A Year with the Catechism. Petroc Willey, Dominic Scotto, Donald Asci, & Elizabeth Siegel
on original holiness. It is precisely by the “radiance of this grace” that “all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed” (376). To love the Lord our God is the greatest and the first of the commandments (see Mt 22:37-40). The others “make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God” (2083). Because man’s happiness depends entirely on his friendship with God, it is the restoration of this alone that can mend his brokenness. What could not be guessed was that the restoration would involve a surpassing of the original state of paradise (374).
Day 55
CCC 385
The Fall
Today’s reading is unusually short — a single paragraph. Its importance for all that will follow in the Catechism’s proclamation and explanation of the faith, however, justifies our spending all our attention on this today. As so often in the Catechism, this is an introductory paragraph to lead into a major section of doctrine (for example, 199, 268): CCC 385 is a summary of key points to help us understand the Church’s teaching on the Fall.
The paragraph begins with the reminder of the infinite goodness of God and of the essential goodness of all his creation. Everything that is, without exception, is fundamentally good (299) since all that exists has no other source of its existence than God, who is goodness and love without end (293, 296). Even though the world is fallen from the state God had intended for it, this is still the case.
The second point in this paragraph is the inescapable experience of suffering and of moral evil. This seems to contradict the opening sentence. Yet the Catechism shows us that the opposite is the case, and gives us the example of Saint Augustine wrestling with this question in his autobiographical book, Confessions. Evil throws us into the arms of the God of love since we know that by naming evil we are measuring it against the good. Without knowledge of the good how could we even identify an action as evil? Without a straight line how could we judge something to be crooked?
Thus we reach the third point — that only in the light of the good is evil seen for what it is; only in the light of “the mystery of our religion” is the “mystery of lawlessness” seen for what it is (385). We only see in the light. Darkness shows us nothing. We find the response to evil, therefore, only in the light of the revelation of divine love. We fix our eyes on Christ, the King of Love.
Day 56
CCC 386-390
“Where Sin Abounded, Grace Abounded All the More”
Today’s reading follows closely on the point we saw being made in CCC 385. We saw there that only goodness reveals evil since goodness is the measuring point against which we make the judgment that something is bad. We know when a plant is sickly only because we know what a healthy plant looks like. And so it is seeing man in relation to God, who is infinitely good, that “unmasks” evil (386).
When God’s revelation is ignored or denied, therefore, there is no point of measurement left and “we cannot recognize sin clearly” (387). This is why, as Saint John says, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (Jn 3:20). Without the revelation of Christ’s love, evil appears just as a mistake, a weakness, and so on. It is the absolute love of Christ, who loves us to the end (Jn 13:1), which reveals evil for what it is — a radical choice against love (387).
The unmasking of evil is not for its own sake, but for the sake of the conversion of the person. Only when we see evil for what it is can we turn to the light and be saved. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin by revealing the Redeemer, the one who saves from sin (388). With the unmasking of evil comes its solution. The diagnosis of the illness is made by the doctor who gives the cure.
A final important point is made in this section: the Fall is a historical event. The biblical account in Genesis uses “figurative language” (390) — in other words, not all of the details are to be taken literally — but the event is real enough. And every age lives with the impact of that event.
Day 57
CCC 391-395
The Fall of the Angels
Following the principle that we saw expressed in CCC 385, that only light reveals darkness for what it is, this section on the fall of the angels focuses our attention on Christ’s victory over the devil: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (394).
The Catechism warns that the devil appears as an intimate friend. His is a “seductive voice” (391), and it was his “mendacious seduction” (394) that led our parents into disobedience. He proposed the way of disobedience and distrust as the means to achieve a godlike status — whereas, as we saw in the very first sentence of the Catechism, God wants to bring us into intimacy with him, making us his friends, through obedience and trust (see 1).
The devil is “a liar and the father of lies” (392), and Christ came as the Truth to “unmask” the lies. The final paragraphs of the Catechism speak of how the devil “mendaciously attributed to himself the three titles of kingship, power and glory” (2855), and even tried to “divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father” (394) by tempting him with these, as though they were in his power to give (see Mt 4:1-11). And so when at Mass we say to God the Father, “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever,” we are affirming the truth that Christ, through his temptations, his passion, death and Resurrection, has restored them to the Father (see 2855).
The devil is the one who came to bring death to us. He is a “murderer from the beginning.” His voice leads to death through disobedience, and he speaks out of envy of man’s blessings and hatred of God and his kingdom. “Now the prince of this world will be driven out” (Jn 12:31), Jesus cries as he approaches the time of his passion. His resurrection reveals his victory over death.
Day 58
CCC 396-401
Original Sin
In a single sentence at the beginning of this section, the Catechism sums up the nature of the human person in a way that allows us clearly to understand what original sin is: “A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God” (396). Remember:
• Man is a spiritual creature: made in the image of God, as an embodied spiritual soul, man has freedom. God will not force man’s submission. He only ever invites, his respect for our freedom absolute.
• God calls us to friendship: he gives his love freely and in return seeks our trusting love. Friendship cannot be established through anything less than mutual love.
• Man is a creature, not the uncreated God. God is infinite, without bounds or limits. Man is created good, but is limited. Man is not all-knowing or all powerful. He cannot “create” from nothing, but can only “make” things out of what God has already created (see 296). What, then, is original sin? Our first parents lost their loving trust
in God’s call to friendship (397). Letting trust die in the heart, through the seductive voice of Satan (391), they disobeyed God and rejected their creaturely state — they sought to be “like God” without God. It is impossible, of course. Seeking to win by disobedience what God wants to give in love, and what can only be received in trusting love, man falls into the utter misery called original sin.
This is the character of every sin: “All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (397). Sin is fueled by the unreal picture we have of God, a “god” of whom we live in fear and whom we think we must resist (399). Cut off from our true source of life and nourishment our lives run wild in confusion and sin and finally wither as we desperately seek, among creatures, what only a return to our true God can give (400-401).
Day 59