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DIVINE REVELATION and OUR FAITH RESPONSE (RCIA) (C 50-100, 142-184, USC Ch

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DIVINE REVELATION and OUR FAITH RESPONSE (RCIA) (C 50-100, 142-184, USC Ch 1 DIVINE REVELATION AND OUR FAITH RESPONSE (RCIA) (C 50-100, 142-184, USC Ch. 1,2,4) The Catechism of the Catholic Church (the universal How God reveals himself in creation (C31-33, USC p.3) catechism) has four parts: 1. Creed: Faith Professed God’s fingerprints are all over his creation. It is for us 2. Sacraments: Faith Celebrated to open the eyes of our soul and see this presence of 3. Christian Morality: Faith Lived God in all that he has made. The author of Psalm 19 4. Prayer: Faith Prayed who lived about 1,000 years before Christ shares with us his sense of God’s existence and presence in The first eleven lessons of this series focus on the creation when he wrote: Creed— Faith Professed. These lessons use the universal catechism and the United States Catholic The heavens proclaim the glory of God and the Catechism as resources. The Catechism of the firmament shows forth the work of his hands. Catholic Church is referenced as C, followed by the Day unto day takes up the story and night unto paragraph number/s, (e.g., C142-150), and the United night makes known the message. (Ps 19:1-2) States Catholic Catechism as USC, followed by the Throughout history, people with open minds have chapter/s and/or page number/s (e.g., USC ch 1, p.2). seen the universe as evidence of God’s existence. The It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to order, harmony and beauty of the world point to an reveal himself and to make known the mystery intelligent creator. of his will, which was that people can draw Pause: Some people love the great outdoors and find it near to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh in the Holy Spirit, and thus become easy to see God in creation. Others just go about their lives and pay very little attention to creation. What about you? To sharers in his divine life. what extent do you find God’s fingerprints in creation? (Divine Revelation #2) The desire for God is written in the human heart because man is created by God and for Contemplating the human person (C33-35 USC p.4) God; God never ceases to draw man to himself. The Catechism tells us that certain traits in the human (C27) person can also lead us to belief in God: openness to truth and beauty, desire for moral goodness, the way This lesson is divided into two parts: we treasure freedom, the voice of conscience, and our Part One: How God reveals himself to us through longings for the infinite and for happiness (C33). All creation, Israel and in Jesus. How God’s of these yearnings within the human spirit or soul can Revelation of himself is transmitted draw us to the reality that people call God. After through Scripture and Tradition rejecting God for many years and then allowing himself to be found by God, Augustine said: “You Part Two: Faith: our response to Divine Revelation have made us for yourself, O Lord, our hearts are ________________ restless until they rest in you” (C30). This yearning for God found in the history of people in all places and PART ONE: DIVINE REVELATION times leads us to believe that in the core of his being, man is fundamentally a religious being (C28). We The Good News is that we come from the loving possess within us a religious impulse and drive toward hands of a God who wishes to reveal himself to us and God. draw us into a loving relationship with him, into an intimate relationship with the Father, Son and Holy In the seventeenth century, the French philosopher Spirit. Even though God is essentially mystery, a Blaise Pascal said: “There is light enough for those mystery so profound that we cannot comprehend, yet who want to see and darkness enough for those who this God has not removed himself from us. In fact in are otherwise inclined.” He also said that faith in him “we live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God is life’s best wager: “If you win, you win Not only that, but our loving God has placed within us everything.” With atheism or unbelief, one risks a capacity to respond to his outreaches to us. In the losing everything. scriptures, we have numerous examples of men and women responding to God’s Revelation of himself. While “through reason we can come to know God with certainty on the basis of his works” (C50), it is 1 only with Divine Revelation that we can come to Jesus, the fullness of God’s public Revelation know the inner life of God and develop a personal relationship with him. To this Divine Revelation we In times past, God spoke in partial and various will now turn. ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days he has spoken through his Son. (Heb 1:1-2) Pause: What have you or might you underline in the above section? Christ…is the Father’s one and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will God reveals his loving plan of salvation through be no other Word than this one. (C65) “deeds” and “words” (C51-67, USC p.12) In and through Jesus’ deeds (miracles, outreach to By natural reason man can know God with sinners and the marginalized, his Passion, Death and certainty, on the basis of his works. But there is Resurrection) and words (e.g., Sermon on the Mount, another order of knowledge, which man cannot [Mt 5-7]), God spoke a perfect, complete and final possibly arrive at by his own powers: the order word to humanity. During his time on earth, Jesus of divine Revelation. (C50) revealed to us that within the one God, there is a As we look at the dynamics involved in human trinity of persons, that God is infinitely loving, relationships, we see the truth of the above statement. forgiving, generous and many, many other things Human beings reveal themselves to each other by which we can read about in the pages of Scripture. deeds and words, both of which are linked. The truth With Jesus, public Revelation ended. By stating this, of what we say is borne out by our deeds. the Church is not saying that God went silent with the When Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God, they Ascension of Jesus into heaven. While public rejected his offer of friendship and alienated humanity Revelation ended with Jesus, our understanding of from their Creator (Gen 3). But God did not stop Revelation did not end. In his book, The Essential loving us, his sons and daughters. Rather, he created a Catholic Catechism, Alan Schreck writes: plan to restore our friendship with him. Again and The truth that is found in Jesus Christ is again God offered friendship to man and taught him to something like a gold mine. We have discovered hope for salvation. the mine (or rather, God has revealed the mine The Catechism outlines for us God’s gradual to us), yet we still have the task of digging out Revelation of himself and his plan to save the world, all the gold. This means that the Holy Spirit is beginning with covenants with Noah, Abraham, and enabling the Church over the course of centuries the people of Israel (C54-65). to “uncover” the truth revealed in Christ, and at times along the way to define the truth that she The two most significant revelatory events in Israel’s has come to understand. history were the Exodus and the Sinai Covenant. In and through the Exodus event, God showed himself to So until the end of time, the Holy Spirit will be be a liberator and savior, a God mighty in deeds on helping the Church to: behalf of his people who were in bondage in Egypt. In • grow in her understanding of what Jesus said and the Sinai Covenant, God revealed his plan to have a did; covenant relationship with Israel. The Ten Commandments would show Israel how they should • state in new and fresh ways her growing under- relate to God and each other. The words of the standing of Divine Revelation. (The Catechism of prophets would further reveal who God was for Israel the Catholic Church, 1992, is an example of the and what he expected of them. The prophets also Church’s most recent understanding of herself and spoke of a New Covenant that God would enter into her beliefs.) with Israel and all humanity (Jer 31:31-34). They spoke of a messiah who would bring salvation to God’s Private Revelation. While the Catholic Church people. believes that public Revelation ended with Christ, she also believes that one form of the Holy Spirit’s on- going activity in the Church occurs through what has Pause: The two most important events in Israel’s history been termed “private revelation,” e.g., apparitions of and relationship with God are the Exodus and the Sinai Covenant. Looking at your life and relationship with God, Mary to members of the faithful. The Catechism states: “Throughout the ages, there have been so can you name one key event or experience? 2 called ‘private’ revelations, some of which have been Christian churches, each one interpreting Scripture in recognized by the authority of the Church. They do its own way. not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive They looked to church leadership.
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