A Year with the Catechism. Petroc Willey, Dominic Scotto, Donald Asci, & Elizabeth Siegel
passage helps us to understand the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis with its account of the seven “days.” The passage is to be read symbolically, not literally. Truths can be taught in many ways, and the passage is rich with truths “revealed by God for our salvation” (337).
The truths are divided into three: first, those associated with the account of the six days (338-344), each given to us in an italicized phrase; then the truths concerned with the seventh day, the day of God’s rest (345-348); finally, a paragraph on the eighth day — a day not included in the Genesis account, but a new day, towards which the original week is pointed, the day of the new creation and the fulfillment of all that God intended (349).
The seven days belong together. They are described as unfolding in interdependence, solidarity, and harmony, and in a “hierarchy” (342), which literally means a “sacred order.” It is a sacred order of value, moving from the inanimate to those creatures that have life; then to creatures that experience their own life, have emotion, movement, and sensation; and finally to the human person in whom the spiritual order is united to the visible order. On the seventh day, the divine Author of this order is formally acknowledged and worshiped.
The New Testament is the great account of the appearance of the eighth day, which is the fulfillment of the old order, the perfecting of its goodness (339, 349). And so the first chapter of John’s Gospel is presented as a series of seven new days, with the wedding at Cana appearing on the eighth day. Jesus comes as a bridegroom to win his bride. After the Resurrection is the period of espousal (see 1617), a period that is to find its fulfillment in the marriage feast of heaven.
Day 51
CCC 355-361
Man: “In the Image of God”
We now begin a rich set of teachings on the human person, the creature who is at once “distinguished” from all other creatures (343) and who is “unique” among them precisely because he sums up and unifies in his own person the whole of creation (327).
There are four fundamental relations that make up the human person, and these are introduced in CCC 355 and form the heart of the presentation that follows. They are: our relation to God; the relation we have in ourselves between soul and body; our relations to other human persons; and the relation we have to the rest of visible creation. It is the fact of these four relations that make the human person unique.
The great worth of the human person depends entirely upon his primary relationship, which is to God, his Father and Creator, in whose image and likeness he is made (356). It is this primary relationship that gives us our dignity and our basic identity. We call human beings “persons” because they are made in the image of the divine Persons (historically, the term was applied to human beings only because of this conviction). Our nature is God-like because God intends that we share his eternal life (356). Because we are God-like, each person is “capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons” (357).
There is a radical equality between all people because of their being made in God’s image. Parents and their children stand together to say “Our Father.” All are “truly brethren” (361), forming a unity (360) in Adam, and in Christ who came to share our nature (359).
Day 52
CCC 362-368
Man: “Body and Soul but Truly One”
You will have noticed the very careful way in which this is written. We are embodied souls — that is, souls who have bodies. Soul and body together make up the whole human being (359). So close is the relationship between soul and body that we are a single unified nature (365).
Yet there is a hierarchy of value here, too. “Soul” refers to that which is “of greatest value,” the spiritual principle (363, see also 2289). We are “most especially” (363) in God’s image because of the soul. In fact, the soul is so centrally who we are that the term is also used to refer to the whole person. Because of our being a spiritual soul, every human being is literally a “new creation” coming straight from the hand of God. The human soul is not “made” by creatures. Only God can make a soul (366).
We do not neglect the body, though. The body shares in human dignity precisely because it is united to the soul. In fact, the body is a temple, because we worship God in the body (remember CCC 28). We are the place where God is worshiped (see 1179, 1695, 2794), and physical churches remind us of this (1180). Temples are sacred places and are treated with loving reverence, and the Catechism will draw many implications from this point (for example, 2297-2298, 2300).
Finally, just as churches have a center, the altar, so human beings also have a center, the heart (368). As in a church, the new covenant — Christ’s sacrifice that saves us — is made present on the altar for us, so for each of us personally, that covenant is renewed in the heart (see 2563).
Day 53
CCC 369-373
Man: “Male and Female He Created Them”
God created us for communion, not only with himself, but also with other human persons. We have been created to need others and also to need to give ourselves in love and service to others. Our lives are not self-sufficient and closed in on ourselves. They are turned outwards towards others. The phrase the Catechism uses is that God created us to be a “communion of persons” (372).
It is because we are made in God’s image that we have this call to receive and give ourselves to others as the very heart of our nature, since God himself, as we have seen, lives as a communion of divine Persons in an eternity of loving self-gift (255, see also 1702). From God’s love flows life; love and life are united in him. Male and female mirror this as well, as new life is transmitted through their loving union (372). Just as the divine Persons are equal (242, 245), so also are male and female human persons made in his image (369). And just as the divine Persons are distinct, and their distinction lies in their relation to each other (254-255), so this, too, is mirrored on the level of creatures. The distinction between male and female is real and is willed by God as something good (369), and the distinction lies in the way in which male and female can be “for” the other, each a “helper” fitted for the other and finding fulfillment in this (371-372).
Finally, this section speaks of the fourth relation that makes up our nature — that of dominion over the earth. This is described as a sharing in God’s providence (373) — in other words, being intelligent cooperators in God’s plan of love for his creation.
Day 54
CCC 374-379
Man: In Paradise
We are presented in today’s reading with the picture of the world when it was “very good” (Gn 1:31). It is a world of happiness, without death, without suffering, of friendship with God, inner integrity, a loving and fruitful relationship between man and woman and the enjoyment of a harmonious relationship with creation. As the Catechism says, “This entire harmony … will be lost by the sin of our first parents” (379).
For man in paradise, each of the four fundamental relations is unharmed; “all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed” (376). The two phrases that the Church uses to describe this state are original holiness and original justice. The first describes the friendship between God and man before the first sin ruptured this. The second describes the harmonious state of the other three relations, where all is in order as it is meant to be. CCC 377 speaks of original justice as a “mastery over the world” and notes that by this “world” God meant especially over oneself. The Church, you will remember, sees the human person as being like a “little world,” a microcosm. This is the domain over which we are given the challenge of kingship or queenship, and we establish our rule precisely by putting ourselves under the greater