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