Week 1: Intro - 49

It’s time for our first reading assignment! This week we will be reading and discussing the Introduction,or Prologue as my edition calls it, and passages (not pages!) 1-49, also known as days 1-7 on the printable CHN guide. Before you begin reading I strongly recommend that you say a prayer to the Holy Spirit, using the prayer I added to the right side bar, the shorter one in the CHN guide, or one of your own choosing.

Good news- the reading didn’t take me all that long. Hopefully they will stay a uniform length.
I found this link to the Compendium very useful. The Compendium is basically a shortened more concise version of the Catechism in a question and answer format. When I had trouble with a passage in the Catechism, I looked it up in the Compendium. Seeing it rephrased or even just reading the same information an additional time proved very helpful.

So without further ado, here are my notes and mommy-thoughts, I hope they will prove helpful and a starting point for reading and discussion.

Prologue

I The Life of Men- to know and love God.
I found this quote from the Compendium (a link I think I’ll be using a lot) that sums it up nicely:

"God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness
freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. In the fullness of
time, God the Father sent his Son as the Redeemer and Savior of mankind, fallen
into sin, thus calling all into his Church and, through the work of the Holy
Spirit, making them adopted children and heirs of his eternal happiness." (CCC
1-25)

The rest of the prologue (sections II-IV) deals with defining catechesis, and information on the history, structure, intended use of the Catechism. What is this crazy huge book anyway? Read the Prologue and find out!

“Catechesis is an education in the faith of children, young people, and adults
which includes especially the teaching if Christian doctrine imparted, generally
speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the
hearers into the fullness of Christian life.” (CCC 5)

Traditionally catechisms are built on four pillars, and this one follows that tradition:
Profession of faith (the Creed)
Sacraments of faith
Life of faith (The Commandments)
Prayer of the believer (The Lord’s Prayer)

Hopefully in reading the Catechism from beginning to end we will be able to appreciate and understand it as a “united whole.” (CCC 18)The Prologue also contains a section that details how to adapt the Catechism for use in different cultures and situations. Truly we belong to a universal Church that has relevance to all places and circumstances!

And finally we are given an excellent reminder “Above All- Charity.”

“The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love
that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for
action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can
see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no
other objective than to arrive at love.” (CCC 25)

And so ends the Prologue and we are on to Chapter 1- Man’s Capacity for God of Section 1- I Believe- We Believe of Part 1- Profession of Faith. Does anyone else find all these levels of division confusing? The chapter itself is divided into sections using Roman numerals, I have kept that format in my notes for clarity.

Part 1, Section1, Chapter 1

I The Desire For God

“The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created
by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in
God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” (CCC
27)

Man is a religious being, and we can find evidence of this throughout history across all cultures.
However, this “intimate and vital bond” with God is often easily forgotten. Several causes are given for this forgetting:
1. Revolt against evil in the world
2. Religious ignorance
3. Cares and troubles of the world
4. Scandal or bad example of believers
5. Currents of thought hostile to religion
6. Attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God out of fear and flee his call

Wow, I know can personally relate to causes # 2, 3, 5, and 6, and not just in my life BC (before conversion). I think these things are just more subtle now. I really noticed myself doing #6 just this week. I noticed this at times when I was engaged in a conflict with my son (who has developed quite a sassy attitude of late). I start to lose my temper, and the farther I go from a charitable and loving parental response (deeper into sin), the less likely I am to turn to God in prayer, both at the moment and even for hours/days afterward. Yes, I actually try to hide from God.

I’m sure I look just as foolish to our Lord as my 6-year-old did to me the other day when I discovered him sitting on the white bathroom rug with a guilty look all over his face and an empty bottle of blue paint next to him. In a misguided attempt to avoid discovery he even told me in all earnestness, “Nothing happened here, I am sitting on this rug for NO reason in particular.” The funny part was, it was washable bath tub paint, so if he would have told me immediately about the mess I could have washed it easily. Hmmm, I’m sure there is a message for me here, I am going to make a pointed effort to bring all my messes to God right away!

Can you share an experience with any of these six factors that cause us to reject or forget God?

Despite all these ways that man can forget about God, God “never ceases to call every man to him, so as to find life and happiness.” (CCC 30) Definitely check out this passage which includes a great quote from St. Augustine!
Do you have a great "restless heart" story to share?

II Ways of Coming to Know God
This section discusses ways of coming to know God: through the beauty and order creation and through the human person and his soul (referred to as the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”).

This reminds me of the importance of getting kids outside to experience God’s creation. I try to incorporate nature study into my homeschooling, and I need the reminder that it is not just an extension of our science or phys. ed. curriculum, but an aspect of bringing them up in the faith. In fact I think we can look at all the school subjects in this light, marveling at the order and wonder in the universe through science, exploring the orderliness and patterns of mathematics, the beauty of art and music, all these things can help our children to know and love God.

III The Knowledge of God According to The Church
This section is all about the role of the Church. Although man IS capable of coming to know God by reason alone (because he is created in the image of God) there are many obstacles to his doing so including the impact of the senses, imagination, and “disordered appetites which are the consequence of original sin”. (CCC 37)
So we need divine revelation to enlighten us, “not only about those things that exceed [our] understanding, but also ‘about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasps of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error.’” (CCC 38)

IV How Can We Speak About God?
This section is about how we can use our human ways of knowing and thinking and our words which are human and describe earthly things to describe God- “the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable”. (CCC 42)
From the Compendium:

"By taking as our starting point the perfections of man and of the other
creatures which are a reflection, albeit a limited one, of the infinite
perfection of God, we are able to speak about God with all people. We must,
however, continually purify our language insofar as it is image-bound and
imperfect, realizing that we can never fully express the infinite mystery of
God." (CCC 39-4348-49)

At the end of each chapter, there is a review section called “In Brief” which provides a handy point by point review! Notice these points have their own reference numbers, so don’t skip them as they are part of the assigned reading.

So now your job is to go do the reading, and come back here and post any questions, comments, insights, favorite passages, or anything else Catechism related! Go, go, go!!!!