The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 7: God Reveals Himself

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

God reveals himself to man and gives us the capacity to know and love him beyond our own natural abilities. From the very beginning, even after the first sin of Adam and Eve, God made himself known to human beings and gave us a promise of redemption. Fr. Mike explains how God’s covenant with Noah offers hope for salvation and unity that are only made possible in Christ. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 50-58. 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, where 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 entire Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our Heavenly Home. This is day 7. We're reading from paragraphs 50 through 58 to 8 paragraphs today. A little longer paragraphs than yesterday, although yesterday, those six sentences, you know, took us a while to get through. I'm using the ascension

edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach. You can follow along with that or you could follow along in any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also, you can follow along with the Catechism and your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. You can also click follow or subscribe and whatever podcast you're listening to, app you're listening to, for daily notifications. Today, as I said, we're reading paragraphs 50 through 58. So this is chapter 2. So remember, We're reading paragraphs 50 through 58. So this is chapter two. So remember if you look at the the foundation of faith kind of idea of the overarching what we have going on here is part one is what we believe, right? So that's pillar one, part one, what we believe. And then we have the first section, section one of part one is divine revelation. That's what we're going to be talking about

today. So the last couple days we talked about how God can be known. He reveals himself through his creations, right? Through we're looking at this world and even we look at our own heart, we look in our minds, we look at our conscience, we recognize that God can exist. But today, we're taking this next step and here is God revealing himself in a particular and unique way. So that is what we're going to go through and well, actually, from the next number of days. But we're beginning with this dog that is so good. It's so good that how God comes to meet us. In fact, that is the title of chapter 2, God comes to meet man.

So today, we're going to be looking at how God has revealed His plan of loving goodness. We're also going to talk about a couple of stories that you know for the next few days, really. We'll talk about the first covenant and that covenant is with Noah and how God has revealed Himself to all mankind in a unique way and has called us in a unique way. So that's what we're going to be going through. Let's say a prayer as we prepare ourselves to launch into today, Father in heaven. We thank you. We thank you for revealing yourself to us.

We thank you for giving yourself to us because there is so much about you that we could never possibly know or imagine if you had not revealed yourself to us. Lord, you reveal yourself, obviously, in your creatures, in this creation, but in a particular way, you have reached out to us and revealed your heart to us. You have revealed your identity to us. Keep revealing your heart to us. You have revealed your identity to us. Keep revealing your heart to us. Keep revealing your identity to us so that we can know you, so that we can love you as you are

since we know that you love us as we are. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. As I said, this is part one, right pillar one, what we believe, section one, divine revelation, and now chapter 2, the revelation. Today, again, we are reading paragraph 50 through 58. Chapter 2, God comes to meet man.

By natural reason, man can know God with certainty on the basis of his works, but there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his own powers, the order of divine revelation. Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed Himself and given Himself to man. This He does by revealing the mystery His plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Article 1, the Revelation of God. God reveals his plan of loving goodness. Dave Erbum states, It pleased God in his goodness and wisdom to reveal Himself and to make known the mystery of His will. His will was that men should have access to the Father through Christ, the Word made flesh in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature. God, who dwells in unapproachable light, wants to communicate His own divine life to the man He freely created in order to adopt

them, as his sons and his only begotten son. By revealing himself, God wishes to make them capable of responding to him and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity. The divine plan of revelation is realized simultaneously by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other and shed light on each other. It involves a specific divine pedagogy. God communicates Himself to man gradually. He prepares Him to welcome by stages the supernatural revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate word Jesus Christ. St.

Irenaeus of León repeatedly speaks of this divine pedagogy using the image of God and man becoming accustomed to one another. He states, the word of God dwelt in man, and became the Son of Man in order to accustom man to perceive God and to accustom God to dwell in man according to the Father's pleasure. The stages of Revelation. In the beginning, God makes Himself known. Dave Erbum states, God, who creates and conserves all things by His Word, provides men with constant evidence of Himself in created realities.

And furthermore, wishing to open up the way to heavenly salvation, He manifested Himself to our first parents from the very beginning. He invited them to intimate communion with himself and clothed them with resplendent grace and justice. This revelation was not broken off by our first parents' sin. Dave Erbum states, After the fall, God buoyed them up with the hope of salvation by promising redemption, and he has never ceased to show his solicitude for the human race, for he wishes to give eternal life to all those who seek salvation by patience in well-doing.

Eucharistic prayer number four states, and went through disobedience, he had lost your friendship, you did not abandon him to the domain of death. Time and again, he offered them covenants. The covenant with Noah. After the unity of the human race was shattered by sin, God at once sought to save humanity part by part. The covenant with Noah after the flood gives expression to the principle of the divine economy toward the nations.

In other words, toward men grouped in their lands, each with its own language, by their families, in their nations. This state of division into many nations is at once cosmic, social, and religious. It is intended to limit the pride of fallen humanity, united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity as at babble. But because of sin, both polytheism and the adultery of the nation and of its rulers constantly threaten this provisional economy with the perversion of paganism. The covenant with Noah remains enforced during the times of the Gentiles until the universal

proclamation of the gospel. The Bible venerates several great figures among the Gentiles, able the just, the king priest Mokizadek, a figure of Christ, and the upright Noah, Daniel, and Job. Scripture thus expresses the heights of sanctity that can be reached by those who live according to the covenant of Noah, waiting for Christ to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. Okay, that's all that. This is day seven, and those are paragraphs 50 to 58.

So what are we looking at here? What do we just listen to? Well, again, this is the beginning of God coming to meet us and revealing himself to us. There's a man named Dr. Peter Crafty used to teach Ruby, still teaches at Boston College, teaches philosophy. And at one point, I can't remember which book it was or maybe which talk it was, but he pointed out how, you know, when it comes to the natural world, you can, you can, like human beings, we can study a rock. We can, we can basically know everything there is to know about a rock because this inanimate object is, is, we can

handle it, we can investigate it, we can crack it open, we can see, we can learn all there is to know about rocks. When it comes to plants, right, these are inanimate, more or less, but they're, they're still alive. And so we can do something similar, we can examine them, break them up open and find out what's inside. We can get to know the very heart of a rock or heart of a plant. When it comes to animals, a little more complex, but we can observe animals, right? We can kind of get to know what it is. How is it that rats live together? How do geese migrate? that kind of a situation when we can observe them? There's a certain degree to which we don't know,

can never know, they think the inner world of an animal. You know, you look at your dog and think, what is that dog thinking or the cat as it's walking away from you once again, that kind of situation. But we can know a lot of what we need to know about animals just by observing them. When it comes to human beings, we can also observe human behavior.

Obviously, that's sociologists do and psychologists do. But there's a degree to which the inner world of another human being will never be known to us unless they reveal themselves to us, right? So yes, we can observe another person. I can stalk them. I do not recommend stalking people. But you know, you could follow a person around and kind of get to know something about them

by simply watching them. But at some point, if you're going to get to know them who they are truly, they are going to have to speak, right? They're going to have to reveal themselves. Then it comes to God where we can look at His creation and get to know something about God. But if we're going to know anything of substance about God, he's going to have to reveal himself to us. No, he doesn't have to reveal himself to us. But if he wants us to know something about him, if he wants us to know his heart,

then he's going to have to reveal himself. And that's what these first paragraphs of Article 1 are saying. In fact, paragraph 50 says this, yeah, financial reason man can know God with certainty on the basis of his works But there's another order of knowledge Which we cannot possibly arrive at by our own power Which is the order of divine revelation and so God does this He did that free decision by honest on his part where he reveals

himself in order and this is so cool in just beautiful in paragraph 52 It says he does this by revealing himself, God wishes to make human beings capable of responding to him and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity. That this is incredible. I think this is amazing, where the catacombs is capturing what it's taken in the scriptures,

you know, so much, so much time to reveal to us, which is that God wants not just us to know about him, God wants us to know him so that we can love him. And you know, in the multi-markedicism that was published years and years ago, the first question was, who made you? And the answer, it's a good deal of question answer, Catacasam, right? Who made you? And the answer is, God made me. The second question is, why did God make you? And the answer is, God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this life,

so as to be happy with him forever in the next. And here we have, why did God reveal himself to you? Well, it says here, God reveals himself to human beings to make us capable of Responding to him and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond our own natural capacity Which is just so cool and then it goes on in paragraph 53 Talks about how God communicates himself to us gradually Remember this that here is God who is revealing himself to humanity that doesn't know who God is. That here is humanity who's walking through this world of brokenness, right? We're walking through this world where people aren't always just or fair.

They don't always love. And so we have these stories of these gods and goddesses who are not fair and are not just and do not love. And so God has revealed Himself to His people by saying, first of all, well, I am, right? I'm one. And I made you on purpose. And I'm just and I'm calling you to be just as well. And so we have this divine pedagogy, right? The pedagogy is that manner of teaching human beings,

manner of revealing to human beings who God truly is. I love this. And paragraph 54 and 55, it talks about how in the beginning, from the very beginning, when God created Adam and Eve, like our first parents, he made himself known. It says, from the very beginning, God manifested himself to our parents, from the very beginning. He invited them to intimate communion with Himself and clothed them with resplendent grace and justice. That, again, our first parents had this union with God that we can see in chapter 2 of Genesis. But we can only imagine,

we can only dream at. Of course, that was lost in the fall, but the revelation, it's a fit paragraph 55 says, this revelation was not broken off by our first parent sin. It's like, we didn't lose that completely with the fall. In fact, Dave Herbum says, after the fall, God buoyed them up with the hope of salvation by promising redemption. Remember that from the very beginning, in Genesis chapter three, in Genesis chapter three, verse 15, right after the fall, God says,

I will put enmity between you and the woman talking about Satan, between Satan and Eve or human humanity, between your seat and her seat. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. That from the very beginning, God had planned and promised. Salvation, God promised that at some point, He will redeem the human race. And I love that prayer from the Roman Missile. It's a Eucharistic prayer number four. We prayed

it and we just said it here a second ago and went through disobedience. He had lost your friendship. You did not abandon him to the domain of death, which is such a good word for all of us to recognize that yes, even though God has made himself known and even though we had turned away from the Lord, even though we had broken our bond with the Lord, that union with the Lord, he continues to call us back. And finally, today we have this section, these three paragraphs about the covenant with Noah. And after the unity of the human race was shattered by sin, God at once sought to save humanity part by part. It's just so so incredible. At once, God at once sought to save humanity part by part. And yes, even though humanity is now divided, I love how it points out. Yes, into many nations, cosmic division, social division, religious division, but God allows this.

He allows this in order to bring us back. And so he makes it possible. I love the fact that paragraph 58 points out that the covenant with Noah remains enforced during the times of the Gentiles until the universal proclamation of the gospel, which is trying to get the gospel to every corner of the world, to every corner of the human heart. Scripture thus is the last sentence we read today. Scripture thus expresses the heights of sanctity that can be reached by those who live according

to the covenant of Noah waiting for Christ to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. And so that's one of the things we realize is that God did not abandon us when we sin. He continues to reach out and he continues to reach out to all people at all times in all places, including you and including me right now. Now we have the fullness of our relation in Jesus Christ, but the world doesn't. And so we keep praying, we keep going out, we keep proclaiming the gospel, we keep proclaiming

this truth that God has revealed Himself that, yes, God is mystery, but He has also revealed Himself His heart in the midst of mystery. And so we have to go out and we have to let the Lord come in. So I'm praying for that. I'm praying for that for the world that we all come to know of the truth and the goodness of God, but also I'm praying for you that every corner of your heart not only knows the love of God, but experiences enters into the love of God. I'm praying that that happens to me too. So let's pray for each other. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.