It is in keeping with the very meaning of the Eucharist that the Faithful, if they have the required dispositions, receive communion each time they participate in the Mass. 219 As the Second Vatican Council says: "That more perfect form of participation in the Mass whereby the faithful, after the priest's communion, receive the Lord's Body from the same sacrifice, is warmly recommended." 220

The ministerial priesthood has the task not only of representing Christ - Head of the Church - before the assembly of the Faithful, but also of acting in the name of the whole Church when presenting to God the Prayer of the Church, and above all when offering the Eucharistic sacrifice. 31

The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of bishops and priests, and the common priesthood of all the Faithful participate, "each in its own proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ." While being "ordered one to another," they differ essentially. 22 In what sense? While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of Baptismal Grace - a life of faith, hope, and charity, a life according to the Spirit - ,the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the Baptismal grace of all Christians. the ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church. For this reaSon it is transmitted by its own sacrament, the sacrament of Holy Orders.

Christ, high priest and unique mediator, has made of the Church "a kingdom, priests for his God and Father." 20 The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly. the Faithful exercise their Baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his own vocation, in Christ's mission as priest, prophet, and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation the faithful are "consecrated to be . . . a holy priesthood." 21

Through these sacraments those already consecrated by Baptism and Confirmation 1 for the common priesthood of all the Faithful can receive particular consecrations. Those who receive the sacrament of Holy Orders are consecrated in Christ's name "to feed the Church by the word and Grace of God." 2 On their part, "Christian spouses are fortified and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and dignity of their state by a special sacrament." 3

A particular gift of the Holy Spirit. the first Grace of this sacrament is one of strengthening, peace and courage to overcome the difficulties that go with the condition of serious illness or the frailty of old age. This grace is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who renews trust and Faith in God and strengthens against the temptations of the evil one, the temptation to discouragement and anguish in the face of death. 134 This assistance from the Lord by the power of his Spirit is meant to lead the sick perSon to healing of the soul, but also of the body if such is God's will. 135 Furthermore, "if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven." 136

The celebration of the sacrament includes the following principal elements: the "priests of the Church" 132 - in silence - lay hands on the sick; they pray over them in the Faith of the Church 133 - this is the epiclesis proper to this sacrament; they then anoint them with oil blessed, if possible, by the bishop. These liturgical actions indicate what Grace this sacrament confers upon the sick.

Word and sacrament form an indivisible whole. the Liturgy of the Word, preceded by an act of repentance, opens the celebration. the words of Christ, the witness of the apostles, awaken the Faith of the sick perSon and of the community to ask the Lord for the strength of his Spirit.

"Episcopal consecration confers, together with the office of sanctifying, also the offices of teaching and ruling.... In fact ... by the imposition of hands and through the words of the consecration, the Grace of the Holy Spirit is given, and a sacred character is impressed in such wise that bishops, in an eminent and visible manner, take the place of Christ himself, teacher, shepherd, and priest, and act as his representative (in Eius perSona agant)." 37 "By virtue, therefore, of the Holy Spirit who has been given to them, bishops have been constituted true and authentic teachers of the Faith and have been made pontiffs and pastors." 38

"Whilst not having the supreme degree of the pontifical office, and notwithstanding the fact that they depend on the bishops in the exercise of their own proper power, the priests are for all that associated with them by reaSon of their sacerdotal dignity; and in virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, after the image of Christ, the supreme and eternal priest, they are consecrated in order to preach the Gospel and shepherd the Faithful as well as to celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament." 46

Seeing God's covenant with Israel in the image of exclusive and Faithful married love, the prophets prepared the Chosen People's conscience for a deepened understanding of the unity and indissolubility of marriage. 102 The books of Ruth and Tobit bear moving witness to an elevated sense of marriage and to the fidelity and tenderness of spouses. Tradition has always seen in the Song of Solomon a unique expression of human love, a pure reflection of God's love - a love "strong as death" that "many waters cannot quench." 103

According to Faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; 96 their mutual attraction, the Creator's own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust; 97 and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work. 98

All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of Faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." 70 Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to "the affairs of the Lord," 71 they give themselves entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God. 72

Given the importance that the ordination of a bishop, a priest, or a deacon has for the life of the particular Church, its celebration calls for as many of the Faithful as possible to take part. It should take place preferably on Sunday, in the cathedral, with solemnity appropriate to the occasion. All three ordinations, of the bishop, of the pRiest, and of the deacon, follow the same movement. Their proper place is within the Eucharistic liturgy.

"The priests, prudent cooperators of the episcopal college and its support and instrument, called to the service of the People of God, constitute, together with their bishop, a unique sacerdotal college (presbyterium) dedicated, it is, true to a variety of distinct duties. In each local assembly of the Faithful they represent, in a certain sense, the bishop, with whom they are associated in all trust and generosity; in part they take upon themselves his duties and solicitude and in their daily toils discharge them." 51 priests can exercise their ministry only in dependence on the bishop and in communion with him. the promise of obedience they make to the bishop at the moment of ordination and the kiss of peace from him at the end of the ordination liturgy mean that the bishop considers them his co-workers, his Sons, his brothers and his friends, and that they in return owe him love and obedience.

"It is in the Eucharistic cult or in the Eucharistic assembly of the Faithful (synaxis) that they exercise in a supreme degree their sacred office; there, acting in the perSon of Christ and proclaiming his mystery, they unite the votive offerings of the faithful to the sacrifice of Christ their head, and in the sacrifice of the Mass they make present again and apply, until the coming of the Lord, the unique sacrifice of the New Testament, that namely of Christ offering himself once for all a spotless victim to the Father." 49 From this unique sacrifice their whole priestly ministry draws its strength. 50

Only priests (bishops and presbyters) are ministers of the Anointing of the Sick. 130 It is the duty of pastors to instruct the Faithful on the benefits of this sacrament. the faithful should encourage the sick to call for a priest to receive this sacrament. the sick should prepare themselves to receive it with good dispositions, assisted by their pastor and the whole ecclesial community, which is invited to surround the sick in a special way through their Prayers and fraternal attention.

The Anointing of the Sick "is not a sacrament for those only who are at the point of death. Hence, as soon as anyone of the Faithful begins to be in danger of death from sickness or old age, the fitting time for him to receive this sacrament has certainly already arrived." 129

The confessor is not the master of God's forgiveness, but its servant. the minister of this sacrament should unite himself to the intention and charity of Christ. 71 He should have a proven knowledge of Christian behavior, experience of human affairs, respect and sensitivity toward the one who has fallen; he must love the truth, be Faithful to the Magisterium of the Church, and lead the penitent with patience toward healing and full maturity. He must pray and do penance for his penitent, entrusting him to the Lord's mercy.

Priests must encourage the Faithful to come to the sacrament of Penance and must make themselves available to celebrate this sacrament each time Christians reaSonably ask for it. 70

According to the Church's command, "after having attained the age of discretion, each of the Faithful is bound by an obligation faithfully to confess serious sins at least once a year." 56 Anyone who is aware of having committed a mortal sin must not receive Holy Communion, even if he experiences deep contrition, without having first received sacramental absolution, unless he has a grave reaSon for receiving Communion and there is no possibility of going to confession. 57 Children must go to the sacrament of Penance before receiving Holy Communion for the first time. 58

Jesus calls to conversion. This call is an essential part of the proclamation of the kingdom: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel." 16 In the Church's preaching this call is addressed first to those who do not yet know Christ and his Gospel. Also, Baptism is the principal place for the first and fundamental conversion. It is by Faith in the Gospel and by Baptism 17 that one renounces evil and gains salvation, that is, the forgiveness of all sins and the gift of new life.

When, in the Ordinary's judgment, a grave necessity arises, Catholic ministers may give the sacraments of Eucharist, Penance, and Anointing of the Sick to other Christians not in full communion with the Catholic Church, who ask for them of their own will, provided they give evidence of holding the Catholic Faith regarding these sacraments and possess the required dispositions. 238

The unity of the Mystical Body: the Eucharist makes the Church. Those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ. Through it Christ unites them to all the Faithful in one body - the Church. Communion renews, strengthens, and deepens this incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism. In Baptism we have been called to form but one body. 230 The Eucharist fulfills this call: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread:" 231

The Church obliges the Faithful "to take part in the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feast days" and, prepared by the sacrament of Reconciliation, to receive the Eucharist at least once a year, if possible during the Easter seaSon. 221 But the Church strongly encourages the faithful to receive the holy Eucharist on Sundays and feast days, or more often still, even daily.

In this sacrament, the sinner, placing himself before the merciful judgment of God, anticipates in a certain way the judgment to which he will be subjected at the end of his earthly life. For it is now, in this life, that we are offered the choice between life and death, and it is only by the road of conversion that we can enter the Kingdom, from which one is excluded by grave sin. 79 In converting to Christ through penance and Faith, the sinner passes from death to life and "does not come into judgment." 80

In the communion of saints, "a perennial link of charity exists between the Faithful who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are expiating their sins in purgatory and those who are still pilgrims on earth. between them there is, too, an abundant exchange of all good things." 86 In this wonderful exchange, the holiness of one profits others, well beyond the harm that the sin of one could cause others. Thus recourse to the communion of saints lets the contrite sinner be more promptly and efficaciously purified of the punishments for sin.

However, the apostolic Church has its own rite for the sick, attested to by St. James: "Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders [presbyters] of the Church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the Prayer of Faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven." 122 Tradition has recognized in this rite one of the seven sacraments. 123

The man of the Old Testament lives his sickness in the presence of God. It is before God that he laments his illness, and it is of God, Master of life and death, that he implores healing. 98 Illness becomes a way to conversion; God's forgiveness initiates the healing. 99 It is the experience of Israel that illness is mysteriously linked to sin and evil, and that Faithfulness to God according to his law restores life: "For I am the Lord, your healer." 100 The prophet intuits that suffering can also have a redemptive meaning for the sins of others. 101 Finally Isaiah announces that God will usher in a time for Zion when he will pardon every offense and heal every illness. 102

"Individual, integral confession and absolution remain the only ordinary way for the Faithful to reconcile themselves with God and the Church, unless physical or moral impossibility excuses from this kind of confession." 94 There are profound reaSons for this. Christ is at work in each of the sacraments. He personally addresses every sinner: "My son, your sins are forgiven." 95 He is the physician tending each one of the sick who need him to cure them. 96 He raises them up and reintegrates them into fraternal communion. Personal confession is thus the form most expressive of reconciliation with God and with the Church.

In case of grave necessity recourse may be had to a communal celebration of reconciliation with general confession and general absolution. Grave necessity of this sort can arise when there is imminent danger of death without sufficient time for the priest or priests to hear each penitent's confession. Grave necessity can also exist when, given the number of penitents, there are not enough confessors to hear individual confessions properly in a reaSonable time, so that the penitents through no fault of their own would be deprived of sacramental Grace or Holy Communion for a long time. In this case, for the absolution to be valid the Faithful must have the intention of individually confessing their sins in the time required. 91 The diocesan bishop is the judge of whether or not the conditions required for general absolution exist. 92 A large gathering of the faithful on the occasion of major feasts or pilgrimages does not constitute a case of grave necessity. 93

Since the Faithful departed now being purified are also members of the same communion of saints, one way we can help them is to obtain indulgences for them, so that the temporal punishments due for their sins may be remitted.

In the Latin Rite the celebration of marriage between two Catholic Faithful normally takes place during Holy Mass, because of the connection of all the sacraments with the Paschal mystery of Christ. 120 In the Eucharist the memorial of the New Covenant is realized, the New Covenant in which Christ has united himself for ever to the Church, his beloved bride for whom he gave himself up. 121 It is therefore fitting that the spouses should seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives by uniting it to the offering of Christ for his Church made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and by receiving the Eucharist so that, communicating in the same Body and the same Blood of Christ, they may form but "one body" in Christ. 122

This is the reaSon why the Church normally requires that the Faithful contract marriage according to the ecclesiastical form. Several reasons converge to explain this requirement: 132 - Sacramental marriage is a liturgical act. It is therefore appropriate that it should be celebrated in the public liturgy of the Church; - Marriage introduces one into an ecclesial order, and creates rights and duties in the Church between the spouses and towards their children; - Since marriage is a state of life in the Church, certainty about it is necessary (hence the obligation to have witnesses); - the public character of the consent protects the "I do" once given and helps the spouses remain faithful to it.

Difference of confession between the spouses does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle for marriage, when they succeed in placing in common what they have received from their respective communities, and learn from each other the way in which each lives in fidelity to Christ. But the difficulties of mixed marriages must not be underestimated. They arise from the fact that the separation of Christians has not yet been overcome. the spouses risk experiencing the tragedy of Christian disunity even in the heart of their own home. Disparity of cult can further aggravate these difficulties. Differences about Faith and the very notion of marriage, but also different religious mentalities, can become sources of tension in marriage, especially as regards the education of children. the temptation to religious indifference can then arise.

A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true Faith, for charity proceeds at the same time "from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith." 60

In the formation of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path, 54 we must assimilate it in Faith and Prayer and put it into practice. We must also examine our conscience before the Lord's Cross. We are assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church. 55

Conscience is a judgment of reaSon whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow Faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:

The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God calls us to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual perSonally, but also to the Church as a whole, the new people made up of those who have accepted the promise and live from it in Faith.

The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity. They express the vocation of the Faithful associated with the glory of his Passion and Resurrection; they shed light on the actions and attitudes characteristic of the Christian life; they are the paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulations; they proclaim the blessings and rewards already secured, however dimly, for Christ's disciples; they have begun in the lives of the Virgin Mary and all the saints.

The first and last point of reference of this Catechesis will always be Jesus Christ himself, who is "the way, and the truth, and the life." 24 It is by looking to him in Faith that Christ's faithful can hope that he himself fulfills his promises in them, and that, by loving him with the same love with which he has loved them, they may perform works in keeping with their dignity:

Catechesis has to reveal in all clarity the joy and the demands of the way of Christ. 22 Catechesis for the "newness of life" 23 in him should be: -a catechesis of the Holy Spirit, the interior Master of life according to Christ, a gentle guest and friend who inspires, guides, corrects, and strengthens this life; -a catechesis of Grace, for it is by grace that we are saved and again it is by grace that our works can bear fruit for eternal life; -a catechesis of the beatitudes, for the way of Christ is summed up in the beatitudes, the only path that leads to the eternal beatitude for which the human heart longs; -a catechesis of sin and forgiveness, for unless man acknowledges that he is a sinner he cannot know the truth about himself, which is a condition for acting justly; and without the offer of forgiveness he would not be able to bear this truth; -a catechesis of the human virtues which causes one to grasp the beauty and attraction of right dispositions towards goodness; -a catechesis of the Christian virtues of Faith, hope, and charity, generously inspired by the example of the saints; -a catechesis of the twofold commandment of charity set forth in the Decalogue; -an ecclesial catechesis, for it is through the manifold exchanges of "spiritual goods" in the "communion of saints" that Christian life can grow, develop, and be communicated.

Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reaSon and Faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life. the virtuous man is he who freely practices the good. The moral virtues are acquired by human effort. They are the fruit and seed of morally good acts; they dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love.

The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the Faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. 77

The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. the tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: "charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, Faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity." 112

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. They belong in their fullness to Christ, Son of David. 109 They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make the Faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations.

"If I . . . have not charity," says the Apostle, "I am nothing." Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, "if I . . . have not charity, I gain nothing." 103 Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues: "So Faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the greatest of these is charity." 104

Christian hope unfolds from the beginning of Jesus' preaching in the proclamation of the beatitudes. the beatitudes raise our hope toward heaven as the new Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through the trials that await the disciples of Jesus. But through the merits of Jesus Christ and of his Passion, God keeps us in the "hope that does not disappoint." 88 Hope is the "sure and steadfast anchor of the soul . . . that enters . . . where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf." 89 Hope is also a weapon that protects us in the struggle of salvation: "Let us . . . put on the breastplate of Faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." 90 It affords us joy even under trial: "Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation." 91 Hope is expressed and nourished in Prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire.

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is Faithful." 84 "The Holy Spirit . . . he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life." 85

The disciple of Christ must not only keep the Faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: "All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks." 82 Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: "So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven." 83

The gift of Faith remains in one who has not sinned against it. 80 But "faith apart from works is dead": 81 when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body.

Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith "man freely commits his entire self to God." 78 For this reaSon the believer seeks to know and do God's will. "The righteous shall live by faith." Living faith "work(s) through charity." 79

The Symbol of the Faith confesses the greatness of God's gifts to man in his work of creation, and even more in redemption and sanctification. What faith confesses, the sacraments communicate: by the sacraments of rebirth, Christians have become "children of God," 2 "partakers of the divine nature." 3 Coming to see in the faith their new dignity, Christians are called to lead henceforth a life "worthy of the gospel of Christ." 4 They are made capable of doing so by the Grace of Christ and the gifts of his Spirit, which they receive through the sacraments and through Prayer.

The Eucharistic Sacrifice. When the celebration takes place in Church the Eucharist is the heart of the Paschal reality of Christian death. 189 In the Eucharist, the Church expresses her efficacious communion with the departed: offering to the Father in the Holy Spirit the sacrifice of the death and resurrection of Christ, she asks to purify his child of his sins and their consequences, and to admit him to the Paschal fullness of the table of the Kingdom. 190 It is by the Eucharist thus celebrated that the community of the Faithful, especially the family of the deceased, learn to live in communion with the one who "has fallen asleep in the Lord," by communicating in the Body of Christ of which he is a living member and, then, by praying for him and with him.

In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to Faith, believing families are of primary importance as centers of living, radiant faith. For this reaSon the Second Vatican Council, using an ancient expression, calls the family the Ecclesia domestica. 166 It is in the bosom of the family that parents are "by word and example . . . the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children. They should encourage them in the vocation which is proper to each child, fostering with special care any religious vocation." 167

Toward Christians who live in this situation, and who often keep the Faith and desire to bring up their children in a Christian manner, priests and the whole community must manifest an attentive solicitude, so that they do not consider themselves separated from the Church, in whose life they can and must participate as baptized perSons:

It can seem difficult, even impossible, to bind oneself for life to another human being. This makes it all the more important to proclaim the Good News that God loves us with a definitive and irrevocable love, that married couples share in this love, that it supports and sustains them, and that by their own Faithfulness they can be witnesses to God's faithful love. Spouses who with God's Grace give this witness, often in very difficult conditions, deserve the gratitude and support of the ecclesial community. 156

The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses' community of perSons, which embraces their entire life: "so they are no longer two, but one flesh." 151 They "are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving." 152 This human communion is confirmed, purified, and completed by communion in Jesus Christ, given through the sacrament of Matrimony. It is deepened by lives of the common Faith and by the Eucharist received together.

"Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the perSon enter - appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and Faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility. In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values." 150

In marriages with disparity of cult the Catholic spouse has a particular task: "For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband." 138 It is a great joy for the Christian spouse and for the Church if this "consecration" should lead to the free conversion of the other spouse to the Christian Faith. 139 Sincere married love, the humble and patient practice of the family virtues, and perseverance in Prayer can prepare the non-believing spouse to accept the Grace of conversion.

Through ecumenical dialogue Christian communities in many regions have been able to put into effect a common pastoral practice for mixed marriages. Its task is to help such couples live out their particular situation in the light of Faith, overcome the tensions between the couple's obligations to each other and towards their ecclesial communities, and encourage the flowering of what is common to them in faith and respect for what separates them.

The liturgy of the Word during funerals demands very careful preparation because the assembly present for the funeral may include some Faithful who rarely attend the liturgy, and friends of the deceased who are not Christians. the homily in particular must "avoid the literary genre of funeral eulogy" 188 and illumine the mystery of Christian death in the light of the risen Christ.

The greeting of the community. A greeting of Faith begins the celebration. Relatives and friends of the deceased are welcomed with a word of "consolation" (in the New Testament sense of the Holy Spirit's power in hope). 187 The community assembling in Prayer also awaits the "words of eternal life." the death of a member of the community (or the anniversary of a death, or the seventh or fortieth day after death) is an event that should lead beyond the perspectives of "this world" and should draw the faithful into the true perspective of faith in the risen Christ.

All the sacraments, and principally those of Christian initiation, have as their goal the last Passover of the child of God which, through death, leads him into the life of the Kingdom. Then what he confessed in Faith and hope will be fulfilled: "I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." 182

Pastoral discernment is needed to sustain and support popular piety and, if necessary, to purify and correct the religious sense which underlies these devotions so that the Faithful may advance in knowledge of the mystery of Christ. 180 Their exercise is subject to the care and judgment of the bishops and to the general norms of the Church.

Besides sacramental liturgy and sacramentals, Catechesis must take into account the forms of piety and popular devotions among the Faithful. the religious sense of the Christian people has always found expression in various forms of piety surrounding the Church's sacramental life, such as the veneration of relics, visits to sanctuaries, pilgrimages, processions, the stations of the cross, religious dances, the rosary, medals, 178 etc.

Sacramentals do not confer the Grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church's Prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it. "For well-disposed members of the Faithful, the liturgy of the sacraments and sacramentals sanctifies almost every event of their lives with the divine grace which flows from the Paschal mystery of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. From this source all sacraments and sacramentals draw their power. There is scarcely any proper use of material things which cannot be thus directed toward the sanctification of men and the praise of God." 174

The celebration of the liturgy, therefore, should correspond to the genius and culture of the different peoples. 70 In order that the mystery of Christ be "made known to all the nations . . . to bring about the obedience of Faith," 71 it must be proclaimed, celebrated, and lived in all cultures in such a way that they themselves are not abolished by it, but redeemed and fulfilled: 72 It is with and through their own human culture, assumed and transfigured by Christ, that the multitude of God's children has access to the Father, in order to glorify him in the one Spirit.

The liturgical traditions or rites presently in use in the Church are the Latin (principally the Roman rite, but also the rites of certain local churches, such as the Ambrosian rite, or those of certain religious orders) and the Byzantine, Alexandrian or Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite and Chaldean rites. In "Faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully recognized rites to be of equal right and dignity, and that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way." 69

The diverse liturgical traditions have arisen by very reaSon of the Church's mission. Churches of the same geographical and cultural area came to celebrate the mystery of Christ through particular expressions characterized by the culture: in the tradition of the "deposit of Faith," 67 in liturgical symbolism, in the organization of fraternal communion, in the theological understanding of the mysteries, and in various forms of holiness. Through the liturgical life of a local church, Christ, the light and salvation of all peoples, is made manifest to the particular people and culture to which that Church is sent and in which she is rooted. the Church is catholic, capable of integrating into her unity, while purifying them, all the authentic riches of cultures. 68

The mystery of Christ is so unfathomably rich that it cannot be exhausted by its expression in any single liturgical tradition. the history of the blossoming and development of these rites witnesses to a remarkable complementarity. When the Churches lived their respective liturgical traditions in the communion of the Faith and the sacraments of the faith, they enriched one another and grew in fidelity to Tradition and to the common mission of the whole Church. 66

From the first community of Jerusalem until the parousia, it is the same Paschal mystery that the Churches of God, Faithful to the apostolic faith, celebrate in every place. the mystery celebrated in the liturgy is one, but the forms of its celebration are diverse.

"Liturgical diversity can be a source of enrichment, but it can also provoke tensions, mutual misunderstandings, and even schisms. In this matter it is clear that diversity must not damage unity. It must express only fidelity to the common Faith, to the sacramental signs that the Church has received from Christ, and to hierarchical communion. Cultural adaptation also requires a conversion of heart and even, where necessary, a breaking with ancestral customs incompatible with the Catholic faith." 74

Since Baptism signifies liberation from sin and from its instigator the devil, one or more exorcisms are pronounced over the candidate. the celebrant then anoints him with the oil of catechumens, or lays his hands on him, and he explicitly renounces Satan. Thus prepared, he is able to confess the Faith of the Church, to which he will be "entrusted" by Baptism. 39

The proclamation of the Word of God enlightens the candidates and the assembly with the revealed truth and elicits the response of Faith, which is inseparable from Baptism. Indeed Baptism is "the sacrament of faith" in a particular way, since it is the sacramental entry into the life of faith.

The meaning and Grace of the sacrament of Baptism are clearly seen in the rites of its celebration. By following the gestures and words of this celebration with attentive participation, the Faithful are initiated into the riches this sacrament signifies and actually brings about in each newly baptized perSon.

From the time of the apostles, becoming a Christian has been accomplished by a journey and initiation in several stages. This journey can be covered rapidly or slowly, but certain essential elements will always have to be present: proclamation of the Word, acceptance of the Gospel entailing conversion, profession of Faith, Baptism itself, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and admission to Eucharistic communion.

From the very day of Pentecost the Church has celebrated and administered holy Baptism. Indeed St. Peter declares to the crowd astounded by his preaching: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." 26 The apostles and their collaborators offer Baptism to anyone who believed in Jesus: Jews, the God-fearing, pagans. 27 Always, Baptism is seen as connected with Faith: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household," St. Paul declared to his jailer in Philippi. and the narrative continues, the jailer "was baptized at once, with all his family." 28

The sacraments of Christian initiation - Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist - lay the foundations of every Christian life. "The sharing in the divine nature given to men through the Grace of Christ bears a certain likeness to the origin, development, and nourishing of natural life. the Faithful are born anew by Baptism, strengthened by the sacrament of Confirmation, and receive in the Eucharist the food of eternal life. By means of these sacraments of Christian initiation, they thus receive in increasing measure the treasures of the divine life and advance toward the perfection of charity." 3

Following this analogy, the first chapter will expound the three sacraments of Christian initiation; the second, the sacraments of healing; and the third, the sacraments at the service of communion and the mission of the Faithful. This order, while not the only one possible, does allow one to see that the sacraments form an organic whole in which each particular sacrament has its own vital place. In this organic whole, the Eucharist occupies a unique place as the "Sacrament of sacraments": "all the other sacraments are ordered to it as to their end." 2

Christ instituted the sacraments of the new law. There are seven: Baptism, Confirmation (or Chrismation), the Eucharist, Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony. the seven sacraments touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian life: 1 they give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christian's life of Faith. There is thus a certain resemblance between the stages of natural life and the stages of the spiritual life.

The harmony of signs (Song, music, words, and actions) is all the more expressive and fruitful when expressed in the cultural richness of the People of God who celebrate. 25 Hence "religious singing by the Faithful is to be intelligently fostered so that in devotions and sacred exercises as well as in liturgical services," in conformity with the Church's norms, "the voices of the faithful may be heard." But "the texts intended to be sung must always be in conformity with Catholic doctrine. Indeed they should be drawn chiefly from the Sacred Scripture and from liturgical sources." 26

Song and music fulfill their function as signs in a manner all the more significant when they are "more closely connected . . . with the liturgical action," 22 according to three principal criteria: beauty expressive of Prayer, the unanimous participation of the assembly at the designated moments, and the solemn character of the celebration. In this way they participate in the purpose of the liturgical words and actions: the glory of God and the sanctification of the Faithful: 23

The liturgical word and action are inseparable both insofar as they are signs and instruction and insofar as they accomplish what they signify. When the Holy Spirit awakens Faith, he not only gives an understanding of the Word of God, but through the sacraments also makes present the "wonders" of God which it proclaims. the Spirit makes present and communicates the Father's work, fulfilled by the beloved Son.

The liturgy of the Word is an integral part of sacramental celebrations. To nourish the Faith of believers, the signs which accompany the Word of God should be emphasized: the book of the Word (a lectionary or a book of the Gospels), its veneration (procession, incense, candles), the place of its proclamation (lectern or ambo), its audible and intelligible reading, the minister's homily which extends its proclamation, and the responses of the assembly (acclamations, meditation psalms, litanies, and profession of faith).

A sacramental celebration is a meeting of God's children with their Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit; this meeting takes the form of a dialogue, through actions and words. Admittedly, the symbolic actions are already a language, but the Word of God and the response of Faith have to accompany and give life to them, so that the seed of the Kingdom can bear its fruit in good soil. the liturgical actions signify what the Word of God expresses: both his free initiative and his people's response of faith.

For the purpose of assisting the work of the common priesthood of the Faithful, other particular ministries also exist, not consecrated by the sacrament of Holy Orders; their functions are determined by the bishops, in accord with liturgical traditions and pastoral needs. "Servers, readers, commentators, and members of the choir also exercise a genuine liturgical function." 14

It is the whole community, the Body of Christ united with its Head, that celebrates. "Liturgical services are not private functions but are celebrations of the Church which is 'the sacrament of unity,' namely, the holy people united and organized under the authority of the bishops. Therefore, liturgical services pertain to the whole Body of the Church. They manifest it, and have effects upon it. But they touch individual members of the Church in different ways, depending on their orders, their role in the liturgical services, and their actual participation in them." 7 For this reaSon, "rites which are meant to be celebrated in common, with the Faithful present and actively participating, should as far as possible be celebrated in that way rather than by an individual and quasi-privately." 8

The Catechesis of the liturgy entails first of all an understanding of the sacramental economy (Chapter One). In this light, the innovation of its celebration is revealed. This chapter will therefore treat of the celebration of the sacraments of the Church. It will consider that which, through the diversity of liturgical traditions, is common to the celebration of the seven sacraments. What is proper to each will be treated later. This fundamental catechesis on the sacramental celebrations responds to the first questions posed by the Faithful regarding this subject: - Who celebrates the liturgy? - How is the liturgy celebrated? - When is the liturgy celebrated? - Where is the liturgy celebrated?

All the signs in the liturgical celebrations are related to Christ: as are sacred images of the holy Mother of God and of the saints as well. They truly signify Christ, who is glorified in them. They make manifest the "cloud of witnesses" 29 who continue to participate in the salvation of the world and to whom we are united, above all in sacramental celebrations. Through their icons, it is man "in the image of God," finally transfigured "into his likeness," 30 who is revealed to our Faith. So too are the angels, who also are recapitulated in Christ:

"The beauty of the images moves me to contemplation, as a meadow delights the eyes and subtly infuses the soul with the glory of God." 32 Similarly, the contemplation of sacred icons, united with meditation on the Word of God and the singing of liturgical hymns, enters into the harmony of the signs of celebration so that the mystery celebrated is imprinted in the heart's memory and is then expressed in the new life of the Faithful.

A Church, "a house of Prayer in which the Eucharist is celebrated and reserved, where the Faithful assemble, and where is worshipped the presence of the Son of God our Savior, offered for us on the sacrificial altar for the help and consolation of the faithful - this house ought to be in good taste and a worthy place for Prayer and sacred ceremonial." 57 In this "house of God" the truth and the harmony of the signs that make it up should show Christ to be present and active in this place. 58

The worship "in Spirit and in truth" 53 of the New Covenant is not tied exclusively to any one place. the whole earth is sacred and entrusted to the children of men. What matters above all is that, when the Faithful assemble in the same place, they are the "living stones," gathered to be "built into a spiritual house." 54 For the Body of the risen Christ is the spiritual temple from which the source of living water springs forth: incorporated into Christ by the Holy Spirit, "we are the temple of the living God." 55

The Liturgy of the Hours is intended to become the Prayer of the whole People of God. In it Christ himself "continues his priestly work through his Church." 50 His members participate according to their own place in the Church and the circumstances of their lives: priests devoted to the pastoral ministry, because they are called to remain diligent in Prayer and the service of the word; religious, by the charism of their consecrated lives; all the Faithful as much as possible: "Pastors of souls should see to it that the principal hours, especially Vespers, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and on the more solemn feasts. the laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually." 51

The mystery of Christ, his Incarnation and Passover, which we celebrate in the Eucharist especially at the Sunday assembly, permeates and transfigures the time of each day, through the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, "the divine office." 46 This celebration, Faithful to the apostolic exhortations to "pray constantly," is "so devised that the whole course of the day and night is made holy by the praise of God." 47 In this "public Prayer of the Church," 48 The faithful (clergy, religious, and lay people) exercise the royal priesthood of the baptized. Celebrated in "the form approved" by the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours "is truly the voice of the Bride herself addressed to her Bridegroom. It is the very Prayer which Christ himself together with his Body addresses to the Father. 49

When the Church keeps the memorials of martyrs and other saints during the annual cycle, she proclaims the Paschal mystery in those "who have suffered and have been glorified with Christ. She proposes them to the Faithful as examples who draw all men to the Father through Christ, and through their merits she begs for God's favors." 45

Sunday is the pre-eminent day for the liturgical assembly, when the Faithful gather "to listen to the word of God and take part in the Eucharist, thus calling to mind the Passion, Resurrection, and glory of the Lord Jesus, and giving thanks to God who 'has begotten them again, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead' unto a living hope": 40

"By a tradition handed down from the apostles which took its origin from the very day of Christ's Resurrection, the Church celebrates the Paschal mystery every seventh day, which day is appropriately called the Lord's Day or Sunday." 36 The day of Christ's Resurrection is both the first day of the week, the memorial of the first day of creation, and the "eighth day," on which Christ after his "rest" on the great sabbath inaugurates the "day that the Lord has made," the "day that knows no evening." 37 The Lord's Supper is its center, for there the whole community of the Faithful encounters the risen Lord who invites them to his banquet: 38

"Holy Mother Church believes that she should celebrate the saving work of her divine Spouse in a sacred commemoration on certain days throughout the course of the year. Once each week, on the day which she has called the Lord's Day, she keeps the memory of the Lord's resurrection. She also celebrates it once every year, together with his blessed Passion, at Easter, that most solemn of all feasts. In the course of the year, moreover, she unfolds the whole mystery of Christ .... Thus recalling the mysteries of the redemption, she opens up to the Faithful the riches of her Lord's powers and merits, so that these are in some way made present in every age; the faithful lay hold of them and are filled with saving Grace." 33

Since the beginning of the Church, adult Baptism is the common practice where the proclamation of the Gospel is still new. the catechumenate (preparation for Baptism) therefore occupies an important place. This initiation into Christian Faith and life should dispose the catechumen to receive the gift of God in Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist.

The catechumenate, or formation of catechumens, aims at bringing their conversion and Faith to maturity, in response to the divine initiative and in union with an ecclesial community. the catechumenate is to be "a formation in the whole Christian life . . . during which the disciples will be joined to Christ their teacher. the catechumens should be properly initiated into the mystery of salvation and the practice of the evangelical virtues, and they should be introduced into the life of faith, liturgy, and charity of the People of God by successive sacred rites." 47

Catechumens "are already joined to the Church, they are already of the household of Christ, and are quite frequently already living a life of Faith, hope, and charity." 48 "With love and solicitude mother Church already embraces them as her own." 49

The Eucharist is also the sacrifice of praise by which the Church sings the glory of God in the name of all creation. This sacrifice of praise is possible only through Christ: he unites the Faithful to his perSon, to his praise, and to his intercession, so that the sacrifice of praise to the Father is offered through Christ and with him, to be accepted in him.

In the communion, preceded by the Lord's Prayer and the breaking of the bread, the Faithful receive "the bread of heaven" and "the cup of salvation," the body and blood of Christ who offered himself "for the life of the world": 179

From the beginning the Church has been Faithful to the Lord's command. of the Church of Jerusalem it is written:

The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the Passion scandalized them: "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" 158 The Eucharist and the Cross are stumbling blocks. It is the same mystery and it never ceases to be an occasion of division. "Will you also go away?": 159 The Lord's question echoes through the ages, as a loving invitation to discover that only he has "the words of eternal life" 160 and that to receive in Faith the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself.

The miracles of the multiplication of the loaves, when the Lord says the blessing, breaks and distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude, prefigure the superabundance of this unique bread of his Eucharist. 156 The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the Hour of Jesus' glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father's kingdom, where the Faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ. 157

In the Old Covenant bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God; 154 their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of God's Faithfulness to his promises. The "cup of blessing" 155 at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup.

At the heart of the Eucharistic celebration are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ's Body and Blood. Faithful to the Lord's command the Church continues to do, in his memory and until his glorious return, what he did on the eve of his Passion: "He took bread...." "He took the cup filled with wine...." the signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ; they continue also to signify the goodness of creation. Thus in the Offertory we give thanks to the Creator for bread and wine, 152 fruit of the "work of human hands," but above all as "fruit of the earth" and "of the vine" - gifts of the Creator. the Church sees in the gesture of the king-priest Melchizedek, who "brought out bread and wine," a prefiguring of her own offering. 153

Holy Mass (Missa), because the liturgy in which the mystery of salvation is accomplished concludes with the sending forth (missio) of the Faithful, so that they may fulfill God's will in their daily lives.

The Eucharist is also the sacrifice of the Church. the Church which is the Body of Christ participates in the offering of her Head. With him, she herself is offered whole and entire. She unites herself to his intercession with the Father for all men. In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body. the lives of the Faithful, their praise, sufferings, Prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering, and so acquire a new value. Christ's sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering.

The Eucharistic sacrifice is also offered for the Faithful departed who "have died in Christ but are not yet wholly purified," 191 so that they may be able to enter into the light and peace of Christ:

Before so great a sacrament, the Faithful can only echo humbly and with ardent faith the words of the Centurion: "Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea" ("Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul will be healed."). 217 and in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom the faithful pray in the same spirit:

The altar, around which the Church is gathered in the celebration of the Eucharist, represents the two aspects of the same mystery: the altar of the sacrifice and the table of the Lord. This is all the more so since the Christian altar is the symbol of Christ himself, present in the midst of the assembly of his Faithful, both as the victim offered for our reconciliation and as food from heaven who is giving himself to us. "For what is the altar of Christ if not the image of the Body of Christ?" 212 asks St. Ambrose. He says elsewhere, "The altar represents the body [of Christ] and the Body of Christ is on the altar." 213 The liturgy expresses this unity of sacrifice and communion in many Prayers. Thus the Roman Church prays in its anaphora:

The Mass is at the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord's body and blood. But the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice is wholly directed toward the intimate union of the Faithful with Christ through communion. To receive communion is to receive Christ himself who has offered himself for us.

"That in this sacrament are the true Body of Christ and his true Blood is something that 'cannot be apprehended by the senses,' says St. Thomas, 'but only by Faith, which relies on divine authority.' For this reaSon, in a commentary on Luke 22:19 ('This is my body which is given for you.'), St. Cyril says: 'Do not doubt whether this is true, but rather receive the words of the Savior in faith, for since he is the truth, he cannot lie.'" 210

The tabernacle was first intended for the reservation of the Eucharist in a worthy place so that it could be brought to the sick and those absent outside of Mass. As Faith in the real presence of Christ in his Eucharist deepened, the Church became conscious of the meaning of silent adoration of the Lord present under the Eucharistic species. It is for this reaSon that the tabernacle should be located in an especially worthy place in the church and should be constructed in such a way that it emphasizes and manifests the truth of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our Faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. "The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession." 206

The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic Faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation." 204

It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament. the Church Fathers strongly affirmed the Faith of the Church in the efficacy of the Word of Christ and of the action of the Holy Spirit to bring about this conversion. Thus St. John Chrysostom declares:

The Lord's Supper, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his Passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. 141 The Breaking of Bread, because Jesus used this rite, part of a Jewish meat when as master of the table he blessed and distributed the bread, 142 above all at the Last Supper. 143 It is by this action that his disciples will recognize him after his Resurrection, 144 and it is this expression that the first Christians will use to designate their Eucharistic assemblies; 145 by doing so they signified that all who eat the one broken bread, Christ, enter into communion with him and form but one body in him. 146 The Eucharistic assembly (synaxis), because the Eucharist is celebrated amid the assembly of the Faithful, the visible expression of the Church. 147

In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our Faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking." 138

The Holy Spirit has marked us with the seal of the Lord ("Dominicus character") "for the day of redemption." 85 "Baptism indeed is the seal of eternal life." 86 The Faithful Christian who has "kept the seal" until the end, remaining faithful to the demands of his Baptism, will be able to depart this life "marked with the sign of faith," 87 with his baptismal faith, in expectation of the blessed vision of God - the consummation of faith - and in the hope of resurrection.

Incorporated into the Church by Baptism, the Faithful have received the sacramental character that consecrates them for Christian religious worship. 83 The Baptismal seal enables and commits Christians to serve God by a vital participation in the holy liturgy of the Church and to exercise their baptismal priesthood by the witness of holy lives and practical charity. 84

Baptism constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians, including those who are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church: "For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. Justified by Faith in Baptism, [they] are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reaSon are accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church." 80 "Baptism therefore constitutes the sacramental bond of unity existing among all who through it are reborn." 81

"Reborn as Sons of God, [the baptized] must profess before men the Faith they have received from God through the Church" and participate in the apostolic and missionary activity of the People of God. 79

The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the Faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.

For all the baptized, children or adults, Faith must grow after Baptism. For this reaSon the Church celebrates each year at the Easter Vigil the renewal of Baptismal promises. Preparation for Baptism leads only to the threshold of new life. Baptism is the source of that new life in Christ from which the entire Christian life springs forth.

Baptism is the sacrament of Faith. 54 But faith needs the community of believers. It is only within the faith of the Church that each of the faithful can believe. the faith required for Baptism is not a perfect and mature faith, but a beginning that is called to develop. the catechumen or the Godparent is asked: "What do you ask of God's Church?" the response is: "Faith!"

Baptism, the Eucharist, and the sacrament of Confirmation together constitute the "sacraments of Christian initiation," whose unity must be safeguarded. It must be explained to the Faithful that the reception of the sacrament of Confirmation is necessary for the completion of Baptismal Grace. 88 For "by the sacrament of Confirmation, [the baptized] are more perfectly bound to the Church and are enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed." 89

Although Confirmation is sometimes called the "sacrament of Christian maturity," we must not confuse adult Faith with the adult age of natural growth, nor forget that the Baptismal Grace is a grace of free, unmerited election and does not need "ratification" to become effective. St. Thomas reminds us of this:

Every baptized perSon not yet confirmed can and should receive the sacrament of Confirmation. 121 Since Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist form a unity, it follows that "the Faithful are obliged to receive this sacrament at the appropriate time," 122 for without Confirmation and Eucharist, Baptism is certainly valid and efficacious, but Christian initiation remains incomplete.

This "character" perfects the common priesthood of the Faithful, received in Baptism, and "the confirmed perSon receives the power to profess faith in Christ publicly and as it were officially (quasi ex officio)." 120

From this fact, Confirmation brings an increase and deepening of Baptismal Grace: - it roots us more deeply in the divine filiation which makes us cry, "Abba! Father!"; 115 - it unites us more firmly to Christ; - it increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us; - it renders our bond with the Church more perfect; 116 - it gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the Faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross: 117

The sign of peace that concludes the rite of the sacrament signifies and demonstrates ecclesial communion with the bishop and with all the Faithful. 114

When Confirmation is celebrated separately from Baptism, as is the case in the Roman Rite, the Liturgy of Confirmation begins with the renewal of Baptismal promises and the profession of Faith by the confirmands. This clearly shows that Confirmation follows Baptism. 110 When adults are baptized, they immediately receive Confirmation and participate in the Eucharist. 111

To prepare for worthy reception of this sacrament, the Faithful should observe the fast required in their Church. 218 Bodily demeanor (gestures, clothing) ought to convey the respect, solemnity, and joy of this moment when Christ becomes our guest.

Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in Faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God - the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love visible in Christ, who "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature," in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." 296 This spiritual beauty of God is reflected in the most holy Virgin Mother of God, the angels, and saints. Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to Prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier.

Three principal parables on Prayer are transmitted to us by St. Luke: - the first, "the importunate friend," 75 invites us to urgent Prayer: "Knock, and it will be opened to you." To the one who prays like this, the heavenly Father will "give whatever he needs," and above all the Holy Spirit who contains all gifts. - the second, "the importunate widow," 76 is centered on one of the qualities of prayer: it is necessary to pray always without ceasing and with the patience of Faith. "and yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" - the third parable, "the Pharisee and the tax collector," 77 concerns the humility of the heart that prays. "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" the Church continues to make this prayer its own: Kyrie eleison!

In Jesus "the Kingdom of God is at hand." 72 He calls his hearers to conversion and Faith, but also to watchfulness. In Prayer the disciple keeps watch, attentive to Him Who Is and Him Who Comes, in memory of his first coming in the lowliness of the flesh, and in the hope of his second coming in glory. 73 In communion with their Master, the disciples' Prayer is a battle; only by keeping watch in prayer can one avoid falling into temptation. 74

The Prayer of Faith consists not only in saying "Lord, Lord," but in disposing the heart to do the will of the Father. 70 Jesus calls his disciples to bring into their Prayer this concern for cooperating with the divine plan. 71

Just as Jesus prays to the Father and gives thanks before receiving his gifts, so he teaches us filial boldness: "Whatever you ask in Prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will." 66 Such is the power of Prayer and of Faith that does not doubt: "all things are possible to him who believes." 67 Jesus is as saddened by the "lack of faith" of his own neighbors and the "little faith" of his own disciples 68 as he is struck with admiration at the great faith of the Roman centurion and the Canaanite woman. 69

Once committed to conversion, the heart learns to pray in Faith. Faith is a filial adherence to God beyond what we feel and understand. It is possible because the beloved Son gives us access to the Father. He can ask us to "seek" and to "knock," since he himself is the door and the way. 65

When Jesus prays he is already teaching us how to pray. His Prayer to his Father is the theological path (the path of Faith, hope, and charity) of our Prayer to God. But the Gospel also gives us Jesus' explicit teaching on prayer. Like a wise teacher he takes hold of us where we are and leads us progressively toward the Father. Addressing the crowds following him, Jesus builds on what they already know of prayer from the Old Covenant and opens to them the newness of the coming Kingdom. Then he reveals this newness to them in parables. Finally, he will speak openly of the Father and the Holy Spirit to his disciples who will be the teachers of prayer in his Church.

The Gospel according to St. Luke emphasizes the action of the Holy Spirit and the meaning of Prayer in Christ's ministry. Jesus prays before the decisive moments of his mission: before his Father's witness to him during his Baptism and Transfiguration, and before his own fulfillment of the Father's plan of love by his Passion. 43 He also prays before the decisive moments involving the mission of his apostles: at his election and call of the Twelve, before Peter's confession of him as "the Christ of God," and again that the Faith of the chief of the Apostles may not fail when tempted. 44 Jesus' Prayer before the events of salvation that the Father has asked him to fulfill is a humble and trusting commitment of his human will to the loving will of the Father.

When Jesus openly entrusts to his disciples the mystery of Prayer to the Father, he reveals to them what their Prayer and ours must be, once he has returned to the Father in his glorified humanity. What is new is to "ask in his name." 78 Faith in the Son introduces the disciples into the knowledge of the Father, because Jesus is "the way, and the truth, and the life." 79 Faith bears its fruit in love: it means keeping the word and the commandments of Jesus, it means abiding with him in the Father who, in him, so loves us that he abides with us. In this new covenant the certitude that our Petitions will be heard is founded on the prayer of Jesus. 80

Prayer to Jesus is answered by him already during his ministry, through signs that anticipate the power of his death and Resurrection: Jesus hears the Prayer of Faith, expressed in words (the leper, Jairus, the Canaanite woman, the good thief) 84 or in silence (the bearers of the paralytic, the woman with a hemorrhage who touches his clothes, the tears and ointment of the sinful woman). 85 The urgent request of the blind men, "Have mercy on us, Son of David" or "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" has-been renewed in the traditional prayer to Jesus known as the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" 86 Healing infirmities or forgiving sins, Jesus always responds to a prayer offered in faith: "Your faith has made you well; go in peace."

The Revelation of "what must soon take place," the Apocalypse, is borne along by the Songs of the heavenly liturgy 127 but also by the intercession of the "witnesses" (martyrs). 128 The prophets and the saints, all those who were slain on earth for their witness to Jesus, the vast throng of those who, having come through the great tribulation, have gone before us into the Kingdom, all sing the praise and glory of him who sits on the throne, and of the Lamb. 129 In communion with them, the Church on earth also sings these songs with Faith in the midst of trial. By means of Petition and intercession, faith hopes against all hope and gives thanks to the "Father of lights," from whom "every perfect gift" comes down. 130 Thus faith is pure praise.

Praise is the form of Prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because HE IS. It shares in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in Faith before seeing him in glory. By praise, the Spirit is joined to our spirits to bear witness that we are children of God, 121 testifying to the only Son in whom we are adopted and by whom we glorify the Father. Praise embraces the other forms of Prayer and carries them toward him who is its source and goal: the "one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist." 122

In the first place these are Prayers that the Faithful hear and read in the Scriptures, but also that they make their own - especially those of the Psalms, in view of their fulfillment in Christ. 96 The Holy Spirit, who thus keeps the memory of Christ alive in his Church at Prayer, also leads her toward the fullness of truth and inspires new formulations expressing the unfathomable mystery of Christ at work in his Church's life, sacraments, and mission. These formulations are developed in the great liturgical and spiritual traditions. the forms of prayer revealed in the apostolic and canonical Scriptures remain normative for Christian prayer.

In the first community of Jerusalem, believers "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the Prayers." 95 This sequence is characteristic of the Church's Prayer: founded on the apostolic Faith; authenticated by charity; nourished in the Eucharist.

The Gospel reveals to us how Mary prays and intercedes in Faith. At Cana, 89 The mother of Jesus asks her Son for the needs of a wedding feast; this is the sign of another feast - that of the wedding of the Lamb where he gives his body and blood at the request of the Church, his Bride. It is at the hour of the New Covenant, at the foot of the cross, 90 that Mary is heard as the Woman, the new Eve, the true "Mother of all the living."

Mary's Prayer is revealed to us at the dawning of the fullness of time. Before the incarnation of the Son of God, and before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, her Prayer cooperates in a unique way with the Father's plan of loving kindness: at the Annunciation, for Christ's conception; at Pentecost, for the formation of the Church, his Body. 88 In the Faith of his humble handmaid, the Gift of God found the acceptance he had awaited from the beginning of time. She whom the Almighty made "full of Grace" responds by offering her whole being: "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word." "Fiat": this is Christian prayer: to be wholly God's, because he is wholly ours.

Certain constant characteristics appear throughout the Psalms: simplicity and spontaneity of Prayer; the desire for God himself through and with all that is good in his creation; the distraught situation of the believer who, in his preferential love for the Lord, is exposed to a host of enemies and temptations, but who waits upon what the Faithful God will do, in the certitude of his love and in submission to his will. the Prayer of the psalms is always sustained by praise; that is why the title of this collection as handed down to us is so fitting: "The Praises." Collected for the assembly's worship, the Psalter both sounds the call to prayer and sings the response to that call: Hallelu-Yah! (“Alleluia"), "Praise the Lord!"

In their "one to one" encounters with God, the prophets draw light and strength for their mission. Their Prayer is not flight from this unFaithful world, but rather attentiveness to the Word of God. At times their Prayer is an argument or a complaint, but it is always an intercession that awaits and prepares for the intervention of the Savior God, the Lord of history. 36

"Great is the mystery of the Faith!"

It remains for the holy people to struggle, with Grace from on high, to obtain the good things God promises. In order to possess and contemplate God, Christ's Faithful mortify their cravings and, with the grace of God, prevail over the seductions of pleasure and power.

All Christ's Faithful are to "direct their affections rightly, lest they be hindered in their pursuit of perfect charity by the use of worldly things and by an adherence to riches which is contrary to the spirit of evangelical poverty." 336

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through Faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe." 332 Henceforth, Christ's faithful "have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires"; they are led by the Spirit and follow the desires of the Spirit. 333

The sixth beatitude proclaims, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 306 "Pure in heart" refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God's holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity; 307 chastity or sexual rectitude; 308 love of truth and orthodoxy of Faith. 309 There is a connection between purity of heart, of body, and of faith:

For this reaSon bishops, personally or through delegates, should see to the promotion of sacred art, old and new, in all its forms and, with the same religious care, remove from the liturgy and from places of worship everything which is not in conformity with the truth of Faith and the authentic beauty of sacred art. 297

"You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." 9 Paradoxically our Prayer of Petition is a response to the plea of the living God: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water!" 10 Prayer is the response of Faith to the free promise of salvation and also a response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God. 11

God calls man first. Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each perSon to that mysterious encounter known as Prayer. In Prayer, the Faithful God's initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response. As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself, prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama. Through words and actions, this drama engages the heart. It unfolds throughout the whole history of salvation.

After Elijah had learned mercy during his retreat at the Wadi Cherith, he teaches the widow of Zarephath to believe in the Word of God and confirms her Faith by his urgent Prayer: God brings the widow's child back to life. 33 The sacrifice on Mount Carmel is a decisive test for the faith of the People of God. In response to Elijah's plea, "Answer me, O LORD, answer me," the Lord's fire consumes the holocaust, at the time of the evening oblation. the Eastern liturgies repeat Elijah's plea in the Eucharistic epiclesis. Finally, taking the desert road that leads to the place where the living and true God reveals himself to his people, Elijah, like Moses before him, hides "in a cleft of he rock" until the mysterious presence of God has passed by. 34 But only on the mountain of the Transfiguration will Moses and Elijah behold the unveiled face of him whom they sought; "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God [shines] in the face of Christ," crucified and risen. 35

For the People of God, the Temple was to be the place of their education in Prayer: pilgrimages, feasts and sacrifices, the evening offering, the incense, and the bread of the Presence (“shewbread") - all these signs of the holiness and glory of God Most High and Most Near were appeals to and ways of Prayer. But ritualism often encouraged an excessively external worship. the people needed education in Faith and conversion of heart; this was the mission of the prophets, both before and after the Exile.

David is par excellence the king "after God's own heart," the shepherd who prays for his people and prays in their name. His submission to the will of God, his praise, and his repentance, will be a model for the Prayer of the people. His Prayer, the prayer of God's Anointed, is a Faithful adherence to the divine promise and expresses a loving and joyful trust in God, the only King and Lord. 28 In the Psalms David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the first prophet of Jewish and Christian prayer. the prayer of Christ, the true Messiah and Son of David, will reveal and fulfill the meaning of this prayer.

From this intimacy with the Faithful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, 23 Moses drew strength and determination for his intercession. He does not pray for himself but for the people whom God made his own. Moses already intercedes for them during the battle with the Amalekites and prays to obtain healing for Miriam. 24 But it is chiefly after their Apostasy that Moses "stands in the breach" before God in order to save the people. 25 The arguments of his Prayer - for intercession is also a mysterious battle - will inspire the boldness of the great intercessors among the Jewish people and in the Church: God is love; he is therefore righteous and faithful; he cannot contradict himself; he must remember his marvellous deeds, since his glory is at stake, and he cannot forsake this people that bears his name.

"Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." 21 Moses' Prayer is characteristic of contemplative Prayer by which God's servant remains Faithful to his mission. Moses converses with God often and at length, climbing the mountain to hear and entreat him and coming down to the people to repeat the words of his God for their guidance. Moses "is entrusted with all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly, not in riddles," for "Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth." 22

God renews his promise to Jacob, the ancestor of the twelve tribes of Israel. 17 Before confronting his elder brother Esau, Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious figure who refuses to reveal his name, but he blesses him before leaving him at dawn. From this account, the spiritual tradition of the Church has retained the symbol of Prayer as a battle of Faith and as the triumph of perseverance. 18

As a final stage in the purification of his Faith, Abraham, "who had received the promises," 13 is asked to sacrifice the Son God had given him. Abraham's faith does not weaken (“God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering."), for he "considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead." 14 and so the Father of believers is conformed to the likeness of the Father who will not spare his own Son but wiLl deliver him up for us all. 15 Prayer restores man to God's likeness and enables him to share in the power of God's love that saves the multitude. 16

When God calls him, Abraham goes forth "as the Lord had told him"; 8 Abraham's heart is entirely submissive to the Word and so he obeys. Such attentiveness of the heart, whose decisions are made according to God's will, is essential to Prayer, while the words used count only in relation to it. Abraham's Prayer is expressed first by deeds: a man of silence, he constructs an altar to the Lord at each stage of his journey. Only later does Abraham's first prayer in words appear: a veiled complaint reminding God of his promises which seem unfulfilled. 9 Thus one aspect of the drama of prayer appears from the beginning: the test of Faith in the fidelity of God.

The tradition of Christian Prayer is one of the ways in which the tradition of Faith takes shape and grows, especially through the contemplation and study of believers who treasure in their hearts the events and words of the economy of salvation, and through their profound grasp of the spiritual realities they experience. 2

The Church "forcefully and specially exhorts all the Christian Faithful . . . to learn 'the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ' ( ⇒ Phil 3:8) by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures.... Let them remember, however, that Prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue takes place between God and man. For 'we speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles."' 4

One enters into Prayer as one enters into liturgy: by the narrow gate of Faith. Through the signs of his presence, it is the Face of the Lord that we seek and desire; it is his Word that we want to hear and keep.

"Pray constantly . . . always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father." 33 St. Paul adds, "Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all Prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance making supplication for all the saints." 34 For "we have not been commanded to work, to keep watch and to fast constantly, but it has been laid down that we are to pray without ceasing." 35 This tireless fervor can come only from love. Against our dullness and laziness, the battle of Prayer is that of humble, trusting, and persevering love. This love opens our hearts to three enlightening and life-giving facts of Faith about prayer.

For St. Paul, this trust is bold, founded on the Prayer of the Spirit in us and on the Faithful love of the Father who has given us his only Son. 31 Transformation of the praying heart is the first response to our Petition.

The revelation of Prayer in the economy of salvation teaches us that Faith rests on God's action in history. Our filial trust is enkindled by his supreme act: the Passion and Resurrection of his Son. Christian Prayer is cooperation with his providence, his plan of love for men.

The most common yet most hidden temptation is our lack of Faith. It expresses itself less by declared incredulity than by our actual preferences. When we begin to pray, a thousand labors or cares thought to be urgent vie for priority; once again, it is the moment of truth for the heart: what is its real love? Sometimes we turn to the Lord as a last resort, but do we really believe he is? Sometimes we enlist the Lord as an ally, but our heart remains presumptuous. In each case, our lack of faith reveals that we do not yet share in the disposition of a humble heart: "Apart from me, you can do nothing." 20

Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is dryness. Dryness belongs to contemplative Prayer when the heart is separated from God, with no taste for thoughts, memories, and feelings, even spiritual ones. This is the moment of sheer Faith clinging faithfully to Jesus in his agony and in his tomb. "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if dies, it bears much fruit." 18 If dryness is due to the lack of roots, because the word has fallen on rocky soil, the battle requires conversion. 19

In positive terms, the battle against the possessive and dominating self requires vigilance, sobriety of heart. When Jesus insists on vigilance, he always relates it to himself, to his coming on the last day and every day: today. the bridegroom comes in the middle of the night; the light that must not be extinguished is that of Faith: "'Come,' my heart says, 'seek his face!'" 17

"Lead us not into temptation" implies a decision of the heart: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.... No one can serve two masters." 156 "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." 157 In this assent to the Holy Spirit the Father gives us strength. "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is Faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, so that you may be able to endure it." 158

This Petition, with the responsibility it involves, also applies to another hunger from which men are perishing: "Man does not live by bread alone, but . . . by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God," 123 that is, by the Word he speaks and the Spirit he breathes forth. Christians must make every effort "to proclaim the good news to the poor." There is a famine on earth, "not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD." 124 For this reaSon the specifically Christian sense of this fourth petition concerns the Bread of Life: the Word of God accepted in Faith, the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist. 125

By the three first Petitions, we are strengthened in Faith, filled with hope, and set aflame by charity. Being creatures and still sinners, we have to petition for us, for that "us" bound by the world and history, which we offer to the boundless love of God. For through the name of his Christ and the reign of his Holy Spirit, our Father accomplishes his plan of salvation, for us and for the whole world.

Simple and Faithful trust, humble and joyous assurance are the proper dispositions for one who prays the Our Father.

For this reaSon, in spite of the divisions among Christians, this Prayer to "our" Father remains our common patrimony and an urgent summons for all the baptized. In communion by Faith in Christ and by Baptism, they ought to join in Jesus' Prayer for the unity of his disciples. 50

Grammatically, "our" qualifies a reality common to more than one perSon. There is only one God, and he is recognized as Father by those who, through Faith in his only Son, are reborn of him by water and the Spirit. 47 The Church is this new communion of God and men. United with the only Son, who has become "the firstborn among many brethren," she is in communion with one and the same Father in one and the same Holy Spirit. 48 In praying "our" Father, each of the baptized is praying in this communion: "The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul." 49

When we say "our" Father, we recognize first that all his promises of love announced by the prophets are fulfilled in the new and eternal covenant in his Christ: we have become "his" people and he is henceforth "our" God. This new relationship is the purely gratuitous gift of belonging to each other: we are to respond to "Grace and truth" given us in Jesus Christ with love and Faithfulness. 45

From this unshakeable Faith springs forth the hope that sustains each of the seven Petitions, which express the groanings of the present age, this time of patience and expectation during which "it does not yet appear what we shall be." 22 The Eucharist and the Lord's Prayer look eagerly for the Lord's return, "until he comes." 23

Contemplative Prayer is a communion of love bearing Life for the multitude, to the extent that it consents to abide in the night of Faith. the Paschal night of the Resurrection passes through the night of the agony and the tomb - the three intense moments of the Hour of Jesus which his Spirit (and not "the flesh [which] is weak") brings to life in Prayer. We must be willing to "keep watch with (him) one hour." 14

The Holy Spirit gives to certain of the Faithful the gifts of wisdom, faith and discernment for the sake of this common good which is Prayer (spiritual direction). Men and women so endowed are true servants of the living tradition of Prayer.

Ordained ministers are also responsible for the formation in Prayer of their brothers and sisters in Christ. Servants of the Good Shepherd, they are ordained to lead the People of God to the living waters of Prayer: the Word of God, the liturgy, the theological life (the life of Faith, hope, and charity), and the Today of God in concrete situations. 45

In the communion of saints, many and varied spiritualities have been developed throughout the history of the Churches. the perSonal charism of some witnesses to God's love for men has been handed on, like "the spirit" of Elijah to Elisha and John the Baptist, so that their followers may have a share in this spirit. 43 A distinct spirituality can also arise at the point of convergence of liturgical and theological currents, bearing witness to the integration of the Faith into a particular human environment and its history. the different schools of Christian spirituality share in the living tradition of Prayer and are essential guides for the faithful. In their rich diversity they are refractions of the one pure light of the Holy Spirit.

This twofold movement of Prayer to Mary has found a privileged expression in the Ave Maria: Hail Mary [or Rejoice, Mary]: the greeting of the angel Gabriel opens this Prayer. It is God himself who, through his angel as intermediary, greets Mary. Our prayer dares to take up this greeting to Mary with the regard God had for the lowliness of his humble servant and to exult in the joy he finds in her. 30 Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee: These two phrases of the angel's greeting shed light on one another. Mary is full of grace because the Lord is with her. the grace with which she is filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace. "Rejoice . . . O Daughter of Jerusalem . . . the Lord your God is in your midst." 31 Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in perSon, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is "the dwelling of God . . . with men." 32 Full of grace, Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell in her and whom she is about to give to the world. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. After the angel's greeting, we make Elizabeth's greeting our own. "Filled with the Holy Spirit," Elizabeth is the first in the long succession of generations who have called Mary "blessed." 33 "Blessed is she who believed...." 34 Mary is "blessed among women" because she believed in the fulfillment of the Lord's word. Abraham. because of his Faith, became a blessing for all the nations of the earth. 35 Mary, because of her faith, became the mother of believers, through whom all nations of the earth receive him who is God's own blessing: Jesus, the "fruit of thy womb."

Mary gave her consent in Faith at the Annunciation and maintained it without hesitation at the foot of the Cross. Ever since, her motherhood has extended to the brothers and sisters of her Son "who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties." 28 Jesus, the only mediator, is the way of our Prayer; Mary, his mother and ours, is wholly transparent to him: she "shows the way" (hodigitria), and is herself "the Sign" of the way, according to the traditional iconography of East and West.

This simple invocation of Faith developed in the tradition of Prayer under many forms in East and West. the most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners." It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light. 18 By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior's mercy.

In the living tradition of Prayer, each Church proposes to its Faithful, according to its historic, social, and cultural context, a language for Prayer: words, melodies, gestures, iconography. the Magisterium of the Church 15 has the task of discerning the fidelity of these ways of praying to the tradition of apostolic faith; it is for pastors and catechists to explain their meaning, always in relation to Jesus Christ.

The Church, the house of God, is the proper place for the liturgical Prayer of the parish community. It is also the privileged place for adoration of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. the choice of a favorable place is not a matter of indifference for true Prayer. - For perSonal prayer, this can be a "prayer corner" with the Sacred Scriptures and icons, in order to be there, in secret, before our Father. 48 In a Christian family, this kind of little oratory fosters prayer in common. - In regions where monasteries exist, the vocation of these communities is to further the participation of the Faithful in the Liturgy of the Hours and to provide necessary solitude for more intense personal prayer. 49 - Pilgrimages evoke our earthly journey toward heaven and are traditionally very special occasions for renewal in prayer. For pilgrims seeking living water, shrines are special places for living the forms of Christian prayer "in Church."

The Tradition of the Church proposes to the Faithful certain rhythms of praying intended to nourish continual Prayer. Some are daily, such as morning and evening Prayer, Grace before and after meals, the Liturgy of the Hours. Sundays, centered on the Eucharist, are kept holy primarily by prayer. the cycle of the liturgical year and its great feasts are also basic rhythms of the Christian's life of prayer.

Contemplative Prayer is hearing the Word of God. Far from being passive, such attentiveness is the obedience of Faith, the unconditional acceptance of a servant, and the loving commitment of a child. It participates in the "Yes" of the Son become servant and the Fiat of God's lowly handmaid.

Contemplation is a gaze of Faith, fixed on Jesus. "I look at him and he looks at me": this is what a certain peasant of Ars used to say to his holy cure about his Prayer before the tabernacle. This focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self. His gaze purifies our heart; the light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men. Contemplation also turns its gaze on the mysteries of the life of Christ. Thus it learns the "interior knowledge of our Lord," the more to love him and follow him. 11

Contemplative Prayer is also the pre-eminently intense time of Prayer. In it the Father strengthens our inner being with power through his Spirit "that Christ may dwell in (our) hearts through Faith" and we may be "grounded in love." 10

Entering into contemplative Prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy: we "gather up:" the heart, recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, abide in the dwelling place of the Lord which we are, awaken our Faith in order to enter into the presence of him who awaits us. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, so as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed.

The choice of the time and duration of the Prayer arises from a determined will, revealing the secrets of the heart. One does not undertake contemplative Prayer only when one has the time: one makes time for the Lord, with the firm determination not to give up, no matter what trials and dryness one may encounter. One cannot always meditate, but one can always enter into inner prayer, independently of the conditions of health, work, or emotional state. the heart is the place of this quest and encounter, in poverty ant in Faith.

What is contemplative Prayer? St. Teresa answers: "Contemplative Prayer [oracion mental] in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us." 6 Contemplative prayer seeks him "whom my soul loves." 7 It is Jesus, and in him, the Father. We seek him, because to desire him is always the beginning of love, and we seek him in that pure Faith which causes us to be born of him and to live in him. In this inner prayer we can still meditate, but our attention is fixed on the Lord himself.

Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions of Faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian Prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of Prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.

To meditate on what we read helps us to make it our own by confronting it with ourselves. Here, another book is opened: the book of life. We pass from thoughts to reality. To the extent that we are humble and Faithful, we discover in meditation the movements that stir the heart and we are able to discern them. It is a question of acting truthfully in order to come into the light: "Lord, what do you want me to do?"

When we ask to be delivered from the Evil One, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final Petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm humanity, she implores the precious gift of peace and the Grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ's return By praying in this way, she anticipates in humility of Faith the gathering together of everyone and everything in him who has "the keys of Death and Hades," who "is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." 174

Because they are members of the Body whose Head is Christ, 89 Christians contribute to building up the Church by the constancy of their convictions and their moral lives. the Church increases, grows, and develops through the holiness of her Faithful, until "we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 90

The fidelity of the baptized is a primordial condition for the proclamation of the Gospel and for the Church's mission in the world. In order that the message of salvation can show the power of its truth and radiance before men, it must be authenticated by the witness of the life of Christians. "The witness of a Christian life and good works done in a supernatural spirit have great power to draw men to the Faith and to God." 88

The first precept (“You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.") requires the Faithful to participate in the Eucharistic celebration when the Christian community gathers together on the day commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord. 82

The precepts of the Church are set in the context of a moral life bound to and nourished by liturgical life. the obligatory character of these positive laws decreed by the pastoral authorities is meant to guarantee to the Faithful the indispensable minimum in the spirit of Prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and neighbor:

In the work of teaching and applying Christian morality, the Church needs the dedication of pastors, the knowledge of theologians, and the contribution of all Christians and men of good will. Faith and the practice of the Gospel provide each perSon with an experience of life "in Christ," who enlightens him and makes him able to evaluate the divine and human realities according to the Spirit of God. 80 Thus the Holy Spirit can use the humblest to enlighten the learned and those in the highest positions.

The law of God entrusted to the Church is taught to the Faithful as the way of life and truth. the faithful therefore have the right to be instructed in the divine saving precepts that purify judgment and, with Grace, heal wounded human reaSon. 79 They have the duty of observing the constitutions and decrees conveyed by the legitimate authority of the Church. Even if they concern disciplinary matters, these determinations call for docility in charity.

The supreme degree of participation in the authority of Christ is ensured by the charism of infallibility. This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of divine Revelation; it also extends to all those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the Faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed. 77

The Roman Pontiff and the bishops are "authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach the Faith to the people entrusted to them, the faith to be believed and put into practice." 76 The ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him teach the faithful the truth to believe, the charity to practice, the beatitude to hope for.

By living with the mind of Christ, Christians hasten the coming of the Reign of God, "a kingdom of justice, love, and peace." 91 They do not, for all that, abandon their earthly tasks; Faithful to their master, they fulfill them with uprightness, patience, and love.

Faith in God's love encompasses the call and the obligation to respond with sincere love to divine charity. the First Commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all creatures for him and because of him. 12

The First Commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption: By despair, man ceases to hope for his perSonal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice - for the Lord is Faithful to his promises - and to his mercy.

Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. "Heresy is the obstinate post-Baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic Faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him." 11

The First Commandment requires us to nourish and protect our Faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith: Voluntary Doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.

Our moral life has its source in Faith in God who reveals his love to us. St. Paul speaks of the "obedience of faith" 9 as our first obligation. He shows that "ignorance of God" is the principle and explanation of all moral deviations. 10 Our duty toward God is to believe in him and to bear witness to him.

"The First Commandment embraces Faith, hope, and charity. When we say 'God' we confess a constant, unchangeable being, always the same, faithful and just, without any evil. It follows that we must necessarily accept his words and have complete faith in him and acknowledge his authority. He is almighty, merciful, and infinitely beneficent. Who could not place all hope in him? Who could not love him when contemplating the treasures of goodness and love he has poured out on us? Hence the formula God employs in the Scripture at the beginning and end of his commandments: 'I am the LORD.'" 8

Ever since St. Augustine, the Ten Commandments have occupied a predominant place in the Catechesis of Baptismal candidates and the Faithful. In the fifteenth century, the custom arose of expressing the commandments of the Decalogue in rhymed formulae, easy to memorize and in positive form. They are still in use today. the catechisms of the Church have often expounded Christian morality by following the order of the Ten Commandments.

The Magisterium of the Pastors of the Church in moral matters is ordinarily exercised in Catechesis and preaching, with the help of the works of theologians and spiritual authors. Thus from generation to generation, under the aegis and vigilance of the pastors, the "deposit" of Christian moral teaching has been handed on, a deposit composed of a characteristic body of rules, commandments, and virtues proceeding from Faith in Christ and animated by charity. Alongside the Creed and the Our Father, the basis for this catechesis has traditionally been the Decalogue which sets out the principles of moral life valid for all men.

The Law of the Gospel fulfills the commandments of the Law. the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, far from abolishing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands arise from them: it reveals their entire divine and human truth. It does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to reform the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure, 22 where Faith, hope, and charity are formed and with them the other virtues. the Gospel thus brings the Law to its fullness through imitation of the perfection of the heavenly Father, through forgiveness of enemies and Prayer for persecutors, in emulation of the divine generosity. 23

The Law of the Gospel "fulfills," refines, surpasses, and leads the Old Law to its perfection. 21 In the Beatitudes, the New Law fulfills the divine promises by elevating and orienting them toward the "kingdom of heaven." It is addressed to those open to accepting this new hope with Faith - the poor, the humble, the afflicted, the pure of heart, those persecuted on account of Christ and so marks out the surprising ways of the Kingdom.

The New Law is the Grace of the Holy Spirit given to the Faithful through faith in Christ. It works through charity; it uses the Sermon on the Mount to teach us what must be done and makes use of the sacraments to give us the grace to do it:

According to Christian tradition, the Law is holy, spiritual, and good, 14 yet still imperfect. Like a tutor 15 it shows what must be done, but does not of itself give the strength, the Grace of the Spirit, to fulfill it. Because of sin, which it cannot remove, it remains a law of bondage. According to St. Paul, its special function is to denounce and disclose sin, which constitutes a "law of concupiscence" in the human heart. 16 However, the Law remains the first stage on the way to the kingdom. It prepares and disposes the chosen people and each Christian for conversion and Faith in the Savior God. It provides a teaching which endures for ever, like the Word of God.

The moral law finds its fullness and its unity in Christ. Jesus Christ is in perSon the way of perfection. He is the end of the law, for only he teaches and bestows the justice of God: "For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has Faith may be justified." 4

The virtue of solidarity goes beyond material goods. In spreading the spiritual goods of the Faith, the Church has promoted, and often opened new paths for, the development of temporal goods as well. and so throughout the centuries has the Lord's saying been verified: "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well": 47

"God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us." 116 To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is Faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 117

To the Lord's Sermon on the Mount it is fitting to add the moral Catechesis of the apostolic teachings, such as Romans 12-15, 1 Corinthians 12-13, Colossians 3-4, Ephesians 4-5, etc. This doctrine hands on the Lord's teaching with the authority of the apostles, particularly in the presentation of the virtues that flow from Faith in Christ and are animated by charity, the principal gift of the Holy Spirit. "Let charity be genuine.... Love one another with brotherly affection.... Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in Prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality." 29 This catechesis also teaches us to deal with cases of conscience in the light of our relationship to Christ and to the Church. 30

The New Law is called a law of love because it makes us act out of the love infused by the Holy Spirit, rather than from fear; a law of Grace, because it confers the strength of grace to act, by means of Faith and the sacraments; a law of freedom, because it sets us free from the ritual and juridical observances of the Old Law, inclines us to act spontaneously by the prompting of charity and, finally, lets us pass from the condition of a servant who "does not know what his master is doing" to that of a friend of Christ - "For all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" - or even to the status of Son and heir. 31

The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his Grace. the Fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man's free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the Faithful. Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.

Since it belongs to the supernatural order, Grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by Faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved. 56 However, according to the Lord's words "Thus you will know them by their fruits" 57 - reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.

The preparation of man for the reception of Grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in Justification through Faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:" 50

Justification establishes cooperation between God's Grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of Faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:

Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of Faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life: 40

Justification is at the same time the acceptance of God's righteousness through Faith in Jesus Christ. Righteousness (or "justice") here means the rectitude of divine love. With justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts, and obedience to the divine will is granted us.

The Grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us "the righteousness of God through Faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism: 34

The theological virtues of Faith, hope, and charity inform and give life to the moral virtues. Thus charity leads us to render to God what we as creatures owe him in all justice. the virtue of religion disposes us to have this attitude.

The acts of Faith, hope, and charity enjoined by the First Commandment are accomplished in Prayer. Lifting up the mind toward God is an expression of our adoration of God: Prayer of praise and thanksgiving, intercession and Petition. Prayer is an indispensable condition for being able to obey God's commandments. " (We) ought always to pray and not lose heart." 15

In many circumstances, the Christian is called to make promises to God. Baptism and Confirmation, Matrimony and Holy Orders always entail promises. Out of perSonal devotion, the Christian may also promise to God this action, that Prayer, this alms-giving, that pilgrimage, and so forth. Fidelity to promises made to God is a sign of the respect owed to the divine majesty and of love for a Faithful God.

By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the Faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." 137 "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reaSon, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved." 138 To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpability.

All the baptized are called to chastity. the Christian has "put on Christ," 134 The model for all chastity. All Christ's Faithful are called to lead a chaste life in keeping with their particular states of life. At the moment of his Baptism, the Christian is pledged to lead his affective life in chastity.

Whoever wants to remain Faithful to his Baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God's commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to Prayer. "Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity." 127

Autopsies can be morally permitted for legal inquests or scientific research. the free gift of organs after death is legitimate and can be meritorious. The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of Faith in the resurrection of the body. 92

The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in Faith and hope of the Resurrection. the burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; 91 it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.

Education in the Faith by the parents should begin in the child's earliest years. This already happens when family members help one another to grow in faith by the witness of a Christian life in keeping with the Gospel. Family Catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches other forms of instruction in the faith. Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray and to discover their vocation as children of God. 35 The parish is the Eucharistic community and the heart of the liturgical life of Christian families; it is a privileged place for the catechesis of children and parents.

Through the Grace of the sacrament of marriage, parents receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children. Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the Faith of which they are the "first heralds" for their children. They should associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church. 34 A wholesome family life can foster interior dispositions that are a genuine preparation for a living faith and remain a support for it throughout one's life.

Fidelity expresses constancy in keeping one's given word. God is Faithful. the Sacrament of Matrimony enables man and woman to enter into Christ's fidelity for his Church. Through conjugal chastity, they bear witness to this mystery before the world.

It can happen that one of the spouses is the innocent victim of a divorce decreed by civil law; this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law. There is a considerable difference between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be Faithful to the sacrament of marriage and is unjustly abandoned, and one who through his own grave fault destroys a canonically valid marriage. 178

Martyrdom is the supreme witness given to the truth of the Faith: it means bearing witness even unto death. the martyr bears witness to Christ who died and rose, to whom he is united by charity. He bears witness to the truth of the faith and of Christian doctrine. He endures death through an act of fortitude. "Let me become the food of the beasts, through whom it will be given me to reach God." 270

The duty of Christians to take part in the life of the Church impels them to act as witnesses of the Gospel and of the obligations that flow from it. This witness is a transmission of the Faith in words and deeds. Witness is an act of justice that establishes the truth or makes it known. 268 All Christians by the example of their lives and the witness of their word, wherever they live, have an obligation to manifest the new man which they have put on in Baptism and to reveal the power of the Holy Spirit by whom they were strengthened at Confirmation.

Before Pilate, Christ proclaims that he "has come into the world, to bear witness to the truth." 265 The Christian is not to "be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord." 266 In situations that require witness to the Faith, the Christian must profess it without equivocation, after the example of St. Paul before his judges. We must keep "a clear conscience toward God and toward men." 267

The Old Testament attests that God is the source of all truth. His Word is truth. His Law is truth. His "Faithfulness endures to all generations." 254 Since God is "true," the members of his people are called to live in the truth. 255

It is not the role of the Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life. This task is part of the vocation of the lay Faithful, acting on their own initiative with their fellow citizens. Social action can assume various concrete forms. It should always have the common good in view and be in conformity with the message of the Gospel and the teaching of the Church. It is the role of the laity "to animate temporal realities with Christian commitment, by which they show that they are witnesses and agents of peace and justice." 230

The Church's social teaching comprises a body of doctrine, which is articulated as the Church interprets events in the course of history, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, in the light of the whole of what has been revealed by Jesus Christ. 201 This teaching can be more easily accepted by men of good will, the more the Faithful let themselves be guided by it.

Promises must be kept and contracts strictly observed to the extent that the commitments made in them are morally just. A significant part of economic and social life depends on the honoring of contracts between physical or moral perSons - commercial contracts of purchase or sale, rental or labor contracts. All contracts must be agreed to and executed in good Faith.

For Christians a special gratitude is due to those from whom they have received the gift of Faith, the Grace of Baptism, and life in the Church. These may include parents, grandparents, other members of the family, pastors, catechists, and other teachers or friends. "I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you." 28

The political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist it, and to ensure especially: - the freedom to establish a family, have children, and bring them up in keeping with the family's own moral and religious convictions; - the protection of the stability of the marriage bond and the institution of the family; - the freedom to profess one's Faith, to hand it on, and raise one's children in it, with the necessary means and institutions; - the right to private property, to free enterprise, to obtain work and housing, and the right to emigrate; - in keeping with the country's institutions, the right to medical care, assistance for the aged, and family benefits; - the protection of security and health, especially with respect to dangers like drugs, pornography, alcoholism, etc.; - the freedom to form associations with other families and so to have representation before civil authority. 15

This practice of the Christian assembly dates from the beginnings of the apostolic age. 112 The Letter to the Hebrews reminds the Faithful "not to neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but to encourage one another." 113

Promises made to others in God's name engage the divine honor, fidelity, truthfulness, and authority. They must be respected in justice. To be unFaithful to them is to misuse God's name and in some way to make God out to be a liar. 77

The Faithful should bear witness to the Lord's name by confessing the faith without giving way to fear. 76 Preaching and catechizing should be permeated with adoration and respect for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Since it rejects or denies the existence of God, atheism is a sin against the virtue of religion. 61 The imputability of this offense can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances. "Believers can have more than a little to do with the rise of atheism. To the extent that they are careless about their instruction in the Faith, or present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God and of religion." 62

All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the Faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity.

Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to Faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon." 44 Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast" 45 refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God. 46

"All men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and his Church, and to embrace it and hold on to it as they come to know it." 26 This duty derives from "the very dignity of the human perSon." 27 It does not contradict a "sincere respect" for different religions which frequently "reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men," 28 nor the requirement of charity, which urges Christians "to treat with love, prudence and patience those who are in error or ignorance with regard to the Faith." 29

"A parish is a definite community of the Christian Faithful established on a stable basis within a particular Church; the pastoral care of the parish is entrusted to a pastor as its own shepherd under the authority of the diocesan bishop." 115 It is the place where all the faithful can be gathered together for the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist. the parish initiates the Christian people into the ordinary expression of the liturgical life: it gathers them together in this celebration; it teaches Christ's saving doctrine; it practices the charity of the Lord in good works and brotherly love:

The precept of the Church specifies the law of the Lord more precisely: "On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the Faithful are bound to participate in the Mass." 117 "The precept of participating in the Mass is satisfied by assistance at a Mass which is celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the holy day or on the evening of the preceding day." 118

"The Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and for this reaSon it can and should be called a domestic Church." 9 It is a community of Faith, hope, and charity; it assumes singular importance in the Church, as is evident in the New Testament. 10

Sanctifying Sundays and holy days requires a common effort. Every Christian should avoid making unnecessary demands on others that would hinder them from observing the Lord's Day. Traditional activities (sport, restaurants, etc.), and social necessities (public services, etc.), require some people to work on Sundays, but everyone should still take care to set aside sufficient time for leisure. With temperance and charity the Faithful will see to it that they avoid the excesses and violence sometimes associated with popular leisure activities. In spite of economic constraints, public authorities should ensure citizens a time intended for rest and divine worship. Employers have a similar obligation toward their employees.

On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the Faithful are to refrain from engaging in work or activities that hinder the worship owed to God, the joy proper to the Lord's Day, the performance of the works of mercy, and the appropriate relaxation of mind and body. 123 Family needs or important social service can legitimately excuse from the obligation of Sunday rest. the faithful should see to it that legitimate excuses do not lead to habits prejudicial to religion, family life, and health.

"If because of lack of a sacred minister or for other grave cause participation in the celebration of the Eucharist is impossible, it is specially recommended that the Faithful take part in the Liturgy of the Word if it is celebrated in the parish Church or in another sacred place according to the prescriptions of the diocesan bishop, or engage in Prayer for an appropriate amount of time perSonally or in a family or, as occasion offers, in groups of families." 120

Participation in the communal celebration of the Sunday Eucharist is a testimony of belonging and of being Faithful to Christ and to his Church. the faithful give witness by this to their communion in faith and charity. Together they testify to God's holiness and their hope of salvation. They strengthen one another under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice. For this reaSon the Faithful are obliged to participate in the Eucharist on days of obligation, unless excused for a serious reason (for example, illness, the care of infants) or dispensed by their own pastor. 119 Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin.

The Church has painstakingly collected the records of those who persevered to the end in witnessing to their Faith. These are the acts of the Martyrs. They form the archives of truth written in letters of blood:

As on the day of our Baptism, when our whole life was entrusted to the "standard of teaching", 14 let us embrace the Creed of our life-giving Faith. To say the Credo with faith is to enter into communion with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and also with the whole Church which transmits the faith to us and in whose midst we believe:

St. Gregory of Nazianzus, also called "the Theologian", entrusts this summary of Trinitarian Faith to the catechumens of Constantinople: Above all guard for me this great deposit of faith for which I live and fight, which I want to take with me as a companion, and which makes me bear all evils and despise all pleasures: I mean the profession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I entrust it to you today. By it I am soon going to plunge you into water and raise you up from it. I give it to you as the companion and patron of your whole life. I give you but one divinity and power, existing one in three, and containing the three in a distinct way. Divinity without disparity of substance or nature, without superior degree that raises up or inferior degree that casts down. . . the infinite co-naturality of three infinites. Each person considered in himself is entirely God. . . the three considered together. . . I have not even begun to think of unity when the Trinity bathes me in its splendour. I have not even begun to think of the Trinity when unity grasps me. . 92

In order to articulate the dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to develop her own terminology with the help of certain notions of philosophical origin: "substance", "perSon" or "hypostasis", "relation" and so on. In doing this, she did not submit the Faith to human wisdom, but gave a new and unprecedented meaning to these terms, which from then on would be used to signify an ineffable mystery, "infinitely beyond all that we can humanly understand". 82

During the first centuries the Church sought to clarify her Trinitarian Faith, both to deepen her own understanding of the faith and to defend it against the errors that were deforming it. This clarification was the work of the early councils, aided by the theological work of the Church Fathers and sustained by the Christian people's sense of the faith.

From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church's living Faith, principally by means of Baptism. It finds its expression in the rule of Baptismal faith, formulated in the preaching, Catechesis and Prayer of the Church. Such formulations are already found in the apostolic writings, such as this salutation taken up in the Eucharistic liturgy: "The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." 81

At the outset the Eastern tradition expresses the Father's character as first origin of the Spirit. By confessing the Spirit as he "who proceeds from the Father", it affirms that he comes from the Father through the Son. 77 The Western tradition expresses first the consubstantial communion between Father and Son, by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque). It says this, "legitimately and with good reason", 78 for the eternal order of the divine persons in their consubstantial communion implies that the Father, as "the principle without principle", 79 is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that as Father of the only Son, he is, with the Son, the single principle from which the Holy Spirit proceeds. 80 This legitimate complementarity, provided it does not become rigid, does not affect the identity of Faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed.

The apostolic Faith concerning the Spirit was confessed by the second ecumenical council at Constantinople (381): "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father." 71 By this confession, the Church recognizes the Father as "the source and origin of the whole divinity". 72 But the eternal origin of the Spirit is not unconnected with the Son's origin: "The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is God, one and equal with the Father and the Son, of the same substance and also of the same nature. . . Yet he is not called the Spirit of the Father alone,. . . but the Spirit of both the Father and the Son." 73 The Creed of the Church from the Council of Constantinople confesses: "With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified." 74

By calling God "Father", the language of Faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God's parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, 62 which emphasizes God's immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. the language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: 63 no one is father as God is Father.

Since the beginning the Christian Faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human.

Catechesis on creation is of major importance. It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the Christian Faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked themselves: 120 "Where do we come from?" "Where are we going?" "What is our origin?" "What is our end?" "Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?" the two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 116 Holy Scripture begins with these solemn words. the profession of Faith takes them up when it confesses that God the Father almighty is "Creator of heaven and earth" (Apostles' Creed), "of all that is, seen and unseen" (Nicene Creed). We shall speak first of the Creator, then of creation and finally of the fall into sin from which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to raise us up again.

"Nothing is more apt to confirm our Faith and hope than holding it fixed in our minds that nothing is impossible with God. Once our reaSon has grasped the idea of God's almighty power, it will easily and without any hesitation admit everything that [the Creed] will afterwards propose for us to believe - even if they be great and marvellous things, far above the ordinary laws of nature." 115

Only Faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God's almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ's power. 113 The Virgin Mary is the supreme model of this faith, for she believed that "nothing will be impossible with God", and was able to magnify the Lord: "For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name." 114

Faith in God the Father Almighty can be put to the test by the experience of evil and suffering. God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil. But in the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil. Christ crucified is thus "the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." 111 It is in Christ's Resurrection and exaltation that the Father has shown forth "the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe". 112

of all the divine attributes, only God's omnipotence is named in the Creed: to confess this power has great bearing on our lives. We believe that his might is universal, for God who created everything also rules everything and can do everything. God's power is loving, for he is our Father, and mysterious, for only Faith can discern it when it "is made perfect in weakness". 103

The Trinity is a mystery of Faith in the strict sense, one of the "mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God". 58 To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reaSon alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

This paragraph expounds briefly (I) how the mystery of the Blessed Trinity was revealed, (II) how the Church has articulated the doctrine of the Faith regarding this mystery, and (III) how, by the divine missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit, God the Father fulfils the "plan of his loving goodness" of creation, redemption and sanctification.

The divine name, "I Am" or "He Is", expresses God's Faithfulness: despite the faithlessness of men's sin and the punishment it deserves, he keeps "steadfast love for thousands". 21 By going so far as to give up his own Son for us, God reveals that he is "rich in mercy". 22 By giving his life to free us from sin, Jesus reveals that he himself bears the divine name: "When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will realize that "I AM"." 23

After Israel's sin, when the people had turned away from God to worship the golden calf, God hears Moses' Prayer of intercession and agrees to walk in the midst of an unFaithful people, thus demonstrating his love. 18 When Moses asks to see his glory, God responds "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name "the LORD" [YHWH]." 19 Then the LORD passes before Moses and proclaims, "YHWH, YHWH, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness"; Moses then confesses that the LORD is a forgiving God. 20

By revealing his name God at the same time reveals his Faithfulness which is from everlasting to everlasting, valid for the past ("I am the God of your Father"), as for the future ("I will be with you"). 12 God, who reveals his name as "I AM", reveals himself as the God who is always there, present to his people in order to save them.

God calls Moses from the midst of a bush that burns without being consumed: "I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." 9 God is the God of the fathers, the One who had called and guided the patriarchs in their wanderings. He is the Faithful and compassionate God who remembers them and his promises; he comes to free their descendants from slavery. He is the God who, from beyond space and time, can do this and wills to do it, the God who will put his almighty power to work for this plan.

Jesus himself affirms that God is "the one Lord" whom you must love "with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength". 6 At the same time Jesus gives us to understand that he himself is "the Lord". 7 To confess that Jesus is Lord is distinctive of Christian Faith. This is not contrary to belief in the One God. Nor does believing in the Holy Spirit as "Lord and giver of life" introduce any division into the One God:

These are the words with which the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed begins. the confession of God's oneness, which has its roots in the divine revelation of the Old Covenant, is inseparable from the profession of God's existence and is equally fundamental. God is unique; there is only one God: "The Christian Faith confesses that God is one in nature, substance and essence." 3

"I believe in God": this first affirmation of the Apostles' Creed is also the most fundamental. the whole Creed speaks of God, and when it also speaks of man and of the world it does so in relation to God. the other articles of the Creed all depend on the first, just as the remaining Commandments make the first explicit. the other articles help us to know God better as he revealed himself progressively to men. "The Faithful first profess their belief in God." 2

Our profession of Faith begins with God, for God is the First and the Last, 1 The beginning and the end of everything. the Credo begins with God the Father, for the Father is the first divine perSon of the Most Holy Trinity; our Creed begins with the creation of heaven and earth, for creation is the beginning and the foundation of all God's works.

Over the centuries, Israel's Faith was able to manifest and deepen realization of the riches contained in the revelation of the divine name. God is unique; there are no other gods besides him. 24

God, "HE WHO IS", revealed himself to Israel as the one "abounding in steadfast love and Faithfulness". 27 These two terms express summarily the riches of the divine name. In all his works God displays, not only his kindness, goodness, Grace and steadfast love, but also his trustworthiness, constancy, faithfulness and truth. "I give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness." 28 He is the Truth, for "God is light and in him there is no darkness"; "God is love", as the apostle John teaches. 29

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian Faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of faith". 56 The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin". 57

Christians are baptized "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" 53 Before receiving the sacrament, they respond to a three-part question when asked to confess the Father, the Son and the Spirit: "I do." "The Faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity." 54

It means making good use of created things: Faith in God, the only One, leads us to use everything that is not God only insofar as it brings us closer to him, and to detach ourselves from it insofar as it turns us away from him: My Lord and my God, take from me everything that distances me from you. My Lord and my God, give me everything that brings me closer to you My Lord and my God, detach me from myself to give my all to you. 51

God's love is "everlasting": 41 "For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you." 42 Through Jeremiah, God declares to his people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my Faithfulness to you." 43

In the course of its history, Israel was able to discover that God had only one reaSon to reveal himself to them, a single motive for choosing them from among all peoples as his special possession: his sheer gratuitous love. 38 and thanks to the prophets Israel understood that it was again out of love that God never stopped saving them and pardoning their unFaithfulness and sins. 39

"The sum of your word is truth; and every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever." 30 "and now, O LORD God, you are God, and your words are true"; 31 this is why God's promises always come true. 32 God is Truth itself, whose words cannot deceive. This is why one can abandon oneself in full trust to the truth and Faithfulness of his word in all things. the beginning of sin and of man's fall was due to a lie of the tempter who induced doubt of God's word, kindness and faithfulness.

Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. the existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reaSon, 122 even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error. This is why Faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth: "By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear." 123

"In the beginning was the Word. . . and the Word was God. . . all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." 129 The New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal Word, his beloved Son. In him "all things were created, in heaven and on earth.. . all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." 130 The Church's Faith likewise confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the "giver of life", "the Creator Spirit" (Veni, Creator Spiritus), the "source of every good". 131

The Old Testament suggests and the New Covenant reveals the creative action of the Son and the Spirit, 132 inseparably one with that of the Father. This creative co-operation is clearly affirmed in the Church's rule of Faith: "There exists but one God. . . he is the Father, God, the Creator, the author, the giver of order. He made all things by himself, that is, by his Word and by his Wisdom", "by the Son and the Spirit" who, so to speak, are "his hands". 133 Creation is the common work of the Holy Trinity.

To become the mother of the Saviour, Mary "was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role." 132 The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as "full of Grace". 133 In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her Faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace.

Throughout the Old Covenant the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary. At the very beginning there was Eve; despite her disobedience, she receives the promise of a posterity that will be victorious over the evil one, as well as the promise that she will be the mother of all the living. 128 By virtue of this promise, Sarah conceives a Son in spite of her old age. 129 Against all human expectation God chooses those who were considered powerless and weak to show forth his Faithfulness to his promises: Hannah, the mother of Samuel; Deborah; Ruth; Judith and Esther; and many other women. 130 Mary "stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him. After a long period of waiting the times are fulfilled in her, the exalted Daughter of Sion, and the new plan of salvation is established." 131

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.

The first heresies denied not so much Christ's divinity as his true humanity (Gnostic Docetism). From apostolic times the Christian Faith has insisted on the true incarnation of God's Son "come in the flesh". 87 But already in the third century, the Church in a council at Antioch had to affirm against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption. the first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is "begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father", and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God "came to be from things that were not" and that he was "from another substance" than that of the Father. 88

The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man. During the first centuries, the Church had to defend and clarify this truth of Faith against the heresies that falsified it.

Belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God is the distinctive sign of Christian Faith: "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." 85 Such is the joyous conviction of the Church from her beginning whenever she sings "the mystery of our religion": "He was manifested in the flesh." 86

By attributing to Jesus the divine title "Lord", the first confessions of the Church's Faith affirm from the beginning that the power, honour and glory due to God the Father are due also to Jesus, because "he was in the form of God", 65 and the Father manifested the sovereignty of Jesus by raising him from the dead and exalting him into his glory. 66

The Gospels report that at two solemn moments, the Baptism and the Transfiguration of Christ, the voice of the Father designates Jesus his "beloved Son". 53 Jesus calls himself the "only Son of God", and by this title affirms his eternal pre-existence. 54 He asks for Faith in "the name of the only Son of God". 55 In the centurion's exclamation before the crucified Christ, "Truly this man was the Son of God", 56 that Christian confession is already heard. Only in the Paschal mystery can the believer give the title "Son of God" its full meaning.

At the announcement that she would give birth to "the Son of the Most High" without knowing man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary responded with the obedience of Faith, certain that "with God nothing will be impossible": "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word." 139 Thus, giving her consent to God's word, Mary becomes the mother of Jesus. Espousing the divine will for salvation wholeheartedly, without a single sin to restrain her, she gave herself entirely to the person and to the work of her Son; she did so in order to serve the mystery of redemption with him and dependent on him, by God's Grace: 140

From the first formulations of her Faith, the Church has confessed that Jesus was conceived solely by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, affirming also the corporeal aspect of this event: Jesus was conceived "by the Holy Spirit without human seed". 146 The Fathers see in the virginal conception the sign that it truly was the Son of God who came in a humanity like our own. Thus St. Ignatius of Antioch at the beginning of the second century says: You are firmly convinced about our Lord, who is truly of the race of David according to the flesh, Son of God according to the will and power of God, truly born of a virgin,. . . he was truly nailed to a tree for us in his flesh under Pontius Pilate. . . he truly suffered, as he is also truly risen. 147

At once virgin and mother, Mary is the symbol and the most perfect realization of the Church: "the Church indeed. . . by receiving the word of God in Faith becomes herself a mother. By preaching and Baptism she brings forth Sons, who are conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of God, to a new and immortal life. She herself is a virgin, who keeps in its entirety and purity the faith she pledged to her spouse." 170

Mary is a virgin because her virginity is the sign of her Faith "unadulterated by any doubt", and of her undivided gift of herself to God's will. 168 It is her faith that enables her to become the mother of the Saviour: "Mary is more blessed because she embraces faith in Christ than because she conceives the flesh of Christ." 169

By his virginal conception, Jesus, the New Adam, ushers in the new birth of children adopted in the Holy Spirit through Faith. "How can this be?" 165 Participation in the divine life arises "not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God". 166 The acceptance of this life is virginal because it is entirely the Spirit's gift to man. the spousal character of the human vocation in relation to God 167 is fulfilled perfectly in Mary's virginal motherhood.

The eyes of Faith can discover in the context of the whole of Revelation the mysterious reaSons why God in his saving plan wanted his Son to be born of a virgin. These reasons touch both on the person of Christ and his redemptive mission, and on the welcome Mary gave that mission on behalf of all men.

Jesus is Mary's only Son, but her spiritual motherhood extends to all men whom indeed he came to save: "The Son whom she brought forth is he whom God placed as the first-born among many brethren, that is, the Faithful in whose generation and formation she co-operates with a mother's love." 160

The deepening of Faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. 154 In fact, Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." 155 and so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the "Ever-virgin". 156

People are sometimes troubled by the silence of St. Mark's Gospel and the New Testament Epistles about Jesus' virginal conception. Some might wonder if we were merely dealing with legends or theological constructs not claiming to be history. To this we must respond: Faith in the virginal conception of Jesus met with the lively opposition, mockery or incomprehension of non-believers, Jews and pagans alike; 151 so it could hardly have been motivated by pagan mythology or by some adaptation to the ideas of the age. the meaning of this event is accessible only to faith, which understands in it the "connection of these mysteries with one another" 152 in the totality of Christ's mysteries, from his Incarnation to his Passover. St. Ignatius of Antioch already bears witness to this connection: "Mary's virginity and giving birth, and even the Lord's death escaped the notice of the prince of this world: these three mysteries worthy of proclamation were accomplished in God's silence." 153

Such is not the case for Simon Peter when he confesses Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God", for Jesus responds solemnly: "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." 46 Similarly Paul will write, regarding his conversion on the road to Damascus, "When he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his Grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles..." 47 "and in the synagogues immediately [Paul] proclaimed Jesus, saying, 'He is the Son of God.'" 48 From the beginning this acknowledgment of Christ's divine sonship will be the centre of the apostolic Faith, first professed by Peter as the Church's foundation. 49

Jesus accepted Peter's profession of Faith, which acknowledged him to be the Messiah, by announcing the imminent Passion of the Son of Man. 40 He unveiled the authentic content of his messianic kingship both in the transcendent identity of the Son of Man "who came down from heaven", and in his redemptive mission as the suffering Servant: "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." 41 Hence the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross. 42 Only after his Resurrection will Peter be able to proclaim Jesus' messianic kingship to the People of God: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." 43

The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls "angels" is a truth of Faith. the witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition.

The profession of Faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body." 187

If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian Faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.

The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from Faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." 171 Far from diminishing the creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for "without a Creator the creature vanishes." 172 Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's Grace. 173

Since God could create everything out of nothing, he can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them, 148 and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection. God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." 149 and since God was able to make light shine in darkness by his Word, he can also give the light of Faith to those who do not yet know him. 150

Scripture bears witness to Faith in creation "out of nothing" as a truth full of promise and hope. Thus the mother of seven Sons encourages them for martyrdom:

From infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. 202 "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life." 203 Already here on earth the Christian life shares by Faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.

In creation God laid a foundation and established laws that remain firm, on which the believer can rely with confidence, for they are the sign and pledge of the unshakeable Faithfulness of God's covenant. 214 For his part man must remain faithful to this foundation, and respect the laws which the Creator has written into it.

From this loving knowledge of Christ springs the desire to proclaim him, to "evangelize", and to lead others to the "yes" of Faith in Jesus Christ. But at the same time the need to know this faith better makes itself felt. To this end, following the order of the Creed, Jesus' principal titles - "Christ", "Son of God", and "Lord" (article 2) - will be presented. the Creed next confesses the chief mysteries of his life - those of his Incarnation (article 3), Paschal mystery (articles 4 and 5) and glorification (articles 6 and 7).

The transmission of the Christian Faith consists primarily in proclaiming Jesus Christ in order to lead others to faith in him. From the beginning, the first disciples burned with the desire to proclaim Christ: "We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." 11 It and they invite people of every era to enter into the joy of their communion with Christ:

Moved by the Grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' 8 On the rock of this Faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church. 9 "To preach. . . the unsearchable riches of Christ" 10

Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the "death of the soul". 291 Because of this Certainty of Faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed perSonal sin. 292

The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. 264 Revelation gives us the Certainty of Faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents. 265

God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil. Where does evil come from? "I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution", said St. Augustine, 257 and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the living God. For "the mystery of lawlessness" is clarified only in the light of the "mystery of our religion". 258 The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil and the superabundance of Grace. 259 We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our Faith on him who alone is its conqueror. 260

Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a perSon, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. and he is called by Grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of Faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.

Concerning Christ's life the Creed speaks only about the mysteries of the Incarnation (conception and birth) and Paschal mystery (passion, crucifixion, death, burial, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension). It says nothing explicitly about the mysteries of Jesus' hidden or public life, but the articles of Faith concerning his Incarnation and Passover do shed light on the whole of his earthly life. "All that Jesus did and taught, from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven", 171 is to be seen in the light of the mysteries of Christmas and Easter.

Those who with God's help have welcomed Christ's call and freely responded to it are urged on by love of Christ to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world. This treasure, received from the apostles, has been Faithfully guarded by their successors. All Christ's faithful are called to hand it on from generation to generation, by professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating it in liturgy and Prayer. 6

Still, the Christian Faith is not a "religion of the book". Christianity is the religion of the "Word" of God, "not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living". 73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open (our) minds to understand the Scriptures." 74

The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, Faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures." 72

For this reaSon, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the Faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body. 66

Thanks to the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of both the realities and the words of the heritage of Faith is able to grow in the life of the Church: - "through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts"; 57 it is in particular "theological research [which] deepens knowledge of revealed truth". 58 - "from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which [believers] experience", 59 The sacred Scriptures "grow with the one who reads them." 60 - "from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth". 61

"By this appreciation of the Faith, aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (Magisterium),. . . receives. . . the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. . . the People unfailingly adheres to this faith, penetrates it more deeply with right judgment, and applies it more fully in daily life." 56

"The whole body of the Faithful. . . cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of faith (sensus fidei) on the part of the whole people, when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals." 55

All the Faithful share in understanding and handing on revealed truth. They have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, who instructs them 53 and guides them into all truth. 54

3. Be attentive to the analogy of Faith. 82 By "analogy of faith" we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.

"The Word of God, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has Faith, is set forth and displays its power in a most wonderful way in the writings of the New Testament" 96 which hand on the ultimate truth of God's Revelation. Their central object is Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Son: his acts, teachings, Passion and glorification, and his Church's beginnings under the Spirit's guidance. 97

Abraham thus fulfils the definition of Faith in Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen": 7 "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." 8 Because he was "strong in his faith", Abraham became the "Father of all who believe". 9

The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eulogy of the Faith of Israel's ancestors, lays special emphasis on Abraham's faith: "By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go." 4 By faith, he lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land. 5 By faith, Sarah was given to conceive the Son of the promise. and by faith Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice. 6

To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in Faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. the Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.

By Faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. 2 With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith". 3

By his Revelation, "the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company." 1 The adequate response to this invitation is Faith.

The Church "forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian Faithful... to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. 112

"and such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigour, and the children of the Church as strength for their Faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life." 109 Hence "access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful." 110

We can distinguish three stages in the formation of the Gospels: 1. the life and teaching of Jesus. the Church holds firmly that the four Gospels, "whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms, Faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up." 99 2. the oral tradition. "For, after the ascension of the Lord, the apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done, but with that fuller understanding which they, instructed by the glorious events of Christ and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, now enjoyed." 100 3. the written Gospels. "The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, the while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus." 101

The mutual connections between dogmas, and their coherence, can be found in the whole of the Revelation of the mystery of Christ. 51 "In Catholic doctrine there exists an order or hierarchy 234 of truths, since they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian Faith." 52

There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of Faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith. 50

This catechism is conceived as an organic presentation of the Catholic Faith in its entirety. It should be seen therefore as a unified whole. Numerous cross-references in the margin of the text (numbers found at the end of a sentence referring to other paragraphs that deal with the same theme), as well as the analytical index at the end of the volume, allow the reader to view each theme in its relationship with the entirety of the faith.

Those who belong to Christ through Faith and Baptism must confess their Baptismal faith before men. 16 First therefore the Catechism expounds revelation, by which God addresses and gives himself to man, and the faith by which man responds to God (Section One). the profession of faith summarizes the gifts that God gives man: as the Author of all that is good; as Redeemer; and as Sanctifier. It develops these in the three chapters on our baptismal faith in the one God: the almighty Father, the Creator; his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour; and the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, in the Holy Church (Section Two).

The plan of this catechism is inspired by the great tradition of catechisms which build Catechesis on four pillars: the Baptismal profession of Faith (the Creed), the Sacraments of Faith, the life of faith (the Commandments), and the Prayer of the believer (the Lord's Prayer).

This work is intended primarily for those responsible for Catechesis: first of all the bishops, as teachers of the Faith and pastors of the Church. It is offered to them as an instrument in fulfilling their responsibility of teaching the People of God. Through the bishops, it is addressed to redactors of catechisms, to priests, and to catechists. It will also be useful reading for all other Christian faithful.

This catechism aims at presenting an organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental contents of Catholic doctrine, as regards both Faith and morals, in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church's Tradition. Its principal sources are the Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, the liturgy, and the Church's Magisterium. It is intended to serve "as a point of reference for the catechisms or compendia that are composed in the various countries". 15

It is therefore no surprise that Catechesis in the Church has again attracted attention in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, which Pope Paul Vl considered the great catechism of modern times. the General Catechetical Directory (1971) the sessions of the Synod of Bishops devoted to evangelization (1974) and catechesis (1977), the apostolic exhortations Evangelii nuntiandi (1975) and Catechesi tradendae (1979), attest to this. the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985 asked "that a catechism or compendium of all Catholic doctrine regarding both Faith and morals be composed" 13 The Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, made the Synod's wish his own, acknowledging that "this desire wholly corresponds to a real need of the universal Church and of the particular Churches." 14 He set in motion everything needed to carry out the Synod Fathers' wish.

While not being formally identified with them, Catechesis is built on a certain number of elements of the Church's pastoral mission which have a catechetical aspect, that prepare for catechesis, or spring from it. They are: the initial proclamation of the Gospel or missionary preaching to arouse Faith; examination of the reaSons for belief; experience of Christian living; celebration of the sacraments; integration into the ecclesial community; and apostolic and missionary witness. 9

"Catechesis is an education in the Faith of children, young people and adults which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life." 8

The Catechism emphasizes the exposition of doctrine. It seeks to help deepen understanding of Faith. In this way it is oriented towards the maturing of that faith, its putting down roots in perSonal life, and its shining forth in personal conduct. 17

By design, this Catechism does not set out to provide the adaptation of doctrinal presentations and catechetical methods required by the differences of culture, age, spiritual maturity, and social and ecclesial condition among all those to whom it is addressed. Such indispensable adaptations are the responsibility of particular catechisms and, even more, of those who instruct the Faithful:

Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me", 49 The Faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.

"Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it Faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith." 48

The apostles entrusted the "Sacred deposit" of the Faith (the depositum fidei), 45 contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. "By adhering to [this heritage] the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and the Prayers. So, in maintaining, practising and professing the faith that has been handed on, there should be a remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful." 46

Throughout the ages, there have been so-called "private" revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of Faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.

"The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ." 28 Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian Faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.

Israel is the priestly people of God, "called by the name of the LORD", and "the first to hear the word of God", 21 The people of "elder brethren" in the Faith of Abraham.

Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a perSonal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the Grace of being able to welcome this revelation in Faith.(so) the proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

We begin our profession of Faith by saying: "I believe" or "We believe". Before expounding the Church's faith, as confessed in the Creed, celebrated in the liturgy and lived in observance of God's commandments and in Prayer, we must first ask what "to believe" means. Faith is man's response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life. Thus we shall consider first that search (Chapter One), then the divine Revelation by which God comes to meet man (Chapter Two), and finally the response of faith (Chapter Three).

The Old Testament is rich in witnesses to this Faith. the Letter to the Hebrews proclaims its eulogy of the exemplary faith of the ancestors who "received divine approval". 10 Yet "God had foreseen something better for us": the Grace of believing in his Son Jesus, "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith". 11

The Virgin Mary most perfectly embodies the obedience of Faith. By faith Mary welcomes the tidings and promise brought by the angel Gabriel, believing that "with God nothing will be impossible" and so giving her assent: "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word." 12 Elizabeth greeted her: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." 13 It is for this faith that all generations have called Mary blessed. 14

Throughout her life and until her last ordeal 15 when Jesus her Son died on the cross, Mary's Faith never wavered. She never ceased to believe in the fulfilment of God's word. and so the Church venerates in Mary the purest realization of faith.

"We guard with care the Faith that we have received from the Church, for without ceasing, under the action of God's Spirit, this deposit of great price, as if in an excellent vessel, is constantly being renewed and causes the very vessel that contains it to be renewed." 62

"For though languages differ throughout the world, the content of the Tradition is one and the same. the Churches established in Germany have no other Faith or Tradition, nor do those of the Iberians, nor those of the Celts, nor those of the East, of Egypt, of Libya, nor those established at the centre of the world. . ." 60 The Church's message "is true and solid, in which one and the same way of salvation appears throughout the whole world." 61

"Indeed, the Church, though scattered throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, having received the Faith from the apostles and their disciples. . . guards [this preaching and faith] with care, as dwelling in but a single house, and similarly believes as if having but one soul and a single heart, and preaches, teaches and hands on this faith with a unanimous voice, as if possessing only one mouth." 59

Through the centuries, in so many languages, cultures, peoples and nations, the Church has constantly confessed this one Faith, received from the one Lord, transmitted by one Baptism, and grounded in the conviction that all people have only one God and Father. 58 St. Irenaeus of Lyons, a witness of this faith, declared:

Whoever says "I believe" says "I pledge myself to what we believe." Communion in Faith needs a common language of faith, normative for all and uniting all in the same confession of faith.

The Apostles' Creed is so called because it is rightly considered to be a Faithful summary of the apostles' faith. It is the ancient Baptismal symbol of the Church of Rome. Its great authority arises from this fact: it is "the Creed of the Roman Church, the See of Peter the first of the apostles, to which he brought the common faith". 13

None of the creeds from the different stages in the Church's life can be considered superseded or irrelevant. They help us today to attain and deepen the Faith of all times by means of the different summaries made of it. Among all the creeds, two occupy a special place in the Church's life:

Through the centuries many professions or symbols of Faith have been articulated in response to the needs of the different eras: the creeds of the different apostolic and ancient Churches, 8 e.g., the Quicumque, also called the Athanasian Creed; 9 The professions of faith of certain Councils, such as Toledo, Lateran, Lyons, Trent; 10 or the symbols of certain popes, e.g., the Fides Damasi 11 or the Credo of the People of God of Paul VI. 12

"These three parts are distinct although connected with one another. According to a compariSon often used by the Fathers, we call them articles. Indeed, just as in our bodily members there are certain articulations which distinguish and separate them, so too in this profession of Faith, the name "articles" has justly and rightly been given to the truths we must believe particularly and distinctly." 6 In accordance with an ancient tradition, already attested to by St. Ambrose, it is also customary to reckon the articles of the Creed as twelve, thus symbolizing the fullness of the apostolic faith by the number of the apostles. 7

The first "profession of Faith" is made during Baptism. the symbol of faith is first and foremost the Baptismal creed. Since Baptism is given "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", 3 The truths of faith professed during Baptism are articulated in terms of their reference to the three persons of the Holy Trinity.

The Greek word symbolon meant half of a broken object, for example, a seal presented as a token of recognition. the broken parts were placed together to verify the bearer's identity. the symbol of Faith, then, is a sign of recognition and communion between believers. Symbolon also means a gathering, collection or summary. A symbol of faith is a summary of the principal truths of the faith and therefore serves as the first and fundamental point of reference for Catechesis.

Such syntheses are called "professions of Faith" since they summarize the faith that Christians profess. They are called "creeds" on account of what is usually their first word in Latin: credo ("I believe"). They are also called "symbols of faith".

From the beginning, the apostolic Church expressed and handed on her Faith in brief formulae normative for all. 1 But already very early on, the Church also wanted to gather the essential elements of her faith into organic and articulated summaries, intended especially for candidates for Baptism:

The Church, "the pillar and bulwark of the truth", Faithfully guards "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints". She guards the memory of Christ's words; it is she who from generation to generation hands on the apostles' confession of faith. 57 As a mother who teaches her children to speak and so to understand and communicate, the Church our Mother teaches us the language of faith in order to introduce us to the understanding and the life of faith.

We do not believe in formulae, but in those realities they express, which Faith allows us to touch. "The believer's act [of faith] does not terminate in the propositions, but in the realities [which they express]." 56 All the same, we do approach these realities with the help of formulations of the faith which permit us to express the faith and to hand it on, to celebrate it in community, to assimilate and live on it more and more.

Faith and science: "Though faith is above reaSon, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." 37 "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. the humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are." 38

"Faith seeks understanding": 33 it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love. the Grace of faith opens "the eyes of your hearts" 34 to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation: that is, of the totality of God's plan and the mysteries of faith, of their connection with each other and with Christ, the centre of the revealed mystery. "The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood." 35 In the words of St. Augustine, "I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe." 36

Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reaSon and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives." 31 "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt." 32

What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reaSon: we believe "because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived". 28 So "that the submission of our Faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit." 29 Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability "are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all"; they are "Motives of Credibility" (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is "by no means a blind impulse of the mind". 30

In Faith, the human intellect and will co-operate with divine Grace: "Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace." 27

Believing is possible only by Grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths he has revealed is contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reaSon. Even in human relations it is not contrary to our dignity to believe what other persons tell us about themselves and their intentions, or to trust their promises (for example, when a man and a woman marry) to share a communion of life with one another. If this is so, still less is it contrary to our dignity to "yield by Faith the full submission of... intellect and will to God who reveals", 26 and to share in an interior communion with him.

When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come "from flesh and blood", but from "my Father who is in heaven". 24 Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. "Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the Grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.'" 25

Faith is first of all a perSonal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature. 17

To be human, "man's response to God by Faith must be free, and... therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. the act of faith is of its very nature a free act." 39 "God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. . . This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus." 40 Indeed, Christ invited people to faith and conversion, but never coerced them. "For he bore witness to the truth but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom... grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself." 41

Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. 42 "Since "without Faith it is impossible to please (God) " and to attain to the fellowship of his Sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained Justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.'"]

Salvation comes from God alone; but because we receive the life of Faith through the Church, she is our mother: "We believe the Church as the mother of our new birth, and not in the Church as if she were the author of our salvation." 55 Because she is our mother, she is also our teacher in the faith.

It is the Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes and sustains my Faith. Everywhere, it is the Church that first confesses the Lord: "Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you", as we sing in the hymn Te Deum; with her and in her, we are won over and brought to confess: "I believe", "We believe". It is through the Church that we receive faith and new life in Christ by Baptism. In the Rituale Romanum, the minister of Baptism asks the catechumen: "What do you ask of God's Church?" and the answer is: "Faith." "What does faith offer you?" "Eternal life." 54

"I believe" (Apostles' Creed) is the Faith of the Church professed perSonally by each believer, principally during Baptism. "We believe" (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) is the faith of the Church confessed by the bishops assembled in council or more generally by the liturgical assembly of believers. "I believe" is also the Church, our mother, responding to God by faith as she teaches us to say both "I believe" and "We believe".

Faith is a perSonal act - the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone. You have not given yourself faith as you have not given yourself life. the believer has received faith from others and should hand it on to others. Our love for Jesus and for our neighbour impels us to speak to others about our faith. Each believer is thus a link in the great chain of believers. I cannot believe without being carried by the faith of others, and by my faith I help support others in the faith.

It is then we must turn to the witnesses of Faith: to Abraham, who "in hope... believed against hope"; 51 to the Virgin Mary, who, in "her pilgrimage of faith", walked into the "night of faith" 52 in sharing the darkness of her Son's suffering and death; and to so many others: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." 53

Now, however, "we walk by Faith, not by sight"; 49 we perceive God as "in a mirror, dimly" and only "in part". 50 Even though enlightened by him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. the world we live in often seems very far from the one promised us by faith. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death, seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it.

Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the Beatific Vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God "face to face", "as he is". 47 So faith is already the beginning of eternal life: When we contemplate the blessings of faith even now, as if gazing at a reflection in a mirror, it is as if we already possessed the wonderful things which our faith assures us we shall one day enjoy. 48

Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: "Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain perSons have made shipwreck of their faith." 44 To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; 45 it must be "working through charity," abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church. 46

Our presentation of the Faith will follow the Apostles' Creed, which constitutes, as it were, "the oldest Roman catechism". the presentation will be completed however by constant references to the Nicene Creed, which is often more explicit and more detailed.

The Gospels were written by men who were among the first to have the Faith 174 and wanted to share it with others. Having known in faith who Jesus is, they could see and make others see the traces of his mystery in all his earthly life. From the swaddling clothes of his birth to the vinegar of his Passion and the shroud of his Resurrection, everything in Jesus' life was a sign of his mystery. 175 His deeds, miracles and words all revealed that "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." 176 His humanity appeared as "sacrament", that is, the sign and instrument, of his divinity and of the salvation he brings: what was visible in his earthly life leads to the invisible mystery of his divine Sonship and redemptive mission

Bishops, with priests as co-workers, have as their first task "to preach the Gospel of God to all men," in keeping with the Lord's command. 415 They are "heralds of Faith, who draw new disciples to Christ; they are authentic teachers" of the apostolic faith "endowed with the authority of Christ." 416

By her complete adherence to the Father's will, to his Son's redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church's model of Faith and charity. Thus she is a "preeminent and . . . wholly unique member of the Church"; indeed, she is the "exemplary realization" (typus) 508 of the Church.

In the one family of God. "For if we continue to love one another and to join in praising the Most Holy Trinity - all of us who are Sons of God and form one family in Christ - we will be Faithful to the deepest vocation of the Church." 499

"So it is that the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the constant Faith of the Church, this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods." 492

Communion of charisms. Within the communion of the Church, the Holy Spirit "distributes special Graces among the Faithful of every rank" for the building up of the Church. 482 Now, "to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." 483

Communion of the sacraments. "The fruit of all the sacraments belongs to all the Faithful. All the sacraments are sacred links uniting the faithful with one another and binding them to Jesus Christ, and above all Baptism, the gate by which we enter into the Church. the communion of saints must be understood as the communion of the sacraments.... the name 'communion' can be applied to all of them, for they unite us to God.... But this name is better suited to the Eucharist than to any other, because it is primarily the Eucharist that brings this communion about." 481

In the primitive community of Jerusalem, the disciples "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the Prayers." 480 Communion in the Faith. the faith of the faithful is the faith of the Church, received from the apostles. Faith is a treasure of life which is enriched by being shared.

"Since all the Faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others.... We must therefore believe that there exists a communion of goods in the Church. But the most important member is Christ, since he is the head.... Therefore, the riches of Christ are communicated to all the members, through the sacraments." 478 "As this Church is governed by one and the same Spirit, all the goods she has received necessarily become a common fund." 479

Her role in relation to the Church and to all humanity goes still further. "In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, Faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior's work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reaSon she is a mother to us in the order of Grace." 509

"Mary's function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power. But the Blessed Virgin's salutary influence on men . . . flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it, and draws all its power from it." 511 "No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer; but just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the Faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source." 512

The Creed links "the forgiveness of sins" with its profession of Faith in the Holy Spirit, for the risen Christ entrusted to the apostles the power to forgive sins when he gave them the Holy Spirit.

Catechesis strives to awaken and nourish in the Faithful faith in the incomparable greatness of the risen Christ's gift to his Church: the mission and the power to forgive sins through the ministry of the apostles and their successors:

After his Resurrection, Christ sent his apostles "so that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations." 524 The apostles and their successors carry out this "ministry of reconciliation," not only by announcing to men God's forgiveness merited for us by Christ, and calling them to conversion and Faith; but also by communicating to them the forgiveness of sins in Baptism, and reconciling them with God and with the Church through the power of the keys, received from Christ: 525

"When we made our first profession of Faith while receiving the holy Baptism that cleansed us, the forgiveness we received then was so full and complete that there remained in us absolutely nothing left to efface, neither original sin nor offenses committed by our own will, nor was there left any penalty to suffer in order to expiate them.... Yet the Grace of Baptism delivers no one from all the weakness of nature. On the contrary, we must still combat the movements of concupiscence that never cease leading us into evil " 521

Our Lord tied the forgiveness of sins to Faith and Baptism: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved." 519 Baptism is the first and chief sacrament of forgiveness of sins because it unites us with Christ, who died for our sins and rose for our Justification, so that "we too might walk in newness of life." 520

The Apostle's Creed associates Faith in the forgiveness of sins not only with faith in the Holy Spirit, but also with faith in the Church and in the communion of saints. It was when he gave the Holy Spirit to his apostles that the risen Christ conferred on them his own divine power to forgive sins: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." 518

After speaking of the Church, her origin, mission, and destiny, we can find no better way to conclude than by looking to Mary. In her we contemplate what the Church already is in her mystery on her own "pilgrimage of Faith," and what she will be in the homeland at the end of her journey. There, "in the glory of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity," "in the communion of all the saints," 516 The Church is awaited by the one she venerates as Mother of her Lord and as her own mother.

"All generations will call me blessed": "The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship." 513 The Church rightly honors "the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of 'Mother of God,' to whose protection the Faithful fly in all their dangers and needs.... This very special devotion ... differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration." 514 The liturgical feasts dedicated to the Mother of God and Marian Prayer, such as the rosary, an "epitome of the whole Gospel," express this devotion to the Virgin Mary. 515

"Christ . . . fulfills this prophetic office, not only by the hierarchy . . . but also by the laity. He accordingly both establishes them as witnesses and provides them with the sense of the Faith [sensus fidei] and the Grace of the word" 438

Since, like all the Faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it. 433 The participation of lay people in Christ's priestly office

"The term 'laity' is here understood to mean all the Faithful except those in Holy Orders and those who belong to a religious state approved by the Church. That is, the faithful, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ and integrated into the People of God, are made sharers in their particular way in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ, and have their own part to play in the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the World." 430

The Good Shepherd ought to be the model and "form" of the bishop's pastoral office. Conscious of his own weaknesses, "the bishop . . . can have compassion for those who are ignorant and erring. He should not refuse to listen to his subjects whose welfare he promotes as of his very own children.... the Faithful ... should be closely attached to the bishop as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father": 428

Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a "definitive manner," they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of Faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful "are to adhere to it with religious assent" 422 which, though distinct from the assent of faith, is nonetheless an extension of it.

"The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the Faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals.... the infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an Ecumenical Council. 418 When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed," 419 and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith." 420 This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself. 421

The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true Faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. the exercise of this charism takes several forms:

In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the Faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith." 417

"In accord with the knowledge, competence, and preeminence which they possess, [lay people] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian Faithful, with due regard to the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of perSons." 443

In the Church, "lay members of the Christian Faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this power [of governance] in accord with the norm of law." 449 and so the Church provides for their presence at particular councils, diocesan synods, pastoral councils; the exercise in solidum of the pastoral care of a parish, collaboration in finance committees, and participation in ecclesiastical tribunals, etc. 450

"A secular institute is an institute of consecrated life in which the Christian Faithful living in the world strive for the perfection of charity and work for the sanctification of the world especially from within." 470

All religious, whether exempt or not, take their place among the collaborators of the diocesan bishop in his pastoral duty. 467 From the outset of the work of evangelization, the missionary "planting" and expansion of the Church require the presence of the religious life in all its forms. 468 "History witnesses to the outstanding service rendered by religious families in the propagation of the Faith and in the formation of new Churches: from the ancient monastic institutions to the medieval orders, all the way to the more recent congregations." 469

Religious life derives from the mystery of the Church. It is a gift she has received from her Lord, a gift she offers as a stable way of life to the Faithful called by God to profess the counsels. Thus, the Church can both show forth Christ and acknowledge herself to be the Savior's bride. Religious life in its various forms is called to signify the very charity of God in the language of our time.

"As with other forms of consecrated life," the order of virgins establishes the woman living in the world (or the nun) in Prayer, penance, service of her brethren, and apostolic activity, according to the state of life and spiritual gifts given to her. 464 Consecrated virgins can form themselves into associations to observe their commitment more Faithfully. 465

The religious state is thus one way of experiencing a "more intimate" consecration, rooted in Baptism and dedicated totally to God. 455 In the consecrated life, Christ's Faithful, moved by the Holy Spirit, propose to follow Christ more nearly, to give themselves to God who is loved above all and, pursuing the perfection of charity in the service of the Kingdom, to signify and proclaim in the Church the glory of the world to come. 456

Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple. the perfection of charity, to which all the Faithful are called, entails for those who freely follow the call to consecrated life the obligation of practicing chastity in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, poverty and obedience. It is the profession of these counsels, within a permanent state of life recognized by the Church, that characterizes the life consecrated to God. 454

The Faithful should "distinguish carefully between the rights and the duties which they have as belonging to the Church and those which fall to them as members of the human society. They will strive to unite the two harmoniously, remembering that in every temporal affair they are to be guided by a Christian conscience, since no human activity, even of the temporal order, can be withdrawn from God's dominion." 451

The Christian Creed - the profession of our Faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in God's creative, saving, and sanctifying action - culminates in the proclamation of the resurrection of the dead on the last day and in life everlasting.

Belief in the resurrection of the dead has been an essential element of the Christian Faith from its beginnings. "The confidence of Christians is the resurrection of the dead; believing this we live." 536 How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.... But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 537

God revealed the resurrection of the dead to his people progressively. Hope in the bodily resurrection of the dead established itself as a consequence intrinsic to Faith in God as creator of the whole man, soul and body. the creator of heaven and earth is also the one who faithfully maintains his covenant with Abraham and his posterity. It was in this double perspective that faith in the resurrection came to be expressed. In their trials, the Maccabean martyrs confessed:

The epiclesis is also a Prayer for the full effect of the assembly's communion with the mystery of Christ. "The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit" 28 have to remain with us always and bear fruit beyond the Eucharistic celebration. the Church therefore asks the Father to send the Holy Spirit to make the lives of the Faithful a living sacrifice to God by their spiritual transformation into the image of Christ, by concern for the Church's unity, and by taking part in her mission through the witness and service of charity.

The Epiclesis ("invocation upon") is the intercession in which the priest begs the Father to send the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, so that the offerings may become the body and blood of Christ and that the Faithful by receiving them, may themselves become a living offering to God. 23

"By the saving word of God, Faith . . . is nourished in the hearts of believers. By this faith then the congregation of the faithful begins and grows." 21 The proclamation does not stop with a teaching; it elicits the response of faith as consent and commitment, directed at the covenant between God and his people. Once again it is the Holy Spirit who gives the Grace of faith, strengthens it and makes it grow in the community. the liturgical assembly is first of all a communion in faith.

The Holy Spirit gives a spiritual understanding of the Word of God to those who read or hear it, according to the dispositions of their hearts. By means of the words, actions, and symbols that form the structure of a celebration, the Spirit puts both the Faithful and the ministers into a living relationship with Christ, the Word and Image of the Father, so that they can live out the meaning of what they hear, contemplate, and do in the celebration.

The assembly should prepare itself to encounter its Lord and to become "a people well disposed." the preparation of hearts is the joint work of the Holy Spirit and the assembly, especially of its ministers. the Grace of the Holy Spirit seeks to awaken Faith, conversion of heart, and adherence to the Father's will. These dispositions are the precondition both for the reception of other graces conferred in the celebration itself and the fruits of new life which the celebration is intended to produce afterward.

Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy. A better knowledge of the Jewish people's Faith and religious life as professed and lived even now can help our better understanding of certain aspects of Christian liturgy. For both Jews and Christians Sacred Scripture is an essential part of their respective liturgies: in the proclamation of the Word of God, the response to this word, Prayer of praise and intercession for the living and the dead, invocation of God's mercy. In its characteristic structure the Liturgy of the Word originates in Jewish Prayer. the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical texts and formularies, as well as those of our most venerable prayers, including the Lord's Prayer, have parallels in Jewish prayer. the Eucharistic Prayers also draw their inspiration from the Jewish tradition. the relationship between Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy, but also their differences in content, are particularly evident in the great feasts of the liturgical year, such as Passover. Christians and Jews both celebrate the Passover. For Jews, it is the Passover of history, tending toward the future; for Christians, it is the Passover fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Christ, though always in expectation of its definitive consummation.

For this reaSon the Church, especially during Advent and Lent and above all at the Easter Vigil, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the "today" of her liturgy. But this also demands that Catechesis help the Faithful to open themselves to this spiritual understanding of the economy of salvation as the Church's liturgy reveals it and enables us to live it.

In this sacramental dispensation of Christ's mystery the Holy Spirit acts in the same way as at other times in the economy of salvation: he prepares the Church to encounter her Lord; he recalls and makes Christ manifest to the Faith of the assembly. By his transforming power, he makes the mystery of Christ present here and now. Finally the Spirit of communion unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ. The Holy Spirit prepares for the reception of Christ

As she has done for the canon of Sacred Scripture and for the doctrine of the Faith, the Church, by the power of the Spirit who guides her "into all truth," has gradually recognized this treasure received from Christ and, as the faithful steward of God's mysteries, has determined its "dispensation." 34 Thus the Church has discerned over the centuries that among liturgical celebrations there are seven that are, in the strict sense of the term, sacraments instituted by the Lord.

The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation. 51 "Sacramental Grace" is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament. the Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son of God. the fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption makes the Faithful partakers in the divine nature 52 by uniting them in a living union with the only Son, the Savior.

Celebrated worthily in Faith, the sacraments confer the Grace that they signify. 48 They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies. the Father always hears the Prayer of his Son's Church which, in the epiclesis of each sacrament, expresses her faith in the power of the Spirit. As fire transforms into itself everything it touches, so the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life whatever is subjected to his power.

Likewise, since the sacraments express and develop the communion of Faith in the Church, the lex orandi is one of the essential criteria of the dialogue that seeks to restore the unity of Christians. 47

For this reaSon no sacramental rite may be modified or manipulated at the will of the minister or the community. Even the supreme authority in the Church may not change the liturgy arbitrarily, but only in the obedience of Faith and with religious respect for the mystery of the liturgy.

The Church's Faith precedes the faith of the believer who is invited to adhere to it. When the Church celebrates the sacraments, she confesses the faith received from the apostles - whence the ancient saying: lex orandi, lex credendi (or: legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi according to Prosper of Aquitaine [5th cent.]). 45 The law of Prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition. 46

"The purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify men, to build up the Body of Christ and, finally, to give worship to God. Because they are signs they also instruct. They not only presuppose Faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it. That is why they are called 'Sacraments of Faith."' 44

Christ sent his apostles so that "repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations." 41 "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." 42 The mission to baptize, and so the sacramental mission, is implied in the mission to evangelize, because the sacrament is prepared for by the word of God and by the Faith which is assent to this word:

Forming "as it were, one mystical perSon" with Christ the head, the Church acts in the sacraments as "an organically structured priestly community." 36 Through Baptism and Confirmation the pRiestly people is enabled to celebrate the liturgy, while those of the Faithful "who have received Holy Orders, are appointed to nourish the Church with the word and Grace of God in the name of Christ." 37

In the liturgy the Holy Spirit is teacher of the Faith of the People of God and artisan of "God's masterpieces," the sacraments of the New Covenant. the desire and work of the Spirit in the heart of the Church is that we may live from the life of the risen Christ. When the Spirit encounters in us the response of faith which he has aroused in us, he brings about genuine cooperation. Through it, the liturgy becomes the common work of the Holy Spirit and the Church.

The dual dimension of the Christian liturgy as a response of Faith and love to the spiritual blessings the Father bestows on us is thus evident. On the one hand, the Church, united with her Lord and "in the Holy Spirit," 5 blesses the Father "for his inexpressible gift 6 in her adoration, praise, and thanksgiving. On the other hand, until the consummation of God's plan, the Church never ceases to present to the Father the offering of his own gifts and to beg him to send the Holy Spirit upon that offering, upon herself, upon the faithful, and upon the whole world, so that through communion in the death and resurrection of Christ the Priest, and by the power of the Spirit, these divine blessings will bring forth the fruits of life "to the praise of his glorious Grace." 7

The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. 604 The Church formulated her doctrine of Faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. the tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire: 605

By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has "opened" heaven to us. the life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained Faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.

Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine Grace manifested in Christ. 590 The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and Faith. the parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief, as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul -a destiny which can be different for some and for others. 591

"It is in regard to death that man's condition is most shrouded in doubt." 565 In a sense bodily death is natural, but for Faith it is in fact "the wages of sin." 566 For those who die in Christ's Grace it is a participation in the death of the Lord, so that they can also share his Resurrection. 567

This "how" exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible only to Faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ's transfiguration of our bodies:

From the beginning, Christian Faith in the resurrection has met with incomprehension and opposition. 548 "On no point does the Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the body." 549 It is very commonly accepted that the life of the human perSon continues in a spiritual fashion after death. But how can we believe that this body, so clearly mortal, could rise to everlasting life?

But there is more. Jesus links Faith in the resurrection to his own perSon: "I am the Resurrection and the life." 542 It is Jesus himself who on the last day will raise up those who have believed in him, who have eaten his body and drunk his blood. 543 Already now in this present life he gives a sign and pledge of this by restoring some of the dead to life, 544 announcing thereby his own Resurrection, though it was to be of another order. He speaks of this unique event as the "sign of Jonah," 545 The sign of the temple: he announces that he will be put to death but rise thereafter on the third day. 546

The Pharisees and many of the Lord's contemporaries hoped for the resurrection. Jesus teaches it firmly. To the Sadducees who deny it he answers, "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?" 540 Faith in the resurrection rests on faith in God who "is not God of the dead, but of the living." 541

God predestines no one to go to hell; 618 for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily Prayers of her Faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance": 619

From the very beginning God blessed all living beings, especially man and woman. the covenant with Noah and with all living things renewed this blessing of fruitfulness despite man's sin which had brought a curse on the ground. But with Abraham, the divine blessing entered into human history which was moving toward death, to redirect it toward life, toward its source. By the Faith of "the Father of all believers," who embraced the blessing, the history of salvation is inaugurated.

"The sacred liturgy does not exhaust the entire activity of the Church": 10 it must be preceded by evangelization, Faith, and conversion. It can then produce its fruits in the lives of the faithful: new life in the Spirit, involvement in the mission of the Church, and service to her unity.

As the work of Christ liturgy is also an action of his Church. It makes the Church present and manifests her as the visible sign of the communion in Christ between God and men. It engages the Faithful in the new life of the community and involves the "conscious, active, and fruitful participation" of everyone. 9

It is this mystery of Christ that the Church proclaims and celebrates in her liturgy so that the Faithful may live from it and bear witness to it in the world:

In the Symbol of the Faith the Church confesses the mystery of the Holy Trinity and of the plan of God's "good pleasure" for all creation: the Father accomplishes the "mystery of his will" by giving his beloved Son and his Holy Spirit for the salvation of the world and for the glory of his name. 1

Thus the Creed's final "Amen" repeats and confirms its first words: "I believe." To believe is to say "Amen" to God's words, promises and commandments; to entrust oneself completely to him who is the "Amen" of infinite love and perfect Faithfulness. the Christian's everyday life will then be the "Amen" to the "I believe" of our Baptismal profession of faith:

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, we find the expression "God of truth" (literally "God of the Amen"), that is, the God who is Faithful to his promises: "He who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth [amen]." 645 Our Lord often used the word "Amen," sometimes repeated, 646 to emphasize the trustworthiness of his teaching, his authority founded on God's truth.

In Hebrew, amen comes from the same root as the word "believe." This root expresses solidity, trustworthiness, Faithfulness. and so we can understand why "Amen" may express both God's faithfulness towards us and our trust in him.

When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Saviour's first coming, the Faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. 200 By celebrating the precursor's birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: "He must increase, but I must decrease." 201

Through his Grace, the Holy Spirit is the first to awaken Faith in us and to communicate to us the new life, which is to "know the Father and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ." 4 But the Spirit is the last of the perSons of the Holy Trinity to be revealed. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian, explains this progression in terms of the pedagogy of divine "condescension":

"No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." 1 "God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!"' 2 This knowledge of Faith is possible only in the Holy Spirit: to be in touch with Christ, we must first have been touched by the Holy Spirit. He comes to meet us and kindles faith in us. By virtue of our Baptism, the first sacrament of the faith, the Holy Spirit in the Church communicates to us, intimately and personally, the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son.

Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the Faith of many believers. 573 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth 574 will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of Apostasy from the truth. the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. 575

Finally, Christ's Resurrection - and the risen Christ himself is the principle and source of our future resurrection: "Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. . . For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." 528 The risen Christ lives in the hearts of his Faithful while they await that fulfilment. In Christ, Christians "have tasted. . . the powers of the age to come" 529 and their lives are swept up by Christ into the heart of divine life, so that they may "live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised." 530

"If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your Faith is in vain." 520 The Resurrection above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ's works and teachings. All truths, even those most inaccessible to human reaSon, find their Justification if Christ by his Resurrection has given the definitive proof of his divine authority, which he had promised.

Christ's Resurrection is an object of Faith in that it is a transcendent intervention of God himself in creation and history. In it the three divine perSons act together as one, and manifest their own proper characteristics. the Father's power "raised up" Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son's humanity, including his body, into the Trinity. Jesus is conclusively revealed as "Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead". 514 St. Paul insists on the manifestation of God's power 515 through the working of the Spirit who gave life to Jesus' dead humanity and called it to the glorious state of Lordship.

O truly blessed Night, sings the Exsultet of the Easter Vigil, which alone deserved to know the time and the hour when Christ rose from the realm of the dead! 512 But no one was an eyewitness to Christ's Resurrection and no evangelist describes it. No one can say how it came about physically. Still less was its innermost essence, his passing over to another life, perceptible to the senses. Although the Resurrection was an historical event that could be verified by the sign of the empty tomb and by the reality of the apostles' encounters with the risen Christ, still it remains at the very heart of the mystery of Faith as something that transcends and surpasses history. This is why the risen Christ does not reveal himself to the world, but to his disciples, "to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people." 513

"No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." 7 Now God's Spirit, who reveals God, makes known to us Christ, his Word, his living Utterance, but the Spirit does not speak of himself. the Spirit who "has spoken through the prophets" makes us hear the Father's Word, but we do not hear the Spirit himself. We know him only in the movement by which he reveals the Word to us and disposes us to welcome him in Faith. the Spirit of truth who "unveils" Christ to us "will not speak on his own." 8 Such properly divine self-effacement explains why "the world cannot receive (him), because it neither sees him nor knows him," while those who believe in Christ know the Spirit because he dwells with them. 9

The Church, a communion living in the Faith of the apostles which she transmits, is the place where we know the Holy Spirit: - in the Scriptures he inspired; - in the Tradition, to which the Church Fathers are always timely witnesses; - in the Church's Magisterium, which he assists; - in the sacramental liturgy, through its words and symbols, in which the Holy Spirit puts us into communion with Christ; - in Prayer, wherein he intercedes for us; - in the charisms and ministries by which the Church is built up; - in the signs of apostolic and missionary life; - in the witness of saints through whom he manifests his holiness and continues the work of salvation.

"Christ is the light of humanity; and it is, accordingly, the heart-felt desire of this sacred Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that, by proclaiming his Gospel to every creature, it may bring to all men that light of Christ which shines out visibly from the Church." 135 These words open the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. By choosing this starting point, the Council demonstrates that the article of Faith about the Church depends entirely on the articles concerning Christ Jesus. the Church has no other light than Christ's; according to a favorite image of the Church Fathers, the Church is like the moon, all its light reflected from the sun.

The mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit is brought to completion in the Church, which is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. This joint mission henceforth brings Christ's Faithful to share in his communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. the Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with his Grace, in order to draw them to Christ. the Spirit manifests the risen Lord to them, recalls his word to them and opens their minds to the understanding of his Death and Resurrection. He makes present the mystery of Christ, supremely in the Eucharist, in order to reconcile them, to bring them into communion with God, that they may "bear much fruit." 132

By this power of the Spirit, God's children can bear much fruit. He who has grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear "the fruit of the Spirit: . . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." 129 "We live by the Spirit"; the more we renounce ourselves, the more we "walk by the Spirit." 130

On that day, the Holy Trinity is fully revealed. Since that day, the Kingdom announced by Christ has been open to those who believe in him: in the humility of the flesh and in Faith, they already share in the communion of the Holy Trinity. By his coming, which never ceases, the Holy Spirit causes the world to enter into the "last days," the time of the Church, the Kingdom already inherited though not yet consummated.

In Mary, the Holy Spirit fulfills the plan of the Father's loving goodness. With and through the Holy Spirit, the Virgin conceives and gives birth to the Son of God. By the Holy Spirit's power and her Faith, her virginity became uniquely fruitful. 105

The Law, the sign of God's promise and covenant, ought to have governed the hearts and institutions of that people to whom Abraham's Faith gave birth. "If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, . . . you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." 75 But after David, Israel gave in to the temptation of becoming a kingdom like other nations. the Kingdom, however, the object of the promise made to David, 76 would be the work of the Holy Spirit; it would belong to the poor according to the Spirit.

Against all human hope, God promises descendants to Abraham, as the fruit of Faith and of the power of the Holy Spirit. 68 In Abraham's progeny all the nations of the earth will be blessed. This progeny will be Christ himself, 69 in whom the outpouring of the Holy Spirit will "gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad." 70 God commits himself by his own solemn oath to giving his beloved Son and "the promised Holy Spirit . . . [who is] the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it." 71

The One whom the Father has sent into our hearts, the Spirit of his Son, is truly God. 10 Consubstantial with the Father and the Son, the Spirit is inseparable from them, in both the inner life of the Trinity and his gift of love for the world. In adoring the Holy Trinity, life-giving, consubstantial, and indivisible, the Church's Faith also professes the distinction of persons. When the Father sends his Word, he always sends his Breath. In their joint mission, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct but inseparable. To be sure, it is Christ who is seen, the visible image of the invisible God, but it is the Spirit who reveals him.

By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with his disciples. He invites them in this way to recognize that he is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which he appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his Passion. 508 Yet at the same time this authentic, real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ's humanity can no longer be confined to earth, and belongs henceforth only to the Father's divine realm. 509 For this reaSon too the risen Jesus enjoys the sovereign freedom of appearing as he wishes: in the guise of a gardener or in other forms familiar to his disciples, precisely to awaken their Faith. 510

Even when faced with the reality of the risen Jesus the disciples are still doubtful, so impossible did the thing seem: they thought they were seeing a ghost. "In their joy they were still disbelieving and still wondering." 506 Thomas will also experience the test of doubt and St. Matthew relates that during the risen Lord's last appearance in Galilee "some doubted." 507 Therefore the hypothesis that the Resurrection was produced by the apostles' Faith (or credulity) will not hold up. On the contrary their faith in the Resurrection was born, under the action of divine Grace, from their direct experience of the reality of the risen Jesus.

In the eyes of many in Israel, Jesus seems to be acting against essential institutions of the Chosen People: - submission to the whole of the Law in its written commandments and, for the Pharisees, in the interpretation of oral tradition; - the centrality of the Temple at Jerusalem as the holy place where God's presence dwells in a special way; - Faith in the one God whose glory no man can share.

Faith can therefore try to examine the circumstances of Jesus' death, faithfully handed on by the Gospels 316 and illuminated by other historical sources, the better to understand the meaning of the Redemption.

The Church remains Faithful to the interpretation of "all the Scriptures" that Jesus gave both before and after his Passover: "Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" 314 Jesus' sufferings took their historical, concrete form from the fact that he was "rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes", who handed "him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified". 315

Simon Peter holds the first place in the college of the Twelve; 283 Jesus entrusted a unique mission to him. Through a revelation from the Father, Peter had confessed: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Our Lord then declared to him: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." 284 Christ, the "living Stone", 285 thus assures his Church, built on Peter, of victory over the powers of death. Because of the Faith he confessed Peter will remain the unshakeable rock of the Church. His mission will be to keep this faith from every lapse and to strengthen his brothers in it. 286

The signs worked by Jesus attest that the Father has sent him. They invite belief in him. 269 To those who turn to him in Faith, he grants what they ask. 270 So miracles strengthen faith in the One who does his Father's works; they bear witness that he is the Son of God. 271 But his miracles can also be occasions for "offence"; 272 they are not intended to satisfy people's curiosity or desire for magic Despite his evident miracles some people reject Jesus; he is even accused of acting by the power of demons. 273

The evangelists indicate the salvific meaning of this mysterious event: Jesus is the new Adam who remained Faithful just where the first Adam had given in to temptation. Jesus fulfils Israel's vocation perfectly: in contrast to those who had once provoked God during forty years in the desert, Christ reveals himself as God's Servant, totally obedient to the divine will. In this, Jesus is the devil's conqueror: he "binds the strong man" to take back his plunder. 243 Jesus' victory over the tempter in the desert anticipates victory at the Passion, the supreme act of obedience of his filial love for the Father.

The finding of Jesus in the temple is the only event that breaks the silence of the Gospels about the hidden years of Jesus. 226 Here Jesus lets us catch a glimpse of the mystery of his total consecration to a mission that flows from his divine Sonship: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's work?" 227 Mary and Joseph did not understand these words, but they accepted them in Faith. Mary "kept all these things in her heart" during the years Jesus remained hidden in the silence of an ordinary life.

The perfect fulfilment of the Law could be the work of none but the divine legislator, born subject to the Law in the perSon of the Son. 337 In Jesus, the Law no longer appears engraved on tables of stone but "upon the heart" of the Servant who becomes "a covenant to the people", because he will "Faithfully bring forth justice". 338 Jesus fulfils the Law to the point of taking upon himself "the curse of the Law" incurred by those who do not "abide by the things written in the book of the Law, and do them", for his death took place to redeem them "from the transgressions under the first covenant". 339

Jesus asked the religious authorities of Jerusalem to believe in him because of the Father's works which he accomplished. 373 But such an act of Faith must go through a mysterious death to self, for a new "birth from above" under the influence of divine Grace. 374 Such a demand for conversion in the face of so surprising a fulfilment of the promises 375 allows one to understand the Sanhedrin's tragic misunderstanding of Jesus: they judged that he deserved the death sentence as a blasphemer. 376 The members of the Sanhedrin were thus acting at the same time out of "ignorance" and the "hardness" of their "unbelief". 377

Given all these testimonies, Christ's Resurrection cannot be interpreted as something outside the physical order, and it is impossible not to acknowledge it as an historical fact. It is clear from the facts that the disciples' Faith was drastically put to the test by their master's Passion and death on the cross, which he had foretold. 502 The shock provoked by the Passion was so great that at least some of the disciples did not at once believe in the news of the Resurrection. Far from showing us a community seized by a mystical exaltation, the Gospels present us with disciples demoralized ("looking sad" 503 ) and frightened. For they had not believed the holy women returning from the tomb and had regarded their words as an "idle tale". 504 When Jesus reveals himself to the Eleven on Easter evening, "he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen." 505

Everything that happened during those Paschal days involves each of the apostles - and Peter in particular - in the building of the new era begun on Easter morning. As witnesses of the Risen One, they remain the foundation stones of his Church. the Faith of the first community of believers is based on the witness of concrete men known to the Christians and for the most part still living among them. Peter and the Twelve are the primary "witnesses to his Resurrection", but they are not the only ones - Paul speaks clearly of more than five hundred perSons to whom Jesus appeared on a single occasion and also of James and of all the apostles. 501

Mary Magdalene and the holy women who came to finish anointing the body of Jesus, which had been buried in haste because the Sabbath began on the evening of Good Friday, were the first to encounter the Risen One. 497 Thus the women were the first messengers of Christ's Resurrection for the apostles themselves. 498 They were the next to whom Jesus appears: first Peter, then the Twelve. Peter had been called to strengthen the Faith of his brothers, 499 and so sees the Risen One before them; it is on the basis of his testimony that the community exclaims: "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" 500

"We bring you the good news that what God promised to the Fathers, this day he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus." 488 The Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of our Faith in Christ, a faith believed and lived as the central truth by the first Christian community; handed on as fundamental by Tradition; established by the documents of the New Testament; and preached as an essential part of the Paschal mystery along with the cross:

Consequently, St. Peter can formulate the apostolic Faith in the divine plan of salvation in this way: "You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your Fathers... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake." 402 Man's sins, following on original sin, are punishable by death. 403 By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 404

The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of "the righteous one, my Servant" as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin. 397 Citing a confession of Faith that he himself had "received", St. Paul professes that "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures." 398 In particular Jesus' redemptive death fulfils Isaiah's prophecy of the suffering Servant. 399 Indeed Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God's suffering Servant. 400 After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles. 401

In her Magisterial teaching of the Faith and in the witness of her saints, the Church has never forgotten that "sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the divine Redeemer endured." 389 Taking into account the fact that our sins affect Christ himself, 390 The Church does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torments inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone:

Among the religious authorities of Jerusalem, not only were the Pharisee Nicodemus and the prominent Joseph of Arimathea both secret disciples of Jesus, but there was also long-standing dissension about him, so much so that St. John says of these authorities on the very eve of Christ's Passion, "many.. . believed in him", though very imperfectly. 378 This is not surprising, if one recalls that on the day after Pentecost "a great many of the priests were obedient to the Faith" and "some believers. . . belonged to the party of the Pharisees", to the point that St. James could tell St. Paul, "How many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed; and they are all zealous for the Law." 379

So that she can fulfill her mission, the Holy Spirit "bestows upon [the Church] varied hierarchic and charismatic gifts, and in this way directs her." 177 "Henceforward the Church, endowed with the gifts of her founder and Faithfully observing his precepts of charity, humility and self-denial, receives the mission of proclaiming and establishing among all peoples the Kingdom of Christ and of God, and she is on earth the seed and the beginning of that kingdom." 178

The Church is in history, but at the same time she transcends it. It is only "with the eyes of Faith" 183 that one can see her in her visible reality and at the same time in her spiritual reality as bearer of divine life.

"The one mediator, Christ, established and ever sustains here on earth his holy Church, the community of Faith, hope, and charity, as a visible organization through which he communicates truth and Grace to all men." 184 The Church is at the same time: - a "society structured with hierarchical organs and the mystical body of Christ; - the visible society and the spiritual community; - the earthly Church and the Church endowed with heavenly riches." 185 These dimensions together constitute "one complex reality which comes together from a human and a divine element": 186

The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the Faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day." 330

"Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways." 325 The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, 326 "the first to hear the Word of God." 327 The Jewish Faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews "belong the Sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ", 328 "for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable." 329

"The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic Faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter." 322 Those "who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church." 323 With the Orthodox Churches, this communion is so profound "that it lacks little to attain the fullness that would permit a common celebration of the Lord's Eucharist." 324

"Fully incorporated into the society of the Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept all the means of salvation given to the Church together with her entire organization, and who - by the bonds constituted by the profession of Faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government, and communion - are joined in the visible structure of the Church of Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. Even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but 'in body' not 'in heart.'" 321

"All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God.... and to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic Faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God's Grace to salvation." 320

Particular Churches are fully catholic through their communion with one of them, the Church of Rome "which presides in charity." 315 "For with this church, by reaSon of its pre-eminence, the whole Church, that is the Faithful everywhere, must necessarily be in accord." 316 Indeed, "from the incarnate Word's descent to us, all Christian churches everywhere have held and hold the great Church that is here [at Rome] to be their only basis and foundation since, according to the Savior's promise, the gates of hell have never prevailed against her." 317

The phrase "particular Church," which is the diocese (or eparchy), refers to a community of the Christian Faithful in communion of faith and sacraments with their bishop ordained in apostolic succession. 313 These particular Churches "are constituted after the model of the universal Church; it is in these and formed out of them that the one and unique Catholic Church exists." 314

"The Church of Christ is really present in all legitimately organized local groups of the Faithful, which, in so far as they are united to their pastors, are also quite appropriately called Churches in the New Testament.... In them the faithful are gathered together through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, and the mystery of the Lord's Supper is celebrated.... In these communities, though they may often be small and poor, or existing in the diaspora, Christ is present, through whose power and influence the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is constituted." 312

"Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that Faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men." 338

The whole Church is apostolic, in that she remains, through the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, in communion of Faith and life with her origin: and in that she is "sent out" into the whole world. All members of the Church share in this mission, though in various ways. "The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well." Indeed, we call an apostolate "every activity of the Mystical Body" that aims "to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth." 377

The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, "is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the Faithful." 402 "For the Roman Pontiff, by reaSon of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered." 403

Likewise, it belongs to the sacramental nature of ecclesial ministry that it have a collegial character. In fact, from the beginning of his ministry, the Lord Jesus instituted the Twelve as "the seeds of the new Israel and the beginning of the sacred hierarchy." 395 Chosen together, they were also sent out together, and their fraternal unity would be at the service of the fraternal communion of all the Faithful: they would reflect and witness to the communion of the divine perSons. 396 For this reason every bishop exercises his ministry from within the episcopal college, in communion with the bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter and head of the college. So also priests exercise their ministry from within the presbyterium of the diocese, under the direction of their bishop.

"How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? and how are they to hear without a preacher? and how can men preach unless they are sent?" 390 No one - no individual and no community - can proclaim the Gospel to himself: "Faith comes from what is heard." 391 No one can give himself the mandate and the mission to proclaim the Gospel. the one sent by the Lord does not speak and act on his own authority, but by virtue of Christ's authority; not as a member of the community, but speaking to it in the name of Christ. No one can bestow Grace on himself; it must be given and offered. This fact presupposes ministers of grace, authorized and empowered by Christ. From him, they receive the mission and faculty ("the sacred power") to act in perSona Christi Capitis. the ministry in which Christ's emissaries do and give by God's grace what they cannot do and give by their own powers, is called a "sacrament" by the Church's tradition. Indeed, the ministry of the Church is conferred by a special sacrament.

The very differences which the Lord has willed to put between the members of his body serve its unity and mission. For "in the Church there is diversity of ministry but unity of mission. To the apostles and their successors Christ has entrusted the office of teaching, sanctifying and governing in his name and by his power. But the laity are made to share in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly office of Christ; they have therefore, in the Church and in the world, their own assignment in the mission of the whole People of God." 387 Finally, "from both groups [hierarchy and laity] there exist Christian Faithful who are consecrated to God in their own special manner and serve the salvific mission of the Church through the profession of the evangelical counsels." 388

"In virtue of their rebirth in Christ there exists among all the Christian Faithful a true equality with regard to dignity and the activity whereby all cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ in accord with each one's own condition and function." 386

"The Christian Faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through Baptism, have been constituted as the people of God; for this reaSon, since they have become sharers in Christ's priestly, prophetic, and royal office in their own manner, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each one." 385

The word "catholic" means "universal," in the sense of "according to the totality" or "in keeping with the whole." the Church is catholic in a double sense: First, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her. "Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church." 307 In her subsists the fullness of Christ's body united with its head; this implies that she receives from him "the fullness of the means of salvation" 308 which he has willed: correct and complete confession of Faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession. the Church was, in this fundamental sense, catholic on the day of Pentecost 309 and will always be so until the day of the Parousia.

"But while in the most Blessed Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle, the Faithful still strive to conquer sin and increase in holiness. and so they turn their eyes to Mary": 306 in her, the Church is already the "all-holy."

The Holy Spirit is "the principle of every vital and truly saving action in each part of the Body." 247 He works in many ways to build up the whole Body in charity: 248 by God's Word "which is able to build you up"; 249 by Baptism, through which he forms Christ's Body; 250 by the sacraments, which give growth and healing to Christ's members; by "the Grace of the apostles, which holds first place among his gifts"; 251 by the virtues, which make us act according to what is good; finally, by the many special graces (called "charisms"), by which he makes the Faithful "fit and ready to undertake various tasks and offices for the renewal and building up of the Church." 252

The unity of Christ and the Church, head and members of one Body, also implies the distinction of the two within a perSonal relationship. This aspect is often expressed by the image of bridegroom and bride. the theme of Christ as Bridegroom of the Church was prepared for by the prophets and announced by John the Baptist. 234 The Lord referred to himself as the "bridegroom." 235 The Apostle speaks of the whole Church and of each of the Faithful, members of his Body, as a bride "betrothed" to Christ the Lord so as to become but one spirit with him. 236 The Church is the spotless bride of the spotless Lamb. 237 "Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her." 238 He has joined her with himself in an everlasting covenant and never stops caring for her as for his own body: 239

The body's unity does not do away with the diversity of its members: "In the building up of Christ's Body there is engaged a diversity of members and functions. There is only one Spirit who, according to his own richness and the needs of the ministries, gives his different gifts for the welfare of the Church." 222 The unity of the Mystical Body produces and stimulates charity among the Faithful: "From this it follows that if one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with him, and if one member is honored, all the members together rejoice." 223 Finally, the unity of the Mystical Body triumphs over all human divisions: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." 224

"The holy People of God shares also in Christ's prophetic office," above all in the supernatural sense of Faith that belongs to the whole People, lay and clergy, when it "unfailingly adheres to this faith . . . once for all delivered to the saints," 210 and when it deepens its understanding and becomes Christ's witness in the midst of this world.

On entering the People of God through Faith and Baptism, one receives a share in this people's unique, priestly vocation: "Christ the Lord, high priest taken from among men, has made this new people 'a kingdom of priests to God, his Father.' the baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood." 209

The People of God is marked by characteristics that clearly distinguish it from all other religious, ethnic, political, or cultural groups found in history: - It is the People of God: God is not the property of any one people. But he acquired a people for himself from those who previously were not a people: "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation." 202 - One becomes a member of this people not by a physical birth, but by being "born anew," a birth "of water and the Spirit," 203 that is, by Faith in Christ, and Baptism. - This People has for its Head Jesus the Christ (the anointed, the Messiah). Because the same anointing, the Holy Spirit, flows from the head into the body, this is "the messianic people." - "The status of this people is that of the dignity and freedom of the Sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple." - "Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us." 204 This is the "new" law of the Holy Spirit. 205 - Its mission is to be salt of the earth and light of the world. 206 This people is "a most sure seed of unity, hope, and salvation for the whole human race." -Its destiny, finally, "is the Kingdom of God which has been begun by God himself on earth and which must be further extended until it has been brought to perfection by him at the end of time." 207

Only Faith can recognize that the Church possesses these properties from her divine source. But their historical manifestations are signs that also speak clearly to human reaSon. As the First Vatican Council noted, the "Church herself, with her marvellous propagation, eminent holiness, and inexhaustible fruitfulness in everything good, her catholic unity and invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable witness of her divine mission." 258

The Church is one because of her source: "the highest exemplar and source of this mystery is the unity, in the Trinity of PerSons, of one God, the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit." 259 The Church is one because of her founder: for "the Word made flesh, the prince of peace, reconciled all men to God by the cross, . . . restoring the unity of all in one people and one body." 260 The Church is one because of her "soul": "It is the Holy Spirit, dwelling in those who believe and pervading and ruling over the entire Church, who brings about that wonderful communion of the Faithful and joins them together so intimately in Christ that he is the principle of the Church's unity." 261 Unity is of the essence of the Church:

By canonizing some of the Faithful, i.e., by solemnly pro claiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God's Grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors. 303 "The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history." 304 Indeed, "holiness is the hidden source and infallible measure of her apostolic activity and missionary zeal." 305

"The Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real though imperfect." 295 In her members perfect holiness is something yet to be acquired: "Strengthened by so many and such great means of salvation, all the Faithful, whatever their condition or state - though each in his own way - are called by the Lord to that perfection of sanctity by which the Father himself is perfect." 296

"The Church . . . is held, as a matter of Faith, to be unfailingly holy. This is because Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit is hailed as 'alone holy,' loved the Church as his Bride, giving himself up for her so as to sanctify her; he joined her to himself as his body and endowed her with the gift of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God." 289 The Church, then, is "the holy People of God," 290 and her members are called "saints." 291

Concern for achieving unity "involves the whole Church, Faithful and clergy alike." 287 But we must realize "that this holy objective - the reconciliation of all Christians in the unity of the one and only Church of Christ - transcends human powers and gifts." That is why we place all our hope "in the Prayer of Christ for the Church, in the love of the Father for us, and in the power of the Holy Spirit." 288

Certain things are required in order to respond adequately to this call: - a permanent renewal of the Church in greater fidelity to her vocation; such renewal is the driving-force of the movement toward unity; 280 - conversion of heart as the Faithful "try to live holier lives according to the Gospel"; 281 for it is the unfaithfulness of the members to Christ's gift which causes divisions; - Prayer in common, because "change of heart and holiness of life, along with public and private Prayer for the unity of Christians, should be regarded as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement, and merits the name 'spiritual ecumenism;"' 282 -fraternal knowledge of each other; 283 - ecumenical formation of the faithful and especially of priests; 284 - dialogue among theologians and meetings among Christians of the different churches and communities; 285 - collaboration among Christians in various areas of service to mankind. 286 "Human service" is the idiomatic phrase.

"Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth" 273 are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: "the written Word of God; the life of Grace; Faith, hope, and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements." 274 Christ's Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, 275 and are in themselves calls to "Catholic unity." 276

"However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the Faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers .... All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reaSon are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church." 272

What are these bonds of unity? Above all, charity "binds everything together in perfect harmony." 265 But the unity of the pilgrim Church is also assured by visible bonds of communion: - profession of one Faith received from the Apostles; -common celebration of divine worship, especially of the sacraments; - apostolic succession through the sacrament of Holy Orders, maintaining the fraternal concord of God's family. 266

"The individual bishops are the visible source and foundation of unity in their own particular Churches." 408 As such, they "exercise their pastoral office over the portion of the People of God assigned to them," 409 assisted by priests and deacons. But, as a member of the episcopal college, each bishop shares in the concern for all the Churches. 410 The bishops exercise this care first "by ruling well their own Churches as portions of the universal Church," and so contributing "to the welfare of the whole Mystical Body, which, from another point of view, is a corporate body of Churches." 411 They extend it especially to the poor, 412 to those persecuted for the Faith, as well as to missionaries who are working throughout the world.