cooperators in God’s plan of love for his creation.

Day 54

CCC 374-379

Man: In Paradise

We are presented in today’s reading with the picture of the world when it was “very good” (Gn 1:31). It is a world of happiness, without death, without suffering, of friendship with God, inner integrity, a loving and fruitful relationship between man and woman and the enjoyment of a harmonious relationship with creation. As the Catechism says, “This entire harmony … will be lost by the sin of our first parents” (379).

For man in paradise, each of the four fundamental relations is unharmed; “all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed” (376). The two phrases that the Church uses to describe this state are original holiness and original justice. The first describes the friendship between God and man before the first sin ruptured this. The second describes the harmonious state of the other three relations, where all is in order as it is meant to be. CCC 377 speaks of original justice as a “mastery over the world” and notes that by this “world” God meant especially over oneself. The Church, you will remember, sees the human person as being like a “little world,” a microcosm. This is the domain over which we are given the challenge of kingship or queenship, and we establish our rule precisely by putting ourselves under the greater rule of God, the only Lord and King.

You will have noticed, then, that original justice depends entirely on original holiness. It is precisely by the “radiance of this grace” that “all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed” (376). To love the Lord our God is the greatest and the first of the commandments (see Mt 22:37-40). The others “make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God” (2083). Because man’s happiness depends entirely on his friendship with God, it is the restoration of this alone that can mend his brokenness. What could not be guessed was that the restoration would involve a surpassing of the original state of paradise (374).

Day 55

CCC 385

The Fall

Today’s reading is unusually short — a single paragraph. Its importance for all that will follow in the Catechism’s proclamation and explanation of the faith, however, justifies our spending all our attention on this today. As so often in the Catechism, this is an introductory paragraph to lead into a major section of doctrine (for example, 199, 268): CCC 385 is a summary of key points to help us understand the Church’s teaching on the Fall.

The paragraph begins with the reminder of the infinite goodness of God and of the essential goodness of all his creation. Everything that is, without exception, is fundamentally good (299) since all that exists has no other source of its existence than God, who is goodness and love without end (293, 296). Even though the world is fallen from the state God had intended for it, this is still the case.

The second point in this paragraph is the inescapable experience of suffering and of moral evil. This seems to contradict the opening sentence. Yet the Catechism shows us that the opposite is the case, and gives us the example of Saint Augustine wrestling with this question in his autobiographical book, Confessions. Evil throws us into the arms of the God of love since we know that by naming evil we are measuring it against the good. Without knowledge of the good how could we even identify an action as evil? Without a straight line how could we judge something to be crooked?

Thus we reach the third point — that only in the light of the good is evil seen for what it is; only in the light of “the mystery of our religion” is the “mystery of lawlessness” seen for what it is (385). We only see in the light. Darkness shows us nothing. We find the response to evil, therefore, only in the light of the revelation of divine love. We fix our eyes on Christ, the King of Love.

Day 56

CCC 386-390

“Where Sin Abounded, Grace Abounded All the More”

Today’s reading follows closely on the point we saw being made in CCC 385. We saw there that only goodness reveals evil since goodness is the measuring point against which we make the judgment that something is bad. We know when a plant is sickly only because we know what a healthy plant looks like. And so it is seeing man in relation to God, who is infinitely good, that “unmasks” evil (386).

When God’s revelation is ignored or denied, therefore, there is no point of measurement left and “we cannot recognize sin clearly” (387). This is why, as Saint John says, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (Jn 3:20). Without the revelation of Christ’s love, evil appears just as a mistake, a weakness, and so on. It is the absolute love of Christ, who loves us to the end (Jn 13:1), which reveals evil for what it is — a radical choice against love (387).

The unmasking of evil is not for its own sake, but for the sake of the conversion of the person. Only when we see evil for what it is can we turn to the light and be saved. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin by revealing the Redeemer, the one who saves from sin (388). With the unmasking of evil comes its solution. The diagnosis of the illness is made by the doctor who gives the cure.

A final important point is made in this section: the Fall is a historical event. The biblical account in Genesis uses “figurative language” (390) — in other words, not all of the details are to be taken literally — but the event is real enough. And every age lives with the impact of that event.

Day 57

CCC 391-395

The Fall of the Angels

Following the principle that we saw expressed in CCC 385, that only light reveals darkness for what it is, this section on the fall of the angels focuses our attention on Christ’s victory over the devil: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (394).

The Catechism warns that the devil appears as an intimate friend. His is a “seductive voice” (391), and it was his “mendacious seduction” (394) that led our parents into disobedience. He proposed the way of disobedience and distrust as the means to achieve a godlike status — whereas, as we saw in the very first sentence of the Catechism, God wants to bring us into intimacy with him, making us his friends, through obedience and trust (see 1).

The devil is “a liar and the father of lies” (392), and Christ came as the Truth to “unmask” the lies. The final paragraphs of the Catechism speak of how the devil “mendaciously attributed to himself the three titles of kingship, power and glory” (2855), and even tried to “divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father” (394) by tempting him with these, as though they were in his power to give (see Mt 4:1-11). And so when at Mass we say to God the Father, “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever,” we are affirming the truth that Christ, through his temptations, his passion, death and Resurrection, has restored them to the Father (see 2855).

The devil is the one who came to bring death to us. He is a “murderer from the beginning.” His voice leads to death through disobedience, and he speaks out of envy of man’s blessings and hatred of God and his kingdom. “Now the prince of this world will be driven out” (Jn 12:31), Jesus cries as he approaches the time of his passion. His resurrection reveals his victory over death.

Day 58

CCC 396-401

Original Sin

In a single sentence at the beginning of this section, the Catechism sums up the nature of the human person in a way that allows us clearly to understand what original sin is: “A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God” (396). Remember:

• Man is a spiritual creature: made in the image of God, as an embodied spiritual soul, man has freedom. God will not force man’s submission. He only ever invites, his respect for our freedom absolute.

• God calls us to friendship: he gives his love freely and in return seeks our trusting love. Friendship cannot be established through anything less than mutual love.

• Man is a creature, not the uncreated God. God is infinite, without bounds or limits. Man is created good, but is limited. Man is not all-knowing or all powerful. He cannot “create” from nothing, but can only “make” things out of what God has already created (see 296). What, then, is original sin? Our first parents lost their loving trust

in God’s call to friendship (397). Letting trust die in the heart, through the seductive voice of Satan (391), they disobeyed God and rejected their creaturely state — they sought to be “like God” without God. It is impossible, of course. Seeking to win by disobedience what God wants to give in love, and what can only be received in trusting love, man falls into the utter misery called original sin.

This is the character of every sin: “All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (397). Sin is fueled by the unreal picture we have of God, a “god” of whom we live in fear and whom we think we must resist (399). Cut off from our true source of life and nourishment our lives run wild in confusion and sin and finally wither as we desperately seek, among creatures, what only a return to our true God can give (400-401).

Day 59

CCC 402-412

“You Did Not Abandon Him to the Power of Death”

The impact of original sin on the whole human race reminds us of our profound unity (402-403). God created us as one human family, with one nature and one destiny. He wills to save us, not as isolated individuals, but together, as a single body (look back to CCC 360). He has made us dependent upon each other. Our sin affects others, as do our prayers and our striving to live in grace in response to Christ. For good or for ill, we affect each other deeply. We often experience this deep mutual impact as unjust. We can remember that the Church describes our “relationality” in precisely the opposite way, as original justice. It is Adam who has corrupted our relationality, turning original justice into a state of original injustice.

The Catechism clarifies that, as transmitted to us, original sin is not to be thought of as “sin” in the sense of a personally willed wrongful act. It is rather “sin” in the way that the Greek word for sin, hamartia, means the term — we are like an arrow that is “missing the mark,” missing the target (404).

Baptism puts us back “on target” (405), but we are now living in a “battlefield” state (409). It is a dramatic image — the danger of serious spiritual injury and death could not be emphasized more. The ignoring of our condition is one of the greatest dangers, for then we live blindly, unaware of the perils (407).

The final image with which we are left, as this chapter concludes, is that of the promise of Christ, who will join us as our brother and Savior on the battlefield. His coming will make everything worthwhile, and the “inexpressible grace” he brings will communicate unimaginable blessings after the definitive victory he will win for us. His coming will be preceded with the finest fruit of his victory, in the form of his mother, freed from original sin.

Day 60

CCC 422-429

I Believe in Jesus Christ, the Only Son of God

With today’s reading we begin a new chapter, a new focus — the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ — and a new period in salvation history, the “fullness of time.” Three headings introduce this second chapter to us.

The first heading reminds us that the Father’s sending of his Son is the heart and center of the Christian faith (422). The purpose of his sending his Son is to redeem us and adopt us as his children. This is the “Good News” of the Christian faith.

A word on terms used here: “Good News” is our translation of the Greek New Testament word, euangelion, which literally means good (eu) message (angelion). We also translate this Greek word as “evangelization.” So, to evangelize is simply to bring “good news”; and the good news is that the Father has sent his beloved Son to redeem and adopt us. This paragraph from the Catechism also quotes from the first line of Saint Mark’s Gospel: “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (422). “Gospel” is another translation for this Greek word, only now it has come to us via old English — god spell. The important thing, then, is to realize that “Gospel,” “evangelization,” and “Good News” are all translations of the same Greek New Testament word.

The next two headings remind us that the work we are reading is a Catechism — it is a work to help us transmit and tell others about the faith, the Good News. The Catechism has been written to enable us to share its contents with others. What people will find, when we share with them, is not just a wonderful message, but the Person of Jesus Christ (426). Christianity is more than principles to live by, more than a philosophy of life. God might have given us just this, but he has “acted far beyond all expectation — he has sent his own ‘beloved Son’” (422). The Christian faith is God’s invitation to know him personally.

Day 61

CCC 430-435

Jesus

Names in the Bible are not mere labels. “A name expresses a person’s essence and identity and the meaning of this person’s life” (203). Jesus’ name tells us both who he is (God) and what he does (saves). His name expresses both his identity and his action.

God can forgive sins since all persons belong to him — he is their Father and Creator. And because every creature belongs to him, all sin is a sin against him. “Because sin is always an offense against God, only he can forgive it” (431). When Jesus forgave sins, therefore, he was manifesting his divinity in the clearest possible way as the beloved Son sent from the Father for this purpose. Those who rejected him called him a blasphemer for this claim (see Mk 2:5-7; CCC 587).

Jesus saves us by coming among us as God. The Catechism teaches here that he saves us by his Incarnation, for here he united the whole of human nature and every person to himself so that he could work his salvation in them (432); by his death, for here he took upon himself as God made man all the offense of sin and forgave it (433); and by his resurrection, for this manifests the power of God’s loving forgiveness to overcome death, the result of sin (434).

Two other points are worth mentioning. First, the Catechism provides the rich background to this whole section in the biblical references given at the foot of the pages. We are encouraged to read these for a deeper understanding. Second, notice that Jesus’ name is the focus of every paragraph. Jesus hands himself over to us by making his name known, and speaking his name in love and from the heart is how we enter into intimacy with him (see also 203). Speaking his name is the “heart of Christian prayer” (435).

Day 62

CCC 436-440

Christ

Unlike “Jesus,” “Christ” is not a proper name. It is a title. However, because Jesus perfectly lived out the meaning of this title, it has become his name (436). We rightly refer to God the Son as “Jesus Christ.”

Christ, or Messiah, literally means anointed. In the Old Testament, kings, priests, and sometimes prophets were anointed with oil to symbolize their consecration to God’s work. The title became the way in which all Jewish hopes were summed up as they looked for one who would be anointed with God’s Spirit to save them.

Jesus was anointed not with oil, a symbol of the divine blessing and commission, but with the Holy Spirit himself. The Holy Spirit consecrates him at his conception (437), comes down upon him at Baptism to reveal him as the Anointed One, the Christ (438). We can look forward to an extended section later in the Catechism on Jesus and the Spirit (702-741). As “Christians” we are members of Christ’s Body, anointed by the same Holy Spirit.

Finally, we can note that the title “Christ” is the description of a mission. Kings, priests, and prophets were anointed for a purpose: kings to rule a kingdom; priests to sanctify a people; prophets to speak God’s truth. Jesus is anointed as the King, the Ruler of God’s eternal kingdom of love and joy. He is anointed as the Priest, offering himself as the one true sacrifice to save and sanctify us. He is anointed as the Prophet, to speak and live the full truth that sets us free and brings us happiness. Because some understood this mission in too political a way, Jesus also referred to himself by other titles from the Old Testament, especially the Suffering Servant and the Son of Man.

Day 63

CCC 441-445

The Only Son of God

The text of the Catechism here carefully explains how this term, “son of God,” which was applied to many in Israel, as well as to Israel as a whole, came to be used of Jesus to express his divinity. “Son” clearly indicates a relationship, but in all other cases, when applied to creatures — whether angels or human persons — it signifies an “adoptive sonship” and a “relationship of particular intimacy” (441). How, then, do we see this title being used to express Jesus’ unique status?

First, it is because he refers to himself as the only Son of God. There were clearly others called “son of God,” and so the claim to be the only one marks Jesus out. We shall see that there is a connected doctrine in the fact that Mary was ever-Virgin: “Jesus is Mary’s only son” (501).

Second, we see this because in the Scriptures we hear the voices of Father and Son expressing their unique relationship. The Father speaks of Jesus as the “beloved” Son (444), while Jesus distinguishes his own relationship to the Father from that of others (443). It is his Father who reveals to Peter this unique relationship. In a later part of the Catechism, CCC 571-591, we will see how Jesus expressed his unique claim to divinity in a number of ways.

We can also see the unique application of the title to Jesus when we consider his role in relation to us. It is in Jesus, the only-begotten Son, preexistent and of one being with the Father, that we are able to be adopted as sons and daughters of the Father. It is precisely because Jesus shares in the fullness of divinity that, by his grace, we can be given a share in his own relationship with the Father. Jesus can make us partakers in the divine nature precisely because he is fully divine.

Day 64

CCC 446-451

Lord

As with the title “Son of God,” the title “Lord” — as a way of addressing Jesus — could be taken as a simple expression of human respect, an elevated way of saying “Sir.” When we read the Gospel accounts, then, not every instance in which Jesus is called “Lord” need necessarily be read as an act of faith in Jesus’ divinity (448).

However, it is clear from the New Testament that oftentimes either Jesus himself, or those who address him, do mean much more than this (for example, Jn 9:38; 21:7). As we have seen, “Lord” is also the way of referring to the divine Name which God himself revealed (209). For the faithful Jew, wishing to honor the mystery of God’s Name expressed by the Tetragrammaton, “Lord” is the acceptable alternative (see Mk 12:29; Lk 4:12). Jesus is also addressed as Lord in this sense, of carrying the divine Name; and one of the earliest Christian proclamations of faith was simply “Jesus is Lord” (Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; Phil 2:11; Acts 2:36; 10:36; Rom 6:23). We can see from these early New Testament texts how the belief in Jesus’ divinity is placed alongside the obedience of faith due to God the Father; thus we find it expressed that God is Father of the Lord Jesus (Col 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3). These expressions of faith were hammered out in the Councils of the Church by the successors of the apostles and have emerged into the forms of faith we have today in the Creeds.

The Catechism concludes this section on the title “Lord” with a reminder of the prominent place it has in Christian prayer. The acclamation “Lord!” is a cry of adoring love. The Catechism reminds us — as it did with the section on the name “Jesus” (435) — that the Church believes as she prays. Her beliefs are expressions of her worship. We will further explore this principle when we read about the centrality of liturgical prayer (see 1124).

Day 65

CCC 456-460

Why Did the Word Become Flesh?

For the first time, the Catechism introduces a section by asking a question: Why did the Word become flesh? The content of the question is taken from John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” It is as if the Catechism’s authors paused before the awesome reality of the Word, who is God, taking flesh, and asked: “How could this be? Who is this God of ours that he would stoop to the level of a creature and appear among us, in human form? Why would he do this?”

The answer comes in four stunning statements of faith, each italicized in CCC 457-460. They appear in an ascending pattern, speaking first to the lowest state of the human person and taking us through to our highest calling.

The only Son of God, the divine Word, became flesh first because of our sins, to save us from our misery and disintegration into death. He took our human nature in order to share in and rescue us from the distress of our poverty, pain, and death. In this he revealed the great love of God for us, who does not want anyone to perish. Jesus rescues us by changing us: as our true image, he calls us to live as he lives. The salvation he brings is not a surface-level change, but a radical call to holiness, to be perfect as the Father is perfect. And so the final goal of Word taking flesh is to raise us to live with God, in his eternity of joy, to share as sons and daughters in his own relationship with the Father. By his grace we come to know and love him as he is in himself.

The truths we have contemplated transform our understanding of ourselves and others, providing us with the solid foundation for our Christian lives. Read CCC 1691 — the content of today’s reading is the substance of the opening to the part on the Christian life.

Day 66

CCC 461-463

The Incarnation

Today’s reading seems mainly concerned to impress upon us the absolute importance of this belief. “Belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God is the distinctive sign of Christian faith” (463). Holding to this belief is what marks out the Christian. Veering from this belief, or losing a sense of its central place, marks the loss of authentic Christian faith.

There are also important points in the phrase “the Word became flesh” clarified for us here. When the Church, following John 1:14, speaks of the Word becoming “flesh,” she intends us to think of more than just the bodily matter of our skin, our tissues, and so on. She means human nature as a whole, body and spiritual soul (461). CCC 470-478 will discuss this at length. In New Testament Greek, the word translated “flesh,” sarx, additionally carries the connotation of weakness, of helplessness, which is also communicated here in the quotation from the hymn in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Jesus humbled himself, he became a servant and “obeyed” death, receiving in himself all the effects of sin (461).

Again, in the phrase “the word became flesh,” “became” is not to be understood as implying a change in God. As we have seen, God is unchangeably faithful and loving (see 214). He does not change. He does not take on a new character at the Incarnation. Rather, it was then that he “revealed his innermost secret” (221). The change brought about by the Incarnation is not in God but in human nature, which is lifted up and united to the Godhead, and brought into the presence of the Father, reconciled and redeemed through the work of Christ. And so the Church speaks of Christ “assuming” human nature, in the sense of adopting it, taking it on. In Christ, every aspect of my nature has been united to God; every element of my being has been adopted.

Day 67

CCC 464-469

True God and True Man

The readings for the next two days belong together. They are both concerned with the Church’s understanding of the Incarnation. Today we see how this understanding was fashioned in the crucible of history, with its personalities and Councils, and with all the struggles involved in grasping the full truth of how God has acted “far beyond all expectation” (422). Tomorrow, this same path is followed, but through a consideration of all of the elements that make up a full human nature, seeking to understand better how each is united to the divine Son of God.

CCC 464 is a crucial paragraph: it summarizes the truth of the Incarnation. The Incarnation of the Son of God is “unique and altogether singular” — in other words, there is no comparison point we can make. Jesus is not simply the very greatest human being, or a human person filled with God’s grace and presence to an exceptional degree. The Lord Jesus is “one of the Trinity” (468) who assumed a complete human nature. The Catechism draws the implication very clearly: “Thus everything in Christ’s human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death” (468). This means that when we read the pages of the Gospels, every sentence which has Jesus as the subject in reality has “one of the Trinity” as the subject. When we read, “Jesus called his disciples to himself and said …” this is “one of the Trinity” calling the disciples and speaking to them. When Jesus weeps, one of the Trinity weeps.

Every heresy (see 2089) the Church has faced concerning the mystery of Christ has in some way rejected the view that God fully assumed complete human nature. In every heresy one of those terms is removed. Instead there is the fastening onto some limited aspect of Christ’s mystery, while denying the full truth of the faith.

Day 68

CCC 470-478

How Is the Son of God Man?

Once again, the Catechism provides us, in a single paragraph, CCC 470, with an excellent summary of the section we are reading before unpacking it in some detail. CCC 470 explains that only gradually were the implications recognized of the truth that a complete human nature was assumed by the Son of God. Jesus had everything that belongs to our humanity. The paragraphs following speak of Christ’s human soul and intellect (471-474), his human will (475), his human body (476-477), and his human heart (478). The Church is saying that “one of the Trinity” thought with a human mind; chose with a human will; ran, ate, slept, and suffered in a human body; and loved with a human heart. Jesus is only one Person — that is, only one individual Being knowing, acting and loving — the divine Person of the Son of God. In the Person of Jesus we meet the human expression of one of the Trinity; we see into the life of God.

As part of a complete humanity, the Divine Son united a human intellect to himself. CCC 472-474 explains this. It means that Jesus had to learn naturally as all human beings do, gradually through experience — what hot and cold feel like, how to tend plants successfully, and so on. As the Divine Son, though, he also had supernatural knowledge of all that the Father had given him to reveal for the sake of his mission of salvation — the Father and his loving plan and also the “secret thoughts of human hearts” (473). His human will, like his human intellect, is entirely turned over to the service of his saving work (475).

This section also helps us understand why the Church venerates Christ’s human heart, his Sacred Heart, and images of Christ’s body (476-478). Because his heart and body — indeed every aspect of his humanity — belong to the divine Person, in venerating them we are venerating the eternal Son.

Day 69

CCC 484-486

Conceived by the Power of the Holy Spirit

The Persons of the Blessed Trinity act together in the work of creation (258, 292). Here we see how they act together in the even greater work of the re-creation of all things. In this short, delicate section we see how the Father prepares and invites the Blessed Virgin (484), the Holy Spirit overshadows her (485), and the Son is conceived in her (486). The Incarnation is truly a Divine work of the Persons together.

The Incarnation is a work of the divine Persons in cooperation with the Blessed Virgin (488). We can notice the importance of the free assent that Mary gives. The Father “invites” Mary (484); he does not force her. The work of our redemption at all stages is something that is to be humanly and freely welcomed and embraced, as our divine Lover God wants nothing less.

As well as providing her free assent, Mary also offers her human nature to the divine Son. It is human nature taken from Mary that is assumed by the Son. The Holy Spirit causes her to “conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own” (485). It is in and through the humanity drawn from Mary that the eternal Son reveals the Father and rescues us from sin and death. It is in and through the humanity drawn from Mary that the eternal Son rises glorified from the dead.

Finally, we see in these short paragraphs the secret of the whole Christian life: that it is brought about by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who comes upon Mary (484), who causes Mary to conceive Christ (485), and who anoints the humanity of Christ with power (486). The Christian life is a divine life, lived “in the Spirit” and made possible only by the anointing power of the Spirit who is sent upon us and upon all of the Church (see Gal 5:25; Acts 1:8).

Day 70

CCC 487-494

Born of the Virgin Mary

Saint John Paul II, in his greatest work on catechesis, described Mary as a “living catechism” (Catechesis in Our Time, 73). And what we read in her life always leads us to her Son. The Catechism gives us this principle at the beginning of today’s reading: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ” (487). This is the key to understanding each of the doctrines about Mary — the Church asks us to look for what they teach us about Jesus and his saving work.

Mary’s predestination is the first doctrine presented here (488-489). It teaches us that God’s plan of salvation fully embraces our freedom. “The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother” (488). God has a plan “formed from all eternity in Christ” (50). His predestination does not mean that he coerces us into his plan, but rather that he provides all that is needed for us to make our assent.

Mary’s Immaculate Conception is the next doctrine presented (490-493). Mary was conceived without original sin, without the disorder that affects all human beings. Does this unique condition mean that she did not need a Savior? On the contrary. While Christ has rescued you and me out of the misery of sin, in the case of the Blessed Virgin, he has saved her from entering into this condition. She was “preserved” from sin, perfectly redeemed from the moment of her conception.

Mary’s obedience of faith is the third doctrine (494). Reading this paragraph helps us understand what a perfect act of faith looks like — a wholehearted offering of ourselves in trust to the God who wishes to espouse us and for whom nothing is impossible, that we might be his “handmaid” in whatever situation he places us for the sake of Christ’s work of redemption.

Day 71

CCC 495-507

Mary’s Motherhood and Virginity

These two doctrines, concerning Mary’s motherhood and virginity, appear to be opposites. In fact, they are two sides of a single coin, both of them affirming Christ’s uniqueness and divinity.

The Council of Ephesus, in AD 431, solemnly declared that Mary was the Theotokos, the Mother of God (495). While this is a title given to Mary, the declaration primarily says something about Jesus. The cross-reference to CCC 466 explains the truth about Christ that is confirmed here: that Jesus is a single divine Person, God the Son who took to himself a complete human nature drawn from the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Person whom Mary carried in her womb was the divine Son. The title preserves for us the mystery of the Incarnation.

The virginity of Mary (496-498) and her perpetual virginity (499-501) both affirm the unique nature of Jesus. Jesus had no earthly father; Joseph is his earthly foster father. The proclamation of Mary’s virginity protects the truth that Jesus is the consubstantial Son of the Father.

The virginity of Mary is a historical truth; her miraculous conception of Jesus is a given fact of history. As we saw with the affirmation of the essential historical veracity of the Gospels (126), and as we will see with the miracles of Jesus (548) and his bodily resurrection (639), the Church holds firmly to the historical truths of these events — and seeks to answer any objections to their historicity (498, 500). They are not only symbolic of deeper spiritual truths.

However, all of these historical events do also carry rich spiritual significance. We see this in the next section of the Catechism, which concerns the meaning of Mary’s virginity in God’s plan (502-507). The Church wants us to develop those “eyes of faith” (502) that can begin to perceive why God acts as he does, that can “read” the meaning of the events around us in the light of God’s plan for our adoption into the mystery of his eternal love.

Day 72

CCC 512-513

The Mysteries of Christ’s Life

In today’s reading the Catechism makes the important observation that the only two points about Christ that are mentioned in the Creed are his sending from the Father in the Incarnation and his return to him in the events of the Paschal mystery. The focus for the Church’s catechesis on Christ, therefore, will always be on these two topics.

The Gospels, as we know, give us much more than this, though they, too, have a clear focus on the last three years of his time on earth, and a particular concentration on the final week of his earthly life. There is much that is “hidden” in the life of Jesus.

The Catechism notes that these two points in the Creed, however, provide all the “light” (512) we need to understand everything else in Jesus’ life. You may have noticed that the Catechism is often helpful in providing this guidance as to which doctrines and teachings shed light on other beliefs that we hold (for example, 89, 388). It is helping us to remember to read the faith as a unity, as a single coherent set of teachings that make sense to us together, as one whole. The Catechism is also reminding us by this that there is a hierarchy of truths. This does not mean that some teachings are truer than others; it is rather that some are more fundamental and essential and that they help us to understand the other truths (see 11, 90, 199, 234).

In the celebration of Christ’s life in the liturgical year these two teachings are marked by Christmas and Easter. In the liturgy we celebrate the great truths that we proclaim in the Creed. And it is again these great feasts and seasons that shed light on the rest of the Church’s liturgical year. “Beginning with the Easter Triduum as its source of light, the new age of the Resurrection fills the whole liturgical year with its brilliance” (1168).

Day 73

CCC 514-521

Christ’s Whole Life Is Mystery

The essence of today’s section lies in the opening two paragraphs. The Catechism first distinguishes mystery from curiosity (514). Curiosity is only appropriate for earthly matters — it can lead to mild interest. The revelation of God’s mystery, on the contrary, concerns the “divine sonship and redemptive mission” of Christ (515), and the only appropriate response to this is our wholehearted belief and commitment — to believe that Jesus is the Christ and God the Son so that through this belief we may have life in his name (see also 203, 430). The Gospels reveal this mystery. The materials in the Gospels were selected for this reason, so we read the Gospels for the sake of deepening our belief in Jesus and to ground our lives securely on his loving and saving presence.

CCC 515 explains how this revelation of Christ’s mystery occurs: through Christ’s humanity which is a sacrament. The Gospels record Jesus’ “deeds, miracles and words,” which lead us to recognize that we are in the presence of the invisible reality of the divine Son and his work. The word “sacrament” is taken from the Latin sacra, “sacred,” and applied to Jesus’ humanity it means that his humanity was both the sacred sign and the sacred instrument of his divinity.

Because Jesus is the divine Son who assumed our humanity, everything he says and does reveals God. CCC 516-518 explain three aspects of this: Christ’s whole earthly life is revelation of the Father, is redemptive, and recapitulates human life, restoring it to its “original vocation” (518). Recapitulates means that, as the “head” (in Latin, caput) of the human race, Jesus represents us, living human life in all its “stages” and dimensions as it is meant to be in God’s plan. We can now join ourselves to Jesus, becoming members of his Body, with Jesus as our true head. Then it is not only we who live the Christian life, but Jesus himself who, as our head, lives in us (519-521).

Day 74

CCC 522-534

The Mysteries of Jesus’ Infancy and Hidden Life

How do we now live the new life of Christ? How do we join ourselves to his redemptive work? Or, to put this in a better way: How does Christ join us to himself in and through our daily life, inviting us to respond, so that we can benefit from his having assumed our humanity and united it to his divinity? The Catechism begins to walk us through the answer to this question, starting from Jesus’ infancy and hidden life. Everything in Jesus’ life, we remember, is revelation of the Father, is redemptive, and is a recapitulation of human life and history for the sake of its restoration. This includes those early years and the times before Jesus began his public ministry.

The first thing you may have noticed is that he accomplishes this through the work of the liturgy and the sacraments. Look through these paragraphs and notice all of the sacraments, the feasts, the seasons, and the holy days. This is where his life is communicated to us now. This is where the grace to live the new life in Christ flows out upon us.

The second place where he joins himself to us is in the most ordinary events of “daily life” (533). When we are poor (525), are called to “become little” (526), are persecuted (523, 530), are learning obedience to our parents (532), are living out our family life (533) — and also when we learn that the Father’s call invites us to a response that takes us beyond all earthly loyalties and commitments (534), since Jesus living in us is, above all, always about his “Father’s work.”

In these ways, then, we become “sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity” (526).

Day 75

CCC 535-540

The Baptism and Temptations

As we read these passages concerning Jesus’ baptism and his temptations, we remember that the Catechism wants us to read these as mysteries of Jesus to which he joins us so that we live them and he also lives them in us (521).

Jesus’ baptism and his temptations belong together, for the Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus during his baptism immediately drove him into the desert to be tempted by the devil (Mk 1:12-13; CCC 538). His baptism is his voluntary identification with us in the misery of our sins so that through his faithful obedience to the Father as one of us “in all things but sin” we might be adopted as beloved children of God. The Father delights in the Son and in this ministry of mercy and redemption (536). The Holy Spirit immediately drives him into the desert to endure the temptations facing humanity, so that Jesus might recapitulate the temptations that Adam faced (539).

The meaning of the two events together can be summed up in the verse from the Letter to the Hebrews, “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Heb 4:15; CCC 540). The baptism concerns his entering into our weakness; the temptations, his rebuffing of all attacks testing his “filial attitude toward God” (538).

The Letter to the Hebrews goes on to invite us to have utter confidence that we will receive all the grace we need to have this same “filial attitude” in the face of temptations that assault us in our daily lives (see 4:16). We can know that it will be Jesus, who has already “vanquished the Tempter for us” (540) who will be living in us. He has united us to himself so that we never need face difficulties on our own or through our own strength.

Day 76

CCC 541-553

The Kingdom

Today we continue reading of the way in which Jesus draws each of us to share in the mystery of his life. As the Catechism will explain, the single Greek word for “mystery” has two dimensions to it and so came to be translated into Latin by two terms, mysterium (mystery) and sacramentum (sacrament): “sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation which was indicated by the term mysterium” (see 774). Jesus’ whole life is the mystery in both these senses, for all that he said and did, all that is visible in him, is the sacramentum that draws us into the hidden mysterium of his divine sonship and saving work.

This mystery is expressed in “the Kingdom of God,” a phrase which depicts the Father’s will to save all people by gathering them around God the Son into the family of God. Jesus’ preaching and miracles, his acts of love and healing, his eating with sinners, and his casting out of demons are the sacramentum that reveal the kingdom, the hidden reality, or mysterium, of salvation.

From the very beginning of his ministry Jesus proclaimed this kingdom (541), for he was sent from the Father to “draw all men to myself” (Jn 12:32), and the proclamation of the kingdom was the entire focus of all that he said and did during his earthly life. The hidden work of salvation was achieved and revealed above all in the “Easter mystery,” the “Paschal mystery,” in which the sacramentum of the Cross and Resurrection express the mysterium of God’s redeeming love, and Jesus’ kingdom overthrows the kingdom of the devil (550).

Today we enter into that kingdom, and are joined to the work of salvation, through the Church — the gathering of people around Jesus that the Son established through his appointment of Simon Peter and the Twelve. Jesus associated these men forever with his kingdom, and it is through them that he “directs the Church” (551).

Day 77

CCC 554-560

The Transfiguration and Entry into Jerusalem

The more we understand, the more God can show us. As soon as Saint Peter understood that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus could begin showing him what this really meant, the King of unconquerable love who would suffer and die but rise triumphant and undefeated.

But every act of understanding is hard won, for the fallen mind is dull, the heart obtuse (see 37): “Peter scorns this prediction, nor do the others understand it any better than he” (554). As we saw, God’s pedagogy is gradual and in stages (53), and the Blessed Trinity works always to open the eyes of our mind to understand the true nature of reality. And now “for a moment Jesus discloses his divine glory” (555). Jesus reveals more of his divinity in order to help the disciples receive more fully the depths of love in God’s saving plan (see the quotation from the Byzantine Liturgy in 555). In the end it is only children, the angels, and “God’s poor” who will have the simplicity and insight to see Christ’s glory, revealed in his humility, and welcome him into Jerusalem as the true King, bringing salvation (559).

All that the Father reveals to us, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, is for the sake of our own entering into the new life of grace made possible by the Son’s Incarnation. Jesus has united his life to ours so we might unite ours to his (521). In the Transfiguration we are shown a glimpse of our blessed future in Christ — the glorious resurrected body — and by this glimpse we are given the added strength we need now to follow the way that Christ has shown us. Again we notice the double way in which this whole section invites us to share in the life of Christ — through the events of everyday life in which the perfect will of the Father may be received and through the grace of the sacraments and the liturgical year (556, 559-560).

Day 78

CCC 571-573

The Passion, Death and Burial of Jesus

These short introductory paragraphs lead us to the center of the Good News. That center is the “Paschal mystery”: the events concerning Jesus that took place around the Jewish Feast of Pasch, or Passover — his passion, death and burial, and then his resurrection. We are at the very center here because, the Catechism tells us, these events mark the accomplishment of God’s saving plan. The final and definitive nature of this accomplishment is underlined by the phrase taken from the Letter to the Hebrews: “once for all” (9:26). With the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s plan is complete. As Jesus said, “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). Jesus, having loved his own, has loved them to the end. Having been obedient to his Father, he has been obedient to the end. In the words of Saint Irenaeus, quoted in CCC 518, Jesus has now “experienced all the stages of life” and by this has made possible the gift of “communion with God to all men.”

These paragraphs impress upon us that this accomplishment was achieved in a “historical, concrete form” (572). God’s plan is not accomplished in the realm of ideas or ideals; its accomplishment was achieved at a particular time and place. It took place in the flesh. There are historical records that record the events (573). In the pages to come, the Catechism will refer time and again to the factual nature of this completion of God’s plan.

A final point worth noting is the reference to the Church’s faithfulness to the interpretation Jesus gave “of ‘all the Scriptures’” (572). We know that “all divine Scripture” speaks of Christ (134). We see here that he is also its interpreter. It is Jesus himself who taught the disciples, and it is the Church’s faithfulness to this interpretation that underlies her God-given teaching.

Day 79

CCC 574-576

Jesus and Israel

The paragraphs we read today explain the religious reasons for the conflicts which led ultimately to Jesus’ death. They center upon three points in particular, points which are summarized in CCC 576: Jesus’ attitude towards the Law, towards the Temple, and towards faith in the One God. As you can see, these are taken up as the main headings following these paragraphs, and we will spend time on each area over the next few days.

We sometimes express doubt by saying that a message or an account sounds “too good to be true.” In each of the areas of conflict in Jesus’ life, those who opposed him were facing a reality that must, to them, have seemed too good to be true. God acted “far beyond all expectation” (422) in sending his own beloved Son. Because of who he is, Jesus sums up and fulfills all of the “institutions of the Chosen People” (576). Jesus is the priest, prophet, and king; he is the true Temple and the real sacrifice; he is the giver of the new Law, the meaning of every feast and celebration; he is the revealer of what it means to say that God is One, as a Trinity of Persons in an eternal communion of love.

When Jesus came, sent from his Father, he acted in ways that made sense in the light of his identity and mission, but they were “far beyond all expectation” and so-called for a decision on the part of those who witnessed or experienced them. The Catechism lists some of his actions, signs of “contradiction” (Lk 2:34; CCC 575), that led to conflict (574). He called for a radical conversion in the light of these signs of the in-breaking kingdom he was establishing. The Catechism notes how understandable it was, in the face of “so surprising a fulfillment of the promises” (591), that many rejected him. In Jesus, they experienced the limitless nature of God’s love.

Day 80

CCC 577-582

Jesus and the Law

Jesus will not allow us to oppose law and grace, or the New Testament against the Old Testament. Jesus is not a “soft option” set against a stern, unyielding Old Testament law. He does not overthrow what has come before. He fulfills it, completes it, strengthens it, builds on it. Jesus keeps all the promises made in the time of the Old Covenant. He is the “Yes” of God (see 2 Cor 1:20), the Confirmation of the truth of what his Father has been revealing gradually by stages (see 53, 65).

The Sermon on the Mount — the collection of Jesus’ teachings gathered in Matthew 5-7 — both affirms and radically deepens what was given to the People of God in the Old Testament. Jesus wants for us not only the good action but the pure motivation, not only what the hand can give but what the heart can release. His teaching is truly “radical” in the etymological sense of “going to the root.” We have already seen that in biblical and Christian teaching the heart is central to an understanding of the person (368, 478; see also 2562-2563).

Jesus not only affirms the goodness of the whole Law, but keeps it fully and in every respect (578-580). In Jesus, God the Son lives the very Law that has its origin and source in him. He lives it in and through the human nature he assumed. Through his words and actions he shows what the true Law looks like.

The conflicts over the Law lay in Jesus’ claim to be its authoritative interpreter, in both word and deed (581). As the divine Son he taught with absolute authority, correcting, where needed, certain human interpretations that were current, especially in the area of laws on the Sabbath and on dietary regulations (581-582). For example, he taught the true “pedagogical meaning” (582) of the dietary law through explaining what it is to be truly clean of heart before God.

Day 81

CCC 583-586

Jesus and the Temple

Jesus is not only the fulfillment of the Law. He is also the fulfillment, in his own Person, of all of the worship of Israel. Jesus had zeal for the Temple (584); it is “my Father’s house” (see Jn 2:16-17). Nonetheless, the physical Temple was only ever a dim image of his own Body, and all of the sacrifices offered in the Temple only ever a poor shadow of his perfect sacrifice of obedient love to the Father for all mankind. Upon Christ’s coming, “Types and shadows have their ending,” as Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote. As in the case of the Law, Jesus did not overthrow the sacrifices and worship, the feasts and holy seasons of the Old Covenant. He came to perfect and fulfill them (583-584), although — as in the case of the Law — the meaning of his words and actions were distorted (585).

Jesus refers to himself as the true Temple of God because all worship now takes place “in him” and “through him” (586; see the footnote reference to Jn 2:21). He is the one over whom the cloud of God’s presence, his shekinah, rests (see Mk 9:7), and it is through his sacrifice of love that access to the Father is made possible (Mt 27:51).

For ourselves, we are now being “built” into the Temple of Christ’s Body. Each of us is placed as a jewel (Rv 21:18-21), a “living stone” (1 Pt 2:5), in the new Temple of Christ, in which the Holy Spirit dwells as our true life (Eph 2:21; see CCC 1695), teaching us to pray in the Son, as members of his Body united to him, to the Father (see 797).

Day 82

CCC 587-591

Jesus and Israel’s Faith in the One God and Savior

With this third element in the conflict between Jesus and some of the religious figures of his time, we reach what the Catechism calls the “real stumbling-block” for those who opposed him: his claim to be able to forgive sins (587). The scandal of Jesus’ actions was based on the fact that “only God can forgive sins” (Mk 2:7; CCC 589, see also 1441). While I can forgive a person those sins committed against myself, no one else has the right to do this; no one, that is, except God, to whom I belong. Likewise, I cannot forgive a person’s sins committed against a third party; again, only God can do this, for all of us belong to him.

God alone can forgive everything since all sin flows from disobedience towards God and expresses distrust in his goodness (397). Jesus never contradicted this fundamental truth. He never claimed that anyone other than God could declare sin to be forgiven; he simply exercised this divine authority himself — “Your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:10) — and left it to his hearers to draw the conclusion as to his union with the Father (589). His divinity was further expressed in the fact that he gave to his apostles this same authority to forgive sins (Jn 20:21-23). Clearly, only one who himself had the power and the authority to forgive sins could share this with others.

The forgiveness of sins, then, is described in the Catechism as the “divine work par excellence” (587). An appreciation of this phrase from the Catechism, together with our understanding of the meaning of the name “Jesus” as “God saves” (see 430-432), helps us to realize that the forgiveness of our sins and our liberation from evil is the focus of Christ’s work in our own lives (see 1741).

Day 83

CCC 595-598

The Trial of Jesus

Today’s reading is particularly hard-hitting. The answer to the question “Who was responsible for Christ’s crucifixion?” is quite simply, “I am responsible, because I sin, and Christ died to rescue me from my sin.” All sinners collectively are responsible for Christ’s death.

The section begins by noting that if we seek to answer that question, “Who was responsible for Christ’s crucifixion?” purely on the level of history, looking at the various actors during the trial and death of Jesus, we face a certain “historical complexity” (597). Some religious authorities in Jerusalem clearly wished him dead, on a charge of blasphemy. But this antagonism towards Jesus was not characteristic of all of the Pharisees (595-596), nor of all the Jews in Jerusalem. In any case, it is difficult to identify motivation. While the charge against him was blasphemy (Mk 14:64), the fear of Caiaphas appeared to be that Jesus would bring disaster upon the Jewish people through Roman aggression. Ultimately, the “personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone” (597).

In considering this question of responsibility, the Catechism also wants us to appreciate the difference between objectively sinful acts and the accompanying subjective guilt. Notice the side reference to 1735, which speaks about how far the guilt of bad acts can be “imputed” to a person. Many elements — fear, ignorance, pressure — can lessen the guilt and blameworthiness of a person who acts badly. On the cross Jesus said that his enemies did not know what they did, for they were ignorant of who he was (see Lk 23:34).

Of course, we do not have such an excuse, for we profess to know him and to be his disciples (597). And notice the present tense: “our sins affect Christ himself” (598). They do so in two ways: they “crucify” him anew in our hearts, where he now lives, and they “crucify” him in the members of his Body (see the scriptural references in footnote 390).

Day 84

CCC 599-605

Christ’s Redemptive Death in God’s Plan of Salvation

From the consideration of the historical circumstances surrounding Christ’s trial and death, we now turn to the place of Christ’s death in God’s plan. Jesus’ death on the cross was part of God’s deliberate plan (599), foretold in the Scriptures (601). That God has a plan does not make our actions into those of robots or mere puppets (600). It might help to look back to CCC 306-307 on Providence and secondary causes: God uses our free choices to achieve his plan. God never causes evil, but he does permit it, even the evil of the Crucifixion, so as to achieve redemption (311-312).

The Catechism also wants us to understand that the fact that this is God’s plan does not imply for a moment that the Father has no care for his Son. On the contrary, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God: they have one name (233), one substance (242), with each wholly possessing the Godhead (253) and sharing together the same mission (258). It is not that “God’s plan” is that of the Father only. It is the common plan of the Persons. Moreover, we remind ourselves that in his innermost being God is love (221). The three divine Persons live in a perfect unity of love (255). Christ’s redemptive death is therefore an expression of this Trinitarian unity and love.

Christ’s death is the divine answer to the disorder, hate, sin, and disunity of fallen humanity, the common divine response of the three Persons who are One almighty, unifying Love. As we saw in the section on the Fall, sin is a lack of harmony, of love, and of truth, and so the Son “assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin” (603). He totally identified himself with us in our fallen state, experiencing the effects of sin, and even death, in order to mend what was broken in us. His healing love is offered for each person without exception (606).

Day 85

CCC 606-612

Christ Offered Himself to His Father

In our readings for the next two days we see that Christ’s free offering of himself is out of love for the Father (606-612) and out of love for humanity (613-618).

The freedom of Christ is a key theme in today’s reading. Jesus freely chooses what the Father wills — he exercises “sovereign” freedom (609), being free as only a true king is free. And Christ’s kingly freedom is gained, paradoxically, through his total, loving obedience to the Father — “I do as the Father has commanded me.”

Jesus does not obey only externally, or halfheartedly; he embraces the Father’s plan and will — “I love the Father.” He is wholehearted in his obedience, holding nothing back. The term “embrace” is used of Jesus’ obedience whenever there is mention of the Father’s loving plan of salvation (606, 607, 609).

This embracing of the Father’s plan allows him to “accept” the suffering that is an inevitable dimension of love in the fallen world in which deep sin and the distortions of self-will oppose the Father’s plan. Perfect Love faces the opposition of sin and its consequences, experiencing the horror of suffering and death. This can’t be “embraced,” for it is not itself a good, but an agony; but it can be — and is — fully accepted. “By accepting in his human will that the Father’s will be done, he accepts his death as redemptive” (612).

This free and loving embrace of the Father’s plan, even in the face of suffering and death, is supremely expressed in the Mass. Jesus takes the very heart and center of who he is — his free and loving union with the Father — and gives this — gives himself — to us. The Catechism describes it this way: “Jesus transformed this Last Supper with the apostles into the memorial of his voluntary offering to the Father for the salvation of men” (610). The Last Supper, in the body given and the blood poured out, perfectly expresses and incarnates his total self-offering (610-611).

Day 86

CCC 613-618

Christ Offered Himself for Our Sins

A sacrifice is an offering. Why are offerings made to God, who is infinite Being? They add nothing to him, give him no joy that he does not already have, provide no complement to his already boundless love.

Offerings are made, not for his sake, but for ours. Because we are made to give ourselves over into his perfect happiness and enjoy him forever, we seek every means by which to express this. We want to offer ourselves in love, so we symbolize this by giving things that belong to us — tithes of crops, of animals, of time. But they only symbolize the gift God really wants: the heart. And when the heart is not given along with the offering, we see the reaction in the Sacred Scriptures: ‘“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?’ says the Lord; ‘I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts’” (Is 1:11); “‘Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?’” (Ps 50:13).