442. What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 3 continuation)

442. What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 3 continuation)    

(Comp 442 repetition) This means that the faithful must guard and activate the three theological virtues and must avoid sins which are opposed to them. Faith believes in God and rejects everything that is opposed to it, such as, deliberate doubt, unbelief, heresy, apostasy, and schism. Hope trustingly awaits the blessed vision of God and his help, while avoiding despair and presumption. Charity loves God above all things and therefore repudiates indifference, ingratitude, lukewarmness, sloth or spiritual indolence, and that hatred of God which is born of pride.

“In brief”

(CCC 2133) "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength" Deut 6:5). 

To deepen and explain

(CCC 2088) 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. (CCC 2089) 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" (CIC, can. 751: emphasis added).

Reflection

(CCC 2090) When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment. [IT CONTINUES]  

(The question: What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? continues)

442. What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 2 continuation)

442. What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 2 continuation)    

(Comp 442 repetition) This means that the faithful must guard and activate the three theological virtues and must avoid sins which are opposed to them. Faith believes in God and rejects everything that is opposed to it, such as, deliberate doubt, unbelief, heresy, apostasy, and schism. Hope trustingly awaits the blessed vision of God and his help, while avoiding despair and presumption. Charity loves God above all things and therefore repudiates indifference, ingratitude, lukewarmness, sloth or spiritual indolence, and that hatred of God which is born of pride.

“In brief”

(CCC 2133) "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength" Deut 6:5). (CCC 2134) The first commandment summons man to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him above all else.    

To deepen and explain

(CCC 2086) "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'" (Roman Catechism 3, 2,4).    

Reflection

(CCC 2087) Our moral life has its source in faith in God who reveals his love to us. St. Paul speaks of the "obedience of faith" (Rom 1:5; 16:26) as our first obligation. He shows that "ignorance of God" is the principle and explanation of all moral deviations (cf. Rom 1:18-32). Our duty toward God is to believe in him and to bear witness to him. [IT CONTINUES]  

(The question: What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? continues)

442. What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 1)

442. What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 1)   

(Comp 442) This means that the faithful must guard and activate the three theological virtues and must avoid sins which are opposed to them. Faith believes in God and rejects everything that is opposed to it, such as, deliberate doubt, unbelief, heresy, apostasy, and schism. Hope trustingly awaits the blessed vision of God and his help, while avoiding despair and presumption. Charity loves God above all things and therefore repudiates indifference, ingratitude, lukewarmness, sloth or spiritual indolence, and that hatred of God which is born of pride.

“In brief”

(CCC 2133) "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength" Deut 6:5). (CCC 2134) The first commandment summons man to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him above all else.      

To deepen and explain

(CCC 2083) Jesus summed up man's duties toward God in this saying: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Mt 22:37; cf. Lk 10:27:"… And with all your strength"). This immediately echoes the solemn call: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD" (Deut 6:4). God has loved us first. The love of the One God is recalled in the first of the "ten words." the commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God. (CCC 2084) God makes himself known by recalling his all-powerful loving, and liberating action in the history of the one he addresses: "I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." The first word contains the first commandment of the Law: "You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve him.... You shall not go after other gods" (Deut 6:13-14). God's first call and just demand is that man accept him and worship him.   

Reflection

(CCC 2085) The one and true God first reveals his glory to Israel (Cf. Ex 19:16-25; 24:15-18). The revelation of the vocation and truth of man is linked to the revelation of God. Man's vocation is to make God manifest by acting in conformity with his creation "in the image and likeness of God": There will never be another God, Trypho, and there has been no other since the world began… than he who made and ordered the universe. We do not think that our God is different from yours. He is the same who brought your fathers out of Egypt "by his powerful hand and his outstretched arm." We do not place our hope in some other god, for there is none, but in the same God as you do: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (St. Justin, Dial. cum Tryphone Judaeo 11, 1: PG 6, 497). [IT CONTINUES]

(The question: What is implied in the affirmation of God: “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)? continues)

441. Is it possible to keep the Decalogue?

441. Is it possible to keep the Decalogue? 

(Comp 441) Yes, because Christ without whom we can do nothing enables us to keep it with the gift of his Spirit and his grace.

“In brief”

(CCC 2082) What God commands he makes possible by his grace.

To deepen and explain

(CCC 2074) Jesus says: "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). The fruit referred to in this saying is the holiness of a life made fruitful by union with Christ. When we believe in Jesus Christ, partake of his mysteries, and keep his commandments, the Savior himself comes to love, in us, his Father and his brethren, our Father and our brethren. His person becomes, through the Spirit, the living and interior rule of our activity. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12). (CCC 2732) 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" (Jn 15:5).   

Reflection

(CCC 521) Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. "By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man" (GS 22 § 2). We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model: We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus' life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church…. For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us (St. John Eudes: LH, Week 33, Friday, OR).  

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