The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 3: What We Believe (Part 1 Introduction with Jeff Cavins) (2025)

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Part 1 of the Catechism—the first pillar—is the longest part of the four parts of the Catechism, and arguably the most foundational. Fr. Mike sits down with Jeff Cavins to discuss the big picture behind this important pillar and prepare us for the journey ahead. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast. When we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith, the Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward a heavenly home. This is day three. Congratulations, you made it to day three. And today we are introducing the very first pillar of the

Catechism. And to that I want to welcome back, for those who are Bible in a year listeners, Jeff Cavins. Good to be with you. I'm so glad. It's exciting. To introduce, we had for our first two days already. I'm so grateful that you're here to introduce the first pillar. How's your voice doing? Oh, you know, I got a cup of coffee here. I'm ready to keep on trucking away. So with this introduction,

we have the Catechism as four pillars, right? And so for each one of those pillars, we're gonna explain those in a second, but we're gonna have people introduce those. And so you're the one to introduce the very first pillar on the Creed, what we believe. As we begin, is it okay if I just open us up with a prayer? Absolutely.

Awesome. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. Thank you for bringing us today, three. Thank you for bringing us to this place where we can learn more about you, where we can know your identity and know our deepest identity as your beloved creation, as those who have been adopted by you in baptism

and made into your sons and your daughters. Help us to know you as our Father. Help us to know you God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and be drawn into your love. This day we ask you to please bless this conversation. Bless Jeff, bless me, and please bless everyone who's listening to us today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. As I said, it's day three, and I'm using, for when it comes to the Catechism, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, which you're going to talk about in a second. Those who are listening, if you like, you can download your own Catechism in your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y, the C is for Catechism, in here. Also, if you want to, you can like, you can follow,

you can subscribe, whatever that is, however you're listening to this podcast. It's only day three, and so why not? Why not subscribe today? Why not follow today? I think it's worth it. Okay, so Jeff, Pillar One. What have we gotten into here on Day Three as we're starting this Catechism? Sure. Well, first thing we need to do really is to kind of

go zoom back and look at the big picture, you know? And the beautiful thing about the Catechism is that it presents our faith in four pillars. And you might remember that great quote of Frank Sheed's. He talked about one of the problems with Catholicism is that kids go through from kindergarten all the way to high school and they graduate and they've got what? They've got a pile, a big pile of Catholicism and they're not quite sure what to do with it. I remember when you said this, you were like, someone asked you like, Hey,

do you Catholics believe in such and such? And you're like, well, looking at the pile, like, I think it's in there. I don't know. Got to be in there. I heard of that. I got an A in that class. Right. You're right. It's got this pile of Catholicism and what the Catechism does is brilliantly, brilliantly separate all of this out so that we can understand our faith and even the separation into four pillars is a teaching tool in itself. And so in this new Catechism, the Ascension's Catechism, they brilliantly laid it out and they color coded it into four areas, and that is blue is what we believe, that's the first

one, the creed, that's what we're going to talk about. The second is how we worship, and the third is how we live, and then how creed, that's what we're going to talk about. The second is how we worship, and the third is how we live, and then how we pray. That's prayer. And so it's laid out in a beautiful way. And you could say it this way, in some ways. You could say, well, what we believe is the creed, and the creed is from Genesis all the way to Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Church. And so the Creed is the plan of God, the plan of sheer goodness, the first paragraph of the Catechism says, in miniature. And so the Creed is this whole great big plan of sheer goodness in miniature, you know? And so that's what we believe, and then you're going to be looking at how we worship, and that's how you get into God's amazing plan.

And then what do we live in the plan? How do we live? We live the life of Christ, the third pillar, and the fourth is prayer. So in the words of Frank Sheed, who was from Great Britain, Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. You know, so yeah, so we're going to be taking a look at the creed here, what we believe, and this is really, really exciting because it begins with this plan of sheer goodness, that God is going to come looking for us and He is going to bring us into His blessed life. And that's the very first paragraph. The very first paragraph just says it all and that is that we are destined for a plan and that's God's plan and He wants us in it. That's so interesting. I mean, just brilliant. As you're noting, here is what we believe

about God, but it's not just here's a list of things we believe about God or that we believe about revelation or we believe about faith, but it's that God wants to bring us into that relationship. He wants to bring us into a covenant community with Him. And that's just, I mean, and almost every section of the catechism, when it does introduce a new article of faith, right, another thing we believe, it always goes back to that. And God shares this with us so that he can share himself with us, that he doesn't just, um, reveal it so we know, we can check that box, this is what I know. But it's because he wants to share his own divine life and he wants us to participate in that life, which is, again, it makes, it makes it what might be,

uh, you've said it before, like an encyclopedia into something very, very different than an encyclopedia. Yeah, it's not an encyclopedia, even though you could use it for that. You could sit there and say, I wanna know more about confession. Okay, I'm gonna look it up in the catechism. But the way that it's put together

is that it's a teaching tool in itself, and Pope Benedict really brought this, he brought this out. It's more than knowledge, it's a relationship. The catechism is more than knowledge, it's a relationship and God is calling us to intimacy. And so the very first pillar, the creed, talks about this quest for God, our search for God who's wooing us and calling us, and it really begins and talks about man's capacity for God and how we can come to know something of God.

And so it kind of brings everybody in on an equal playing field, and it gives us three ways that we can know something of God. We can know something of God through creation. Certainly, you can look at creation, the laws of the universe, even gravity. You can look at the stars and you can know that there is a creator. And then the second one is the human being, our own longing for God, what we call God. And then the third way that we can come to know something of God is reason. But then we hit a wall.

Right, it's like, we can know some things, but at some point, God has to act. Exactly, and that's the fourth thing, that's the thing that the Catechism is really all about, is that the Catechism is saying to every reader, look, we know you can know something of God through creation, and we know through the human person, yes, you're smart. You can reason, but you hit the end of the road. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of remember the movie Truman? Absolutely.

The Truman Show. Yeah. Yeah. And Jim Carrey. Yes. And he doesn't know it, but the Hollywood set is his whole life. Right. Everyone else is watching them.

Everybody else has popcorn and drinks and they're watching him every week and their sponsors for the show and everything else. And he begins to search. He begins to ask questions. There's gotta be more. There's gotta be more. And he looks at the ocean, which is only about a hundred yards long. He doesn't know it. And the director's like, Oh, we got a problem. We got a problem here. And he gets into the boat. Oh no, send a storm, send a storm. And they can't stop him. And And he gets into the boat and they're all, oh no, send a storm, send a storm, and they can't stop him.

And finally he runs into the end of his world. And what do the directors say? He comes over the loudspeaker. And he says, he says, he says, Truman, and Truman says, who are you? And the director says, I'm the creator. Yeah. Yeah, that's divine revelation. It is.

Because at some point, you know, God speaks through his creation, but at some point he speaks to man. Well, how does it say in the catechism, it says that God's divine condescension, he speaks to us as a father to his children. Exactly. Yeah. He comes down to our level

and he adjusts his language to our weakness. Yeah. And he speaks to us. And that's the beautiful thing about the creed here. and he adjusts his language to our weakness. Yeah. And he speaks to us. And that's the beautiful thing about the Creed here. In the Ascension Catechism, they divide it up into divine revelation and the Creed. And then under divine revelation, it's the search. Right.

That's the Truman thing. You know, we're searching for God. But then in divine revelation, what God does is he pulls back the curtain and he begins to reveal himself. And so the catechism talks about how he begins to reveal himself in scripture, in words and deeds. And as he reveals himself, we come to know more of the father and what's he like? What can we depend on? And it becomes, it becomes very, very exciting, you know, to know that he's actually revealing himself to me.

He's not hiding. He's saying, here I am. Right. He's the opposite of hiding. Yeah. He's revealing. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, so interesting, as you're mentioning this, I think some of the, the, here is the man's. Yeah. I know you know, it's so interesting as you're mentioning this. Um, I think some of the the uh

Here is the man's capacity for god as you said here's the our hunger our search our longing for god And here he is responding to us. Um in those first paragraphs, uh, we had Beginning yesterday. We had the prologue that whole the words before and then tomorrow We're going to start with the next piece again this beginning of the search. In your experience of getting into the catechism, just even that those beginning paragraphs are there any challenges or difficulties that you've found in those? Because I know that it pretty soon starts ramping up and starts getting to as you mentioned here's God revealing himself revealing his heart and sometimes as he does that, our hearts get on fire, but sometimes before that, there can be,

I don't know, maybe how would I say this? There can be a little bit of windup where it's not sweeping me off my feet immediately. And I want to just ask if you have any, because you've been teaching the catechism in the Catechetical Institute for 15 years. Yeah, a long time. And so leading people through the catechism, before before we go into like the rest of the, the map here of the trade, what are some like obstacles right away?

People might find right at the beginning. That's a good question. That's a really good question because as you begin that reading of the first paragraph, the God has a plan of sheer goodness, uh, you're going to start reading and people are going to be reading with you and listening to you and they're going to come across words that they've never heard before. And, uh, and they're going to be like, Oh, this is, this is too much for me. This is, yeah, this is a Bible.

Yeah. Jesus with a Lamarose. I get that. But you know, this word divinization, what's that about? And so I think people need to relax and, and go along for the ride and take as much as you can In I mean you got to think about this We're not talking about how to put some kind of little plastic car together or something We're talking about the god of the universe

Disclosing himself but in a way that that we can understand and you you have to be, I think, a little bit, a little patient with it and realize, you're not gonna get everything, you know, the first time, but you listen with the heart of a son, the heart of a daughter who wants to know more about dad, wants to know more about their father. And so that eager heart is important. You know, you're not just kind of casually reading about this,

but you are giving yourself to it with the hopes that you can learn more about them and discover more about yourself. Yeah, that makes sense. Eagerness. And you also kind of mentioned some patience. Yeah. Right. That sense of thing. I able to say, okay, if I don't get it, that's one of the reasons I love podcasts and audio books is because if I'm reading something with my own eyeballs and I might get hung up on a sentence that I'm like, I don't know what this is. I don't know what that just said. I stop.

But if it's being read to me, we keep moving. And then what usually happens is as I keep hearing, I get more context clues and like, oh, okay, now I more or less get the gist. And so that's why I think that eagerness, God is, he wants to reveal himself to me, patience. And I would say maybe even patience, not only with myself and my own limitations,

but also maybe some patience with the fact that today's reading or whatever the day it is might not answer all the questions that I have, but we're gonna get to those. I think there's something about that too, that's just like, okay, we're on, like you said, we're on this journey, just continue to let yourself be led.

Yeah, and constantly hear the words in the back of your mind, and God saying, I want to know you, and I want you to know me. I want you to know me. And this is part of that. Even, again, go back to that, sometimes in our prayer, my prayer, maybe not yours,

I want to, and maybe this was even the Bible, I approach God wanting a certain thing. So whether that's reading the Bible, I want to be inspired, this was even the Bible, I approach God wanting a certain thing. So whether that's reading the Bible, I wanna be inspired, or I'm in prayer and I wanna be consoled. And that might not be what God wants for me at that moment. Maybe he just wants, but he might say, but I have this word for you.

And I think part of that is also trusting each day, even if I wasn't blown away by this article of faith or by this teaching we just got today, But that's what he had for me today Yeah, and so I think that in fact, I think it goes hand-in-hand right here with the search revelation of God revealing itself to us that Trusting that we're gonna get it and you're gonna be stretched in this study Yeah You're gonna be stretched because you come into the study you come into the catechism in the Bible and many people went through the Bible In a year you come into it with this sort of okay., I think I kind of figured, I know what's going on

here, you know, and God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all right, I'm uncomfortable with this. And then prepare for your world to expand. Expand. And your understanding of God will understand. You're like, oh my gosh, you're just so much bigger than I thought. You are so much bigger. It's so great.

What a family, Mary, the saints, the sacraments is, wow. And it reminds me, there was a book written, I think it was in the 60s, I think it was in the late 60s by J.B. Phillips, and it's called Your God is Too Small. Too Small, yeah. And that's what I would encourage people in at the beginning of this is, I think by the time you're done, you're going to find out your God was too small.

You know, and that he's much bigger and be open to that. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And that I think again addresses some of those initial obstacles that people are going to experience. I think, you know, we get to like the moral life. This might be a challenge every day when it gets to the sacramental life, some illumination every day. When it gets to the sacramental life, some illumination every day. The part of this, God revealing Himself is both.

Both challenging, both revealing, illuminating. So going back to, as you're highlighting, the foundations of faith on this, the Catechism in the Ear chart, you talked about how God reveals Himself in a unique way. and then the next section is pretty remarkable too. Well actually, no, in that section is transmission of the Bible. Yeah, yeah, he reveals himself, and it's very specific

in the catechism that God reveals himself in word, in deed, in sacred scripture, but he also reveals himself in sacred tradition, which may be new to some people. New to some people. And you have to realize that we, as Christians, we are not people of the book, although we love the book. We're not people of the book, we're people of the Word, and specifically the living Word, Jesus.

And this revelation, what we call the deposit of faith that Jesus gave to the apostles, that was given in written Scripture and in the sacred tradition. Sacred Scripture, sacred tradition. And a lot of people say, well, man, I wish I could have been back there. Oh, that'd be so cool to know it, to hear all of this, you this. Like you hear people read Luke 24 with the Emmaus Road and Jesus gives this talk and they think, oh, I wish I had a CD of that. And we want to be back there. We want to hear what the disciples

and the disciples of the disciples heard and taught. Well, guess what? You get to. You get to, yeah. You get to. And more. Yes, and more. And so we understand that God is revealing Himself

in sacred scripture and sacred tradition. But then comes the part of, well, yeah, that was them, but what about me? How does it get to me? And that's where we have apostolic succession, which is so important that these early disciples, they ordained bishops who were entrusted with the same deposit of faith, not to change it, not to add, subtract, but to keep this deposit of faith and to systematically and organically keep passing this on to the next generation. And so we are very confident now that we are hearing the teachings of Jesus

that He gave to the disciples, and we are getting the collective input from giants who also got it and said, let me tell you a little bit more about this. They knew about this, they lived this whole thing out, an entire lifetimes of people praying with this, thinking, wrestling with it, and also being guided by the Holy Spirit in that. In passing it on to us, we just get to receive it.

I mean, even the reality here is Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. Like, duh, of course. Like, no, not duh, of course. Like, this was something that was wrestled with in the early church that every Christian just takes for granted at times. But that was giants. So as you're reading over the next year we're gonna be sitting at the feet of giants and listening to all

kinds of this teaching. You know what it's similar to? It's like you've been to an orchestra before. Well you go to the orchestra, hardly anybody knows the names of the people in the orchestra, but they know who the director is. Yeah. And they know who the director is and And they know who the director is, and the director's name is on the front of the program and everything. Well, there's all kinds of people in this orchestra. The director is the Holy Spirit.

And that's why we're confident. Yeah. That's so good. So we got apostolic succession, but then we get into, we get into what is our, what is our response to this revelation that's been given to us. Which is right away. I mean, here in the very first section, section one is here's God revealing himself to us in all these ways.

And as you said, in creation and the human person in reason and then revelation. And then what say you exactly, what's our response? Right, and the response is a beautiful thing. And this is an important point. God revealed Himself in words and deeds. Everybody can agree on that. I don't care what background. You can agree that God revealed Himself in words and deeds.

And so the response to that revelation is in kind, in words and deeds. Words alone are not enough. Right. It has to be words and deeds. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, let her the kingdom of heaven. Yeah. But only those who do the will of my father in heaven. Exactly. So it's kind of fun. You mentioned it. It's interesting, I think, is that God kind of

laid it on the table at the beginning. You know, he's like, I'm going to share a lot with you, but I want you to know I want something back here. You're critical. I want your heart. I want your yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's what we're learning in this first pillar.

What we believe is we are learning about this revelation, prepared to respond to God. And the name for that, that the church gives us, is the obedience of faith. Right, which comes from the first chapter of Romans. Right, same old letter. The obedience of faith. The obedience of faith, yeah. And just to unpack that a little bit, because this will be important for pillars two,

three, and four as well. When we talk about the obedience of faith, we're not talking about the obedience of believism. Yeah, say more about that. Yeah, believism is, I believe. I believe. Can I kind of like grit your teeth? I really believe.

Yeah, yeah. Can't you see how much you're pulling? I believe. Can I in your face? Hopefully they see the video. Jeff really has faith. No, we're not talking about the power of believism, we're talking about faith. And when you look at faith from a Hebraic perspective, that is

the Hebrew perspective, and the Greek, you've got emunah in Hebrew, pistes in Greek. This concept of faith is not mere believism, but as Pope Benedict brings out so well, it is divided into two movements. The first is Intellectual ascent. I believe it. That's true. I believe it. So as you're reading for the next 362 days Yeah, right. People are gonna listen to it and they're gonna have to make a decision. Do I believe it? Right. Do I believe that? Okay. Okay. Check. I'm gonna send father an email. I believe it That's not the, that's part of it. You make intellectual assent. Check. The second part is a personal entrusting of yourself to that truth. And so, for example, if you believe that, that the

Blessed Virgin Mary is the mother of God, is an intercessor and an advocate given to you. You believe that? Yay. And trust yourself. Right? Start praying, start asking her to intercede for you and pray for you if you truly believe it, you know? And so I love this because faith without works is dead

and we have to respond by saying yes I believe it Lord but now I'm gonna entrust myself to you. That's what biblical faith is. It will always be that and so then when you move into the actual Creed in the first pillar you're gonna have you're gonna have material that is if you go to church, it's very familiar. I mean familiar. That whole section is based off of the Apostles Creed. Exactly. Hopefully we all know. Right, but you know what's really interesting is you go to Mass and when you hear the

Apostles Creed in Mass, everybody, they read it together collectively because that's easy, but if you had to do it on your own, that's more difficult. Yeah, have to read it. Yeah, and it's, we, you know, I believe, we believe. I remember, it was a funny thing that happened a few years ago, and this tells you how much we are together

in the body of Christ, but it has to be brought down to the personal level. I believe, you know, I do believe. I was with Father Mitch Pacqua once and he invited me over. I said, are you gonna say Mass this morning? He said, yeah. So I said, can I come?

And he said, yeah. And I thought it was gonna be like 30 other people. And of course with 30 other people, we can all do the heavy lifting together with response. I know the lines every time. Exactly. I know my lyrics. And I got over there, I know the lines every time. Exactly. I know my lyrics. And I got over there, I was the only one.

Yeah. And I realized I didn't know mass the way I thought I knew mass. The first time I ever went to mass when I was the only person in the congregation, quote unquote, I was, oh my gosh, what do I say? The Lord be with you. I'm not sure.

Yeah, right, yeah. I've been doing this for a long time. But that's the way it is here, is that the creed is something that we all recite in the Mass. We believe, and you can look at this in the beginning of the Catechism, the very beginning. You can see the Creed is broken down so well in the Catechism on page, Roman numeral 10, is I believe in God the Father, and then I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, and then third, I believe in the Holy Spirit.

And so you've got the Creed broken down into these three areas, and then all of the sub points of what we believe, and what's funny is we go to Mass, and we just sort of recite it, you know, and I believe in God the Father Almighty creator, you know, minds wandering. Yeah, you're looking at all the words. Yeah. And someone says, would you believe it?

Yeah, I said it, didn't I? I mean, yeah, of course, check. And it's like the first year to get all excited about God, you listen to the creed. I believe that five years later, I believe that 10 years later. Yeah, I believe that. Five years later, I believe that. 10 years later, yeah, I believe that. 20 years later, I'm still here. And that's not what it's for. It's not a checklist to see if you're still in the camp.

The reason that we recite the creed is because it's what we not only believe intellectually, but it's what we're entrusting our life to. And if you entrust your life to that, every part of that creed, you're going to live differently. Yeah, that makes so much, I mean, because like you said, it appears in words and in deeds that God reveals himself and we respond in words and in deeds. I've had a friend who once who said when it came to the creed, sometimes's what we believe it's describing what we believe He said sometimes I just I say the creed

And what I think is no this is in whom I believe or this is in whom I trust This is the one I'm describing the one who I trust as I'm describing the one That I believe in that I have surrendered my life to and that would be I look because it makes it It's not just, again, these are the data that I say is true, but it's here is the one in whom I have this relationship that I, again, just entrusting, I think it's so vital. I heard a great analogy from one of our friends,

I'll make it quick, he was a great analogy, he talked about the, I think it was the Wallenda brothers, we're gonna walk across the night. Oh, the great blondini. Yeah. Is that what it was? Yeah. If somebody was to say blonde Dean, but I the first time I ever read it was the blonde Dini. I'll go with you about Niagara Falls. Yeah. Yeah. And you know that story. Yeah. I love it because it's a, he goes across, you know, it's very dramatic.

Tight rope across tight rope and gets on the other side. Someone yells out, do it again. Do it again, go back the other way. You know, and, and I think from what I understand of the story, you might correct me is that he, he says, do you think I can do it again to the crowd? And I go, yes, we believe you think I can do it again. Pushing a wheelbarrow. Yes, we believe you think I can do it. Pushing a wheelbarrow blindfolded. Yeah. You think I can do it pushing a wheelbarrow? Blindfolded. Yes. You think I can put a human being in the wheelbarrow? And they're going, yes, yes.

And he says, I need a volunteer. Nobody believed. Crickets. Nobody believed. Nobody believed. And that's the way it is with our faith. We can stand up and say, I believe all these things, but do you entrust yourself? And it's the entrusting of yourself that is going to make the biggest

difference in your life. You can go through the whole catechism in a year and agree to everything you're going to be reading, everything. But unless you entrust yourself to God, your life will not look different. Yeah, this is not about just more information, or not information transfer, but transformation. Exactly. That sense of like, whenever we start RCIA, becoming Catholic or learning more about the Catholic Church,

it's like, we don't just want to pass on data. It's about conversion of heart. It's actually about not just getting to know the one who has created and redeemed us, but also having been drawn more deeply into a relationship with him. Yeah, not information transformation. And that's what people need to keep focused on as they go through it. And there's gonna be some things that they hear about

where they're gonna say, man, I just don't understand quite. All right, it's okay. Make a note of it, you can get back to it, but take as much as you possibly can in and, and everything that you learn, ask yourself how you can entrust yourself. You know, going back just a little bit about this, this revelation in scripture, there's a whole section in this first pillar about the nature of, of scripture. Um, how we go about studying scripture, interpreting scripture. And this should give people a real sense of joy and certitude to know that, you know,

a lot of people are, I'm afraid of that. I don't know if I'm gonna mess it up. I know I'll mess up the Bible. And what God is saying is, no, come on in. Come on in, I'll give you some hints on how to do this. And so very early on in the catechism in the Bible, I think it's important to know that saying is, no, come on in. Come on in. I'll give you some hints on how to do this. And so, very early on in the Catechism, in paragraphs, I think it's 112, in paragraph 112, 113, and 114, the church

teaches us three things that will ensure that you're not going to miss the mark in your study. For example, to be especially attentive to the content and unity of the whole scripture. In other words, when you're studying 2 Timothy, make sure that you're taking into consideration the Gospel of Mark. Right. You're in Exodus, even Leviticus.

Yeah. And so the content and unity of this divine revelation is very important. You don't wanna take a text out of context. That's great. For anything. For a problem. Yeah, exactly.

Paragraph 113, read the scripture within the living tradition of the whole church. Well, why should I do that? You know, it's the Bible, the Bible or not. But the truth is, the Bible comes from, it's a tradition that comes from the church. And the church, as you and I have talked about before, the church is the pillar in support of truth, and it's the church that said, that's the inspired Word of God. And St. Augustine said, I wouldn't even know that this was the Word of God unless the church had told me. So it's important to stay within the tradition, the full tradition, that is, sacred Scripture

and sacred tradition. And then the third is to be attentive to the analogy of faith, or that is the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of revelation. So it gives us some simple guidelines there on, you know, what to, you know, I think you said it before, you know, it's like a big sandbox or something, and it gives you the corners to stay, and stay there, you'll be fine.

But inside, you can play around, you can dive deep, you can even use your imagination in many ways. That sense of being able to say, maybe what about this? But you round up against the wall like, okay, I guess that's as far as we go. Yeah. The church has said that's off, off base. And yeah, it's so good to be able to have all those three. When we read scripture and even as we move forward this year with Catechism. And it even gives you the recipe here, like in paragraphs, 116, 117, 118.

It gives you the recipe here on how to in a sense squeeze all the juice out of the orange and get as much out of the Word of God as you possibly can by instructing us to first of all look at the literal sense. That's not a big complicated thing. That just means what was the intention of the haw author? And then, then we get to look at what people really like to do. And that's the spiritual sense. And that's in three, in three different ways. That's the allegorical sense.

And this is big words, but write them down. The allegorical sense means, how does this relate to Christ? Moral sense. How does it relate to me and my life and conduct? Antigodical sense. How does this relate to Christ? Moral sense, how does it relate to me and my life and conduct? Anagogical sense, how does it relate to the future? So you can see here that the church is giving us some very simple instruction on going after this revelation and trying to understand it for ourselves.

And then it talks about the relationship between the old and the new and typology. And it just really equips you to dig in. Which is fascinating, that recognition of typology, right? So that in the Old Testament, there are types or foreshadows of what Jesus fulfills in the New Testament or in the New Covenant. And how not all Christians know about that. Not all Christians know that, again, the scripture is a unified whole

and that it's a story, how's the line that the Old Testament is revealed in the new and the New Testament is hidden in the old. And that sense of like, yeah, there's this connection that is so powerful when we know that that connection exists, which is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I love it.

Also, I think that there'd be something worthwhile noting that in looking at this, especially the Creed, that some of the ways, and on the back of the Catechism at a glance, the Catechism timeline, there actually is a timeline on the back of this. I know, I love it. And some of the-

I'm wired that way. You like the timelines, I wonder where we got that idea. But there's this piece not only of how here is scripture coming to us, but also these professions of faith and these church councils. It's not every church council,

but kind of some of the significant ones and how a lot of what we say is true comes out of maybe wrestling with error. Yeah. Like that there were heresies that came up that were like, maybe that's true. I mean, even like the Council of Nicaea, right, in 325, I mentioned, we all know, of course we know Jesus is fully God and fully man,

but that was formulated because some people were saying, no, that's not the case. And so a lot of what we believe as true in the creed in all of these church councils comes out of, what was it, error? Or heresy, I guess, for lack of a better term. That be accurate? Oh yeah, absolutely.

Most of the councils, Vatican II is a little different, but most of the councils were actually trying to settle a problem. Like, for example, in the Council of Ephesus, when they declared that Mary is the council of Ephesus, when they declared that Mary is the theotokos, she is the mother of God, and that argument was actually over the divinity of Jesus.

Right, it's all about Jesus. It's about Jesus. Yeah. And they said, no, Mary is the mother of God. Jesus is God. From the moment of his conception. Yes. He is fully God, fully man. Fully God, fully man. We call that the big word now, hypostatic union, which means, and this is important, you know, these things are important and they do have ramifications, you know, results. Jesus

isn't two people. He's one person, two natures, human and divine. And in the Council of Constantinople, they even said he had two wills, a human and a divine will, which never were parted from one another. And to realize that that's not explicated in Scripture, right? That's not necessarily like given to us as the data of Scripture, but we have the data of, wait a second, here is Jesus who is conforming his will to the Father's will, here is Jesus who at the same time experiences this, I don't want to say temptation, necessarily, but he was tempted in the wilderness, he was tempted in every way that we are without sin.

And so the church has been able to say, wait a second, if that is the case, and it is the case, then he would have not only human nature and a divine nature, but a human will and a divine will. Yes. And just like, wow, I never thought of that. I would never even thought to ask the question. But I'm glad someone did. Well, somebody did before. Do you know one page in here, and I would just encourage your listeners to look at this.

It's page 735. Oh, yeah. your listeners to look at this. It's page 735. I love that page because it gives, it says it's a timeline of ecclesiastical writers. The following writers and authors arranged here by date are cited in the Catechism, and it goes from the second century, and it goes through a list of every century, the main ecclesiastical writers and where in the catechism they're cited. And so it's basically like going to the beginning of the history of baseball and saying in 1864, and then it comes all the way up to the present with the stars.

And that's what's happening here. So it's a visual of the continuity of the faith from the beginning all the way till now. Yeah. That blows my mind to just, I can just meditate on that page, you know, and say, wow. Yeah. This is part of the living character of tradition. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I'll tell you another, uh, we could go on about so many different things,

but I can tell you another part that I really, really like in the first pillar, the Creed, is paragraph 787. In 787, it says that from the beginning, and this is under the title, The Church, the Body of Christ. And I love this because in the Creed, we make certain statements about the Church, you know? We believe in this holy Catholic Church. The Church is a communion with Jesus. And I love this paragraph.

It says, from the beginning, Jesus associated his disciples with his own life, revealed the mystery of the kingdom to them, and gave them a share in his mission, joy, and sufferings. That line, Father, right there in 787, that line should open up in people's minds and hearts an incredible world of opportunity to know that Jesus is sharing everything with us. And so you can look at His work and His mission one of two ways. You can say, well, He's the Son of God, He's the King of Kings, He is the physician, He's the counselor, He's the healer, He's the one that suffered for the sins of the world, he's the one that died for the sins of the world, he's

the one that rose from the dead. So what's my job? Well, I can either say, well, I'm just a beneficiary of all that. Receive it all. Receive it. Or, wait a minute, he shared everything with me. His mission, his joy, uh-oh, and his sufferings, you know. And so I love this because for Jesus to share himself with the church, with us in this first pillar, it means Satan was wrong in the Garden of Eden when he lied to Adam and Eve about God withholding. God is not withholding anything from us. In fact, He's not withholding anything. He is in fact sharing everything with us. And not only do we get the divine revelation,

we get the divine invitation to share in the divine life and the blessing of God. So this is big-stake stuff. It is. And it's one of those things where I think that's one of the reasons why, as you're highlighting this in paragraph 787, I can't recommend enough having a catechism to follow along.

Oh yeah. There is, sometimes you can, one of the things that I've found is, when doing the Bible in the air, because we based it on the Great Adventure Bible timeline, which has that, we're following the story. We're never gonna lose the story or leave the story. So, you know, you press play the next day and it's,

oh yeah, we're still with, you know, even if we're with the prophets, we're still with Baruch, great, no problem. Got introduced to him yesterday and it's carrying on where we left off. But sometimes with the catechism, it's here we are on a new article. And for me, if I'm not prepared,

if I don't see it in front of me, like, what are we going to talk about today? I don't know yet. And so it's going to be, I think people are going to find that's going to be a little bit of a challenge that way, that we don't necessarily. Yes, this is our invitation into the story, into God's life. But I think what can really, really help people is if they get any catechism. But this, you know, obviously I love the Ascension edition,

because then you get to look at it and say, okay, I see, here we are on day whatever, and the section is, oh, God is truth, and God is love. Okay, now I'm prepared, go ahead and read it to me. You know, there's something about that that, I think it roots it more deeply in my mind and in my heart when I have some kind of frame of reference that I can also kind of see, I think it roots it more deeply in my mind and in my heart. When I have some kind of frame of reference that I can also kind of see, I guess. Yeah. And I think adding to that, which is great,

is that first paragraph is if you open with that almost, you know, every once a week at least go back and open with it and keep in mind that everything I'm reading back here in paragraph 1384, in paragraph 1815, in paragraph 2285, in paragraph 2705, all of it is for the aim of sharing in the life of the Trinity. Now and forever. It's what we're destined for. We're destined to live in the life of the Trinity,

and this is the playbook. This is a map that will guide you in a more sure way than I promise you. Any book you can buy on Amazon or anywhere. This is the book that will give you really the trail guide of how do I do this? I want to share in the life of God. I want to be with God forever and ever and ever. Okay, well, if you really do, guess what? We got two books for you. Yeah. We got the divine revelation and we've got the continuation and the synopsis of the great riches and the inheritance that we have. And so when you hold the catechism

in your hand, you might as well, someone says, what are you reading there? You might as well say, it's my inheritance, right? It's my inheritance, you know? You know, yesterday people, so the very first day, we heard that paragraph one that you mentioned in that plan of sheer goodness. Yesterday, we concluded the day by reading paragraph

25 and in the conclusion of the prologue is this from the Roman Catechism which is so incredible, I love this. The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. So this whole thing we're going to do, doctrine, teaching, whether something is proposed for belief, for hope, or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love. Which is just like, okay, so this is the context that we're given.

Yeah. The very first paragraph of the plan of your goodness, your God and His love, and then this, it's all meant to lead us to love. And listen to the way the first pillar ends. If you want to take the first verse, or first paragraph, I used to always call them verses because I'm so biblical. The first paragraph, but listen to the last paragraph in the in-brief section. And that's something, you know, I want to bring out to our listeners is that every section has a little area that is highlighted called in brief. It's like Cliff Notes. Right. Now don't just go to

those. Here's the bullet points. But that's really what, you know, kind of the heart of it. But listen to what paragraph 1060 says. This is at the end of pillar one. At the end of time, the kingdom of God will come in its fullness. Then the just will reign with Christ forever, glorified in body and soul, and the material universe itself will be transformed. God will then be all in all in eternal life.

Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, I'm all for that. So good news at the beginning, good news at the end. Yeah, it's sounds good. Yeah, I'm all for that. You know, so, uh, good news at the beginning, good news at the end. Yeah, it's so good. And we get, and we, the thing is if we're willing to kind of stick with this, again, it's day three and we're just getting started. Um, but if we're willing to say, okay, I know God, you're going to give me these crumbs.

I think when I say crumbs, I mean, you're going to keep leading me. You're going to, and again, not every day is going to blow my socks off some days. I'm like, okay, well there we go. Day 12, we're checking off the box. But I, I, I'm convinced that it's one of those things like, like the Bible, where if we keep pressing play, we miss a day, miss a week to keep pressing play that God has something to say to us every single time we show up. And so kind of as in conclusion, one last thing, just another question for someone.

You've been teaching scripture, you've been teaching the catechism for so long. What's one last thing you'd want to just offer the people as they're gonna go on this? You know, the journey of the Creed, this first pillar, is the longest. It's the longest journey we have. What's one last word for them as they get started on this? Sure, I think what I would share with you, Father,

is what Cardinal Ratzinger then became Pope Benedict, you know, had to share. And that was that there's a reason that the creed is first. And the reason, you know, you could have put it second or third or whatever, but it was first because pillar two, three and four all spring, spring, spring from this, from this amazing, this amazing story of salvation history and what we believe.

So the second pillar springs from what we believe. The third pillar, the second is sacraments and liturgy. The third pillar is the moral law, life in Christ, that springs from what we believe, and prayer springs from what we believe. So consider this first pillar as an anchor. And the last thing I would say is that when you go to Mass, when you go to Mass and you recite the Creed,

make sure it's not just column one that you agree. But say to the Lord, help me, help me to entrust myself. Trust myself, yeah, that's so good. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's so good. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's so fun. So grateful. And I know that for everyone who's going to be joining us, everyone's going to be walking with us.

Um, again, there can be the tendency to be discouraged and the tendency to say, what is this, what's happening? What's happening is I just think sometimes, you know, there's a, there was a, a early church father who described the action of the Holy Spirit. And sometimes the Holy Spirit comes upon us in power like Pentecost, just bam, there it is, you know, tongues of fire. And sometimes he said the Holy Spirit comes upon us

like a gentle dew, and it just like sinks, seeps into the ground. And it's just like, hey, the earth gets watered one way or the other. If it, you know, huge storm with all this rain pelting the earth, or if it's just a gentle dew, it gets absorbed into the earth. And so I'd say that some days are going to be like, oh my gosh, that was amazing, penetrated. And some days it's just like, okay, that was good. And it's just that dew.

And I think that if we just show up, keep listening, keep pressing play, keep just being faithful, we know that the Lord himself is faithful. He's going to do something through this. And I would also, I also would encourage our listeners to pray for you because, and thank you for what you are doing. You know, we don't know why God chose us to do what we're doing, but kind of like Esther for such a time as this, you know, you're the one that you're doing it and, and we need to pray for you. Pray for you, your voice. He eat, right? You sleep, right? But pray for protection with you for you and your voice. He ate right, you sleep right. But pray for protection with you because God's using you in a very unusual way but a beautiful way and we stand with you.

We're not just listening to you, we stand with you. Together. Yeah. It's awesome. Thanks Jeff. Thanks a lot. That means a lot. So yeah, please let's pray for each other. Jeff said, please pray for me. I am praying for you. My name is Father Mike and I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.