In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness God Speaks to them in human words: "Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men." 63

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

This mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture Speaks of it in images: life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father's house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise: "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." 601

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

Jesus often Speaks of "Gehenna" of "the unquenchable fire" reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. 612 Jesus solemnly proclaims that he "will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire," 613 and that he will pronounce the condemnation: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!" 614

"To accomplish so great a work" - the dispensation or communication of his work of salvation - "Christ is always present in his Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the Sacrifice of the Mass not only in the person of his minister, 'the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross,' but especially in the Eucharistic species. By his power he is present in the sacraments so that when anybody baptizes, it is really Christ himself who baptizes. He is present in his word since it is he himself who Speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the Church. Lastly, he is present when the Church prays and sings, for he has promised 'where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them."' 11

God Speaks to man through the visible creation. the material cosmos is so presented to man's intelligence that he can read there traces of its Creator. 16 Light and darkness, wind and fire, water and earth, the tree and its fruit speak of God and symbolize both his greatness and his nearness.

All gather together. Christians come together in one place for the Eucharistic assembly. At its head is Christ himself, the principal agent of the Eucharist. He is high priest of the New Covenant; it is he himself who presides invisibly over every Eucharistic celebration. It is in representing him that the bishop or priest acting in the person of Christ the head (in persona Christi capitis) presides over the assembly, Speaks after the readings, receives the offerings, and says the Eucharistic Prayer. All have their own active parts to play in the celebration, each in his own way: readers, those who bring up the offerings, those who give communion, and the whole people whose "Amen" manifests their participation.

The word order in Roman antiquity designated an established civil body, especially a governing body. Ordinatio means incorporation into an ordo. In the Church there are established bodies which Tradition, not without a basis in Sacred Scripture, 4 has since ancient times called taxeis (Greek) or ordines. and so the liturgy Speaks of the ordo episcoporum, the ordo presbyterorum, the ordo diaconorum. Other groups also receive this name of ordo: catechumens, virgins, spouses, widows,....

Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." 85 Scripture Speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church. 86

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.

"A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving." 280 The Lord denounces lying as the work of the devil: "You are of your father the devil, . . . there is no truth in him. When he lies, he Speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." 281

Where does Prayer come from? Whether prayer is expressed in words or gestures, it is the whole man who prays. But in naming the source of prayer, Scripture Speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit, but most often of the heart (more than a thousand times). According to Scripture, it is the heart that prays. If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain.

"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

Through his Word, God Speaks to man. By words, mental or vocal, our Prayer takes flesh. Yet it is most important that the heart should be present to him to whom we are speaking in prayer: "Whether or not our prayer is heard depends not on the number of words, but on the fervor of our souls." 2

Contemplative Prayer is silence, the "symbol of the world to come" 12 or "silent love." 13 Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the "outer" man, the Father Speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus.

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

The Christian who unites his own death to that of Jesus views it as a step towards him and an entrance into everlasting life. When the Church for the last time Speaks Christ's words of pardon and absolution over the dying Christian, seals him for the last time with a strengthening anointing, and gives him Christ in viaticum as nourishment for the journey, she speaks with gentle assurance:

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

Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God Speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely: 64

In Sacred Scripture, God Speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words. 75

The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God's plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it Speaks can be signs. 1. the allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ's victory and also of Christian Baptism. 84 2. the moral sense. the events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written "for our instruction". 85 3. the anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, "leading"). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem. 86

and so the Creed is divided into three parts: "the first part Speaks of the first divine Person and the wonderful work of creation; the next speaks of the second divine Person and the mystery of his redemption of men; the final part speaks of the third divine Person, the origin and source of our sanctification." 4 These are "the three chapters of our [baptismal] seal". 5

"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

Scripture Speaks of a sin of these angels. 269 This "fall" consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God." 270 The devil "has sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies". 271

The name of the Saviour God was invoked only once in the year by the high priest in atonement for the sins of Israel, after he had sprinkled the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies with the sacrificial blood. the mercy seat was the place of God's presence. 25 When St. Paul Speaks of Jesus whom "God put forward as an expiation by his blood", he means that in Christ's humanity "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." 26

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.

The mystery of Christ's resurrection is a real event, with manifestations that were historically verified, as the New Testament bears witness. In about A.D. 56 St. Paul could already write to the Corinthians: "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. . ." 490 The Apostle Speaks here of the living tradition of the Resurrection which he had learned after his conversion at the gates of Damascus. 491

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

The prophetic texts that directly concern the sending of the Holy Spirit are oracles by which God Speaks to the heart of his people in the language of the promise, with the accents of "love and fidelity." 85 St. Peter will proclaim their fulfillment on the morning of Pentecost. 86 According to these promises, at the "end time" the Lord's Spirit will renew the hearts of men, engraving a new law in them. He will gather and reconcile the scattered and divided peoples; he will transform the first creation, and God will dwell there with men in peace.

Jesus does not reveal the Holy Spirit fully, until he himself has been glorified through his Death and Resurrection. Nevertheless, little by little he alludes to him even in his teaching of the multitudes, as when he reveals that his own flesh will be food for the life of the world. 110 He also alludes to the Spirit in speaking to Nicodemus, 111 to the Samaritan woman, 112 and to those who take part in the feast of Tabernacles. 113 To his disciples he Speaks openly of the Spirit in connection with Prayer 114 and with the witness they will have to bear. 115

In Scripture, we find a host of interrelated images and figures through which Revelation Speaks of the inexhaustible mystery of the Church. the images taken from the Old Testament are variations on a profound theme: the People of God. In the New Testament, all these images find a new center because Christ has become the head of this people, which henceforth is his Body. 144 Around this center are grouped images taken "from the life of the shepherd or from cultivation of the land, from the art of building or from family life and marriage." 145

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

There is no limit or measure to this essentially divine forgiveness, 146 whether one Speaks of "sins" as in Luke ( ⇒ 11:4), "debts" as in Matthew ( ⇒ 6:12). We are always debtors: "Owe no one anything, except to love one another." 147 The communion of the Holy Trinity is the source and criterion of truth in every relation ship. It is lived out in Prayer, above all in the Eucharist. 148