interdependence of parts on one another, just as the different parts of a body work together for the good of the whole and can only be understood in relation to that whole.
Practiced with persistence and diligence, reading organically will transform our relationship to the Catechism. As a simple exercise, to get the idea, read CCC 218 and then the single cross-reference to CCC 295. CCC 218 explains the special revelation to Israel as being the result of God’s gratuitous love. The cross-reference to CCC 295 reminds us that God’s love is also the source of all creation. So we are led to a profounder truth through the cross-reference; we see that God’s actions, in creation and in history, are always consistent with this one principle: that they flow from his love. God’s love for his people Israel is harmonious with his love for all nations, indeed with the whole of creation.
Day 10
CCC 23-25
Necessary Adaptations
Each paragraph in the Catechism makes a single point, the three points here making a fitting climax to the Prologue. Each paragraph speaks of a different “necessary adaptation.”
The first necessary adaptation is of our lives to the truths of the faith (23). The faith we study in the Catechism wants to put down roots in our lives, and the authors of the Catechism are intending that the truths we find here will “shine forth” in our lives. This will happen if we read attentively, deepening our understanding of these truths, as God works to transform us through our understanding. And so we will find we are learning to make our lives faithful to God.
The second necessary adaptation is of our teaching of the faith to those whom God sends to us (24). Each person is unique, and so we have to assist each person to receive these same truths in a way unique to them so that their lives, also, can be fully “adapted” to the truths of the faith, according to who they are. Thus we will find we are learning to make our lives faithful to the souls God sends to us.
Finally, everything is to be adapted to charity (25). Charity, the love of God, is the eternal, unvarying measuring point to which we “adapt” everything in our lives and in our teaching. In our ongoing seeking to be faithful to God and to the human person, we will consciously and persistently seek to make visible the love of the Lord. In our lives and in our teaching, we are to strive to understand that intrinsic connection to God’s love more and more deeply.
1 In the reader’s particular edition, this Letter may follow the other Letter of Saint John Paul II, Laetamur Magnopere, which we will read tomorrow.
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church.
3 This is also referred to as the Index or the Analytical Index in different editions of the Catechism.
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