Seek God With A Sincere Heart and Moved by Grace, Try in Their Actions To Do His Will As They
Seek God With A Sincere Heart and Moved by Grace, Try in Their Actions To Do His Will As They
Seek God With A Sincere Heart and Moved by Grace, Try in Their Actions To Do His Will As They
Our relationship to God can also be compared to “friendship”. This is how God reveals himself.
He reveals Himself in man’s history to pursue His salvific plan for him. This is what we call
“revelation”.
Revelation – God’s personal loving communication to us of who He is and His plan to save us all
in His love.
It is God’s reaching out to us in friendship, so we get to know and love Him.
It is God’s way of making Himself known to us.
- The Church, in her prophetic mission of reading the signs of the times and interpreting them in
the light of the Gospel, discerns the seeds of the Word in the History and culture of all men of
good will.
- Thus, even non-Christians who do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but nevertheless
seek God with a sincere heart and moved by grace, try in their actions to do His will as they
know it through the dictates of their conscience, may achieve eternal salvation.
Christ reveals God to us primarily through the Church, its Sacred Scripture and living Tradition, through
which the Holy Spirit comes to us.
God is not a distant God. He is a relational God and so He reveals Himself to us.
God “wants all men to be saved and come to know the truth” (1Tim 2:4)
Jesus Christ is “Himself both the mediator and the fullness of all Revelation”
Jesus Christ is the goal, the content, and the agent of God’s self-revelation
Goal – the key, the center, and the purpose
Content – Jesus reveals both God and ourselves
Agent – the mediator
WHERE CAN WE FIND GOD’S REVELATION?
Tradition
Sacred Scripture
- collected in the Bible
- inspired record of how God dealt with His people, and how they responded to,
remembered, and interpreted that experience
- are never to be separated from the people of God whose life and history (Tradition)
formed the context of their writing and development
Scared Tradition and Sacred Scripture then are bound closely together, flowing out from the same
divine well spring, moving towards the same goal and making up a single sacred deposit of the Word of
God
Tradition can be taken either as the process by which divine revelation, coming from Jesus Christ
through the apostles, is communicated and unfolded in the community of the Church, or as the content
of the revelation so communicated.
As Sacred Scripture grew from Tradition, so it is interpreted by Tradition – the life, worship, and
teaching of the Church
Tradition depends on the Scripture as its normative record of Christian origins and identity, while
Scripture requires the living Tradition of the Church to bring its Scriptural message to the fresh
challenges and changing contexts confronting Christians in every age
The Bible was written by persons from the people of God, for the people of God, about the God-
experience of the people of God
1ST Stage
- The life and teachings of Jesus
- What Jesus did and taught for our eternal salvation until the day He was taken up
nd
2 Stage
- Oral tradition
- The apostles handed on to their hearers what Jesus had said and done
rd
3 Stage
- The written Gospels
Bible – also called Scriptures, is the divinely inspired written record of how God made Himself known to
certain people in history.
1. Old Testament
- 46 books
- Centers on the covenant God made with the Israelites and the many consequences of
this covenant on their lives not only as individuals but especially as a nation
- Indicates the gradual self-revelation of God
2. New Testament
- 27 books
- Deals with the New Covenant of God’s people with Jesus Christ
- Jesus’ Birth, Death, and Resurrection fulfilled God’s promises in the Old Testament
Gospels – four different accounts (Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn) on Jesus’ redeeming life, teachings,
and work. The climax in each gospel is Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
Acts of the Apostles – sequel to the Gospel of Luke. It records the events in the early
Church from Christ’s ascension to Paul’s missionary to Rome.
Apostolic Letters/Epistles – provide teachings and instructions in Christian faith and
practices
Book of Revelation – the only apocalyptic book in the Sacred Scripture.
BIBLE
Faith
Christian Faith
- believing that Christ reveals God to us in and through the Catholic church, the body of Christ,
united in the Holy Spirit
- believing in the Holy Trinity
Believing – means that God is calling us to share His divine life – that is ‘pagpapakilala’ to us.