The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 8: God Forms His People (2026)

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

God chose Abraham and made him the “father of a multitude of nations.” Then God formed Israel as his people, freeing them from slavery in Egypt. Fr. Mike explains why God reveals himself in stages, and through the prophets who are honored as saints, he continues to form his people in the hope of salvation. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 59-64. 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 Ear 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 Here 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 journeyed together toward our heavenly home. This is Day 8. We're reading paragraphs 59 to 64, how God chooses Abraham. He forms his people Israel. He purifies and shapes the people through the prophets and through the covenants. A few reminders before we get started. As we get started, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundation of faith approach. But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also, you can follow along with our reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY. Also, you can click follow up, subscribe to listen to your podcast. this podcast, wherever you listen to podcast, you can do that today. You know, it's day eight. And one of the things that we, ah, I don't know, I don't know what your experience has been.

Because it's kind of almost like, I don't, how would I say this? It kind of feels like a little bit of slow going. It kind of feels like, remember how if you went through the Bible in the year, one of the things that we went through was, was just like, okay, yeah, I'm hearing that same story again. Okay, here's the same story again. Like, remember when we had numbers in Deuteronomy at the same time and it was like, okay, wait, you just told the exact same thing. okay, when are you going to get to like the next thing? And this is kind of what we're at. Right now, today, you know, yesterday, today and tomorrow are in the section of the catechism we're at. Revelation is the stages of revelation. So yesterday was the beginning,

right? So God makes himself known through creation. God makes himself known to Adam and Eve. And then there's this break, you know, obviously the fall. And then we talked about how God made himself known to Noah and established that covenant with Noah. Now, today we're going to go and talk about how God chooses Abraham, reveals himself to Abraham, and to the prophets, and then through the prophets, and then to, like, to create the people of God tomorrow is the fullness, right? The fullness of Revelation, who is not a what, is a who? And the fullness of God's revelation is Jesus and coming to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. So these stages of Revelation, it can kind of sometimes, maybe, seem a little bit redundant, a little bit slow.

But we want to take our time in some ways, because that's what God is. doing. We're going to find out that God takes it slow, right? There are stages of revelation. He made himself known in the beginning, Adam and Eve. He made himself known to Noah and especially covenant with him. He makes himself known to Abraham and to David and to the people of Israel through the prophets. And then, of course, God makes himself fully known to us through Jesus. We're going to find out more about that today or be reminded of that today if we already knew that. So let's just pray right now as we begin to know that. Okay. God, you make yourself known in stages, not only in the kind of meta stages, or macro stages,

but also in our lives. I mean, think about this for yourself. Think about how God has made himself known over the Bible in the year. Think of how God has made himself known even over these last seven days here on day eight. Think of how God has made himself known, even in your life. What you know about God or who you know God to be right now is not the same as you knew God to be when you were as a teenager, maybe in your early 20s, or however old you are, God reveals himself in stages, not only in the macro level, but also in our own hearts and our own lives. And so we

just pray, Father in heaven, you call us into being and you reveal yourself to us because you want us to know you. You want us to have a relationship with you. This knowledge of you is oriented towards a relationship. And so one of the messages, one of the things that you remind us of as you continue to reveal yourself is you remind us of hope the hope that regardless of whatever stage we're at right now in our knowing you and our following you is that you remind us to not give up you remind us that you are not going to give up you remind us that you reveal the deepest part of your heart to us and so we just have to keep walking like those patriarchs like Abraham Isaac and Jacob, like their wives and like their children, like the prophets. And of course, like

our Lord Jesus, who continued to walk even when walking was difficult, even when he was weighed down by the cross that was meant for us, but that he carried for us. Lord God, give us the hope to not stop walking, especially when things are darkest. Help us to have the hope to continue to know that when we're walking, you are walking with us. Give us hope to conquer discouragement. Give us hope to conquer despair. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay. So here we are. Day 8, reading paragraphs 59 through 64. God chooses Abraham. In order to gather together scattered humanity, God calls Abram from his country, his kindred, and his father's house,

and makes him Abraham, that is, the father of a multitude of nations. In you, he said, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. The people descended from Abraham would be the trustees of the promise made to the patriarchs, the chosen people, called to prepare for that day when God would gather all his children into the unity of the church. They would be the root onto which the Gentiles would be grafted once they came to believe. The patriarchs, prophets, and certain other Old Testament figures have been, and always will be honored as saints in all the church's liturgical traditions. God forms his people Israel.

After the patriarchs, God formed Israel as his people by freeing them from slavery in Egypt. He established with them the covenant of Mount Sinai and through Moses gave them his law so that they would recognize him and serve him as the one living and true God, the provident father and just judge, and so that they would look for the promised Savior. Israel is the priestly people of God called by the name of the Lord and to whom the Lord our God spoke first, the people of elder brethren in the faith of Abraham. Through the prophets, God forms his people in the hope of salvation, in the expectation of a new and everlasting covenant intended for all to be written on their hearts. The prophets proclaim a radical redemption of the people of God,

purification from all their infidelities, a salvation which will include all the nations. Above all, the poor and humble of the Lord will bear this hope. Such holy women as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith, and Esther kept alive the hope of Israel's salvation. The purest figure among them is Mary. okay so here we are on day eight we have these these few paragraphs and i just i love this i maybe maybe i get a little too over over the top a little bit because but i feels like we're getting some

traction i might i've mentioned this before it sometimes feels well i know i did just a second ago it sometimes feels like um it's slow going but the great reminder is these are people this is a story that we know again if we've walked through the bible in a year we know this we know how god chose abram the whole story of the book of genesis i mean again if if you're you're going to if you went through the Bible in a year last year or the year before or ever, that was maybe a long time ago. If you're reading this concurrently, if you're listening to this concurrently with the Bible in the year this year, that's a whole other thing. And you're probably getting that story of Abraham and getting that story of how God is going in stages. We talked about this yesterday.

The divine pedagogy, right? The way he teaches, the way he leads us and leads us to himself is bit by bit. And so here, we have the story of God calling Abram from his country, his kindred and his father's house. And he makes him Abraham, right? That is the father of. of a multitude of nations. But I love this because the catechism highlights this. The people descended from Abraham would be the trustees of that promise made to the patriarchs, right? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the chosen people called to prepare for that day when God would gather all his children into the unity of the church. And this is one of the things we recognize. I mean, hopefully we all know this, but we know that Jesus didn't found a new religion, right? In so many ways, he fulfilled

the old covenant. Yes, he established the new and everlasting covenant, but in a very real way we can say that here is Jesus who was the one. And he did the thing that God had been preparing his people to expect, to look forward to, and to hope for. And that was the key word, right? And in paragraph 64, it says, through the prophets, God forms his people in the hope of salvation, in the expectation of a new and everlasting covenant intended for all to be written on their hearts. And to think about this, living in that age, right? Even the catechism is coming to us. The Bible came to us in that age. The New Testament was written in the age of the church. So we recognize that, man, all of that story of the Hebrew scriptures, all that story of the Old Testament, all that story of here, Abraham, and

the patriarchs and the prophets, it's just, it's pointed to where we're living right now, which is remarkable. So again, this bit by bit, stages of revelation, but I want to highlight a couple other things. One, in paragraph 61, it notes that the patriarchs, prophets, and certain other Old Testament figures have been and always will be honored as saints. And now, we don't say like, you know, St. Abraham or St. Sarah. We don't say St. Deborah or St. David. But we recognize that when it comes to, I guess we might say it like this. A, in our hearts, we recognize that those figures of the old covenant, those figures in the Old Testament, not all of them, but the heroes, right? We know that we recognize them in our hearts as saints, but also in the church's liturgical traditions. So when it comes

to our understanding of the communion of saints, the letter to the Hebrews chapter 11 talks about these people who have gone before us. They are the cloud of witnesses that surround us. And so, yeah, we honor them as saints, even though we don't have, you know, capital ST, period before their names. I love this. The next stage, right? Here's Abraham, the patriarchs. After the patriarchs, God formed Israel as his people by freeing them from slavery in Egypt, the Exodus. And so he established a covenant in Moses. And this is one of those things. And not only is sending them free from slavery in Egypt, but leading them to the wilderness, leading them into the promised land. And we can recognize that what the catechism is pointing out is the thing that the Bible keeps pointing out.

And that is, these stages of revelation are happening in real life, right? They're happening in real time. I mean, just stop to think about that for a moment. After the book of Joshua, as God led his people, again, out of slavery in Egypt through the will. wilderness across the Jordan River. And here they are in Book of Joshua, coming into the promised land. And after the book of Joshua, you have this book of judges where things are just chaotic. Remember that tagline that kept going back to, in those days, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. When you think, gosh, Lord, couldn't you have just, you know, sped things up? But this is generations upon generations of people who are getting

to know God slowly, like just bit by bit. That was as nations are being formed, as, as wars are being fought, as lives are being lived, as people are getting married and they're having children and they're experiencing tragedy and they're experiencing triumph and they're dying and the next generation comes, here is God who just is moving so slowly because he's moving in time. And he's moving slowly for our sake. And this is the crazy thing. God's moving slowly for our sake. And I often wondered why. Here's my theory. When it comes to how God has moved so slowly, I think it's because of this. I think it's because if God revealed himself all at once in this massively overwhelming way, I don't know if we'd be free to say yes or no to him. You know,

if God just, if you think about this even in terms of if God were to do this to us right now, like, you know, every year on whatever day of the year, God just makes himself completely known so that no one would be able to say he doesn't exist. You know, so that God just makes himself absolutely clearly known. And he says, here's who I am. Yes, I am the God of the Jewish people, fulfilled in Christianity. I established the Catholic Church, you know, all these kind of things. And he just made that very, very clear.

Like, why doesn't he do that? Because then we wouldn't have to worry about who doesn't know the Lord or people who wrestle with atheism. I wonder if God doesn't do that because it's more important to God that we, believe him rather than simply believe in him. What I mean by that is more important to God that, I wonder, I wonder that it's more important to God that we trust him than we simply believe that he exists. And so God moves slowly. So we actually retain the freedom to deny him. We retain the freedom to reject him. And we retain the freedom to love him. That our love isn't based out of this servile fear of, yeah, he shows himself every single year.

And, yeah, who'd want to reject him? Because that's horrible. Maybe you wouldn't be free to reject him. But if we were not free to reject him, maybe we also wouldn't be free to love him. So God, what does he do? He reveals himself in stages. And here's the last thing. I love this.

And paragraph 64. Remember, this is right before tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to talk about how Jesus is the mediator and fullness of all revelation. At the end of this paragraph 64, it talks about how not only to the prophets give us a hope for salvation, an expectation of the new and everlasting covenant for everyone, not just for the Jewish people, but for every person in the entire world. He also talks about how there's a radical redemption of the people of God, like a purification of our hearts that will have new hearts. Every one of us, all the nations, every race, every culture, every people, every language,

every person has the potential, the capacity to have this new heart. And I love how the church says, above all, the poor and humble of the Lord will bear this hope. And it points specifically to the holy women like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith, Esther, and above all, Mary. I love, there's a blessing. This is the last thing. This is the last thing before. This is the last thing for real. In a Catholic wedding rite, there's a thing called the nuptial blessing.

And as part of the nuptial blessing, there's a special blessing upon the bride. And it says, essentially, may God bless her. May she be like those women whose praises are sung throughout the scriptures. May she be like those holy women whose praises are sung throughout the scriptures. And some of those women here have been named. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith, Esther, above all, Mary. I think you know those names. And you know those people.

You know that many of them experienced great suffering, great sadness, great loss in their lives, but also great bravery. They experienced, expressed, great strength. They lived with great grace. I just think, what a gift. What a gift. But they were the poor and humble of the Lord, as were many of their husbands, as were many of their family members and the people around them. But God works through the poor and the humble.

Those who are willing to bear the hope, even in the midst of bit by bit, stage by stage by, age, God revealing himself. God has taken so much time to reveal himself that we just have to say, okay, God, thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Not only, again, as he said, the beginning of this day, in the macro way over the course of 4,000 years here, from the beginning of your revelation to Abraham to this moment, but also in our own lives. And so we just have to pray for openness to that because God keeps revealing himself to us, keeps revealing himself to us in little ways, in these micro ways, in the ways that change our hearts. And so God, please help us all have hearts open to you, minds that want to know you so we can have a

relationship with you. I'm praying for that. I'm praying for that for you. And please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.