“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48)

        “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). When this biblical verse is being looked at in isolation, we have little hints on what exactly Jesus wants us to do. It may just look like an impossible mission in our world or something which is eschatological. In fact, on the contrary, Jesus told his disciples to do something very concrete before he concluded with Matthew 5:48. He said: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Jesus is the Son of God. He preached the kingdom of God during his short ministry on earth. His preaching “indissolubly links the terms ‘gospel’ and ‘kingdom of God’ (kingdom of heaven, reign of God). The kingdom of God is God himself” (Ratzinger 40). The God-man, through his words and deeds, showed to us that the kingdom of God has come. Although many exegesis “saw the term (kingdom of God) as an expression of Jesus’ expression of the imminent end of the world and of the coming world of God” (Ratzinger 47), Pope Benedict XVI said that Jesus’ message about the kingdom is not simply “God’s presence and power in general,” since “God is now present and near in a much more radical way. He is present in Jesus himself. The Son is the kingdom” (Ratzinger 48). As such, a growing number of exegetes today realize that “in the parables Jesus is speaking of himself,” and not just something in the eschatological sense, in order to explain “the mystery of his mission and thus the mystery of the kingdom” (Ratzinger 49).

        Before Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane to fulfill his mission, he gave his disciples a “new commandment:” “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Furthermore, he taught us to obey the commandment to the extent of laying his life for us (c.f. John 15:13), even though when we were still sinners (c.f. Romans 5:18). So “love” is always “the source of doctrine and its end” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan 28). Love is “the beginning since all the doctrine has its source in God’s self-revelation and God is love” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan 28). God reveals himself fully in Jesus Christ who is love. He shows us how to love and how to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. Love is also “the end, or goal, of doctrine since all that is taught is for the sake of union with God in eternity, and since God is love, this means union with Love itself” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan 28-29). St. Augustine relates the unity with God with happiness: “The possession of God is happiness essential” (Catholic Encyclopedia “Happiness”). Indeed, created in the image and likeness of God, man always has a desire in his heart to search for God who is the truth and happiness (CCC 27).

        In order to draw people to happiness, “(t)he whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends” (Ratzinger 21). St. Paul told the church of Corinth: “If I speak the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I … understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions … but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). As a result, when Christians follow the Lord’s command to evangelize the world with the gospel message, “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” (Ratzinger 22). At the center of the message is the Jerusalem kerygma which was heralded by St. Peter and reported in the first ten chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. The heralding message is quite simple. Indeed, St. Augustine said and St. Thomas Aquinas concurred and explained that “God is truly and absolutely simple” (Summa Theologica I, Q3, A7).

        The kerygma is like this: Jesus is the suffering Messiah whom God had foretold through all the prophets (Acts 3:18); he is the Son of God the Father (Acts 2:33), “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36), “Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14), “Author of life” (Acts 3:15), “Prince and Savior” (Acts 5:31), and God’s Spirit is with him (Acts 10:38); he was put to death on the cross (Acts 2:22, 3:13, 4:10, 5:30, 10:39); but God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24, 3:15, 4:10, 5:30, 10:40); he is now at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:25, 2:29, 2:34, 5:31); and he will come to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42). Whoever repents and believes in him will have their sins forgiven and be saved from God’s judgment (Acts 4:12, 10:43). “This message is the essential content of Christianity. It contains the substance of the Apostles’ Creed and the outline of what will become the four Gospels” (Kevane 258). In fact, “(a)ll the phrases of the Apostles’ Creed as it is known, professed, and prayed today can be constructed from these discourses of Peter” (Kevane 260). And St. John the Evangelist summarized this core truth in one biblical verse: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

        To evangelize means “to acquaint men with Jesus as we come to know him through the Gospels. To evangelize is to introduce men into a communion of life with him as well as into the fellowship of disciples, the community that journeys with him” (Ratzinger 53). When people who are seeking for the faith start to show interest in the gospel message and the Person of Jesus, we should “inaugurate the development of evangelization into catechesis” (Ratzinger 56). St. Pope John Paul II said that “catechesis” is “a stage of evangelization,” it is “one of these moments – a very remarkable one – in the whole process of evangelization (Catechesi Tradendae 18). The aim of catechesis is to enable people to know Jesus more concretely so as to establish a personal relationship with him. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Jesus said, “I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me” (John 8:28). He described himself as a servant (c.f. Mark 10:42-45). “The source of the Son’s authority lies in his belonging entirely to his Father” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan xxiii). His teaching about the kingdom of God, with the “wonderfully complete and expertly articulate body of doctrine, was the fulfillment of the Prophetic Revelation, the fullness of the Word of God to mankind. The new Israel of God had its doctrine together with its leaders who were to teach that doctrine” (Kevane 205). Indeed, Jesus himself is the fulfillment of God’s revelation. Rooted in the Father’s love, the Church can “only exercise the authority that it has itself received, that of God the Father, in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It does not have any other. And because of this, the Church, too, is free to speak and act with that same authority” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan xxiv).

        The content of the deposit of faith is safeguarded by the Church, which is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Magisterium of the Church has drawn up a “reference text” – the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the teaching of the faith (GDC 125). The Catechism thus “constitutes a fundamental service by encouraging the proclamation of the Gospel and the teaching of the faith, which both draw their message from Tradition and Sacred Scripture entrusted to the Church, so as to achieve this function with complete authenticity” (GDC 125). Yet, the Catechism is not the only source of catechesis. Being an act of the Magisterium, “it is not superior to the word of God but at its service” (GDC 125). Neither is the Catechism a new invention of the Church. Representative catechetical documents that survived today include writings of the Fathers of the Church, most notably St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386), St. Gregory of Nyssa (331-386) and St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). The Fathers “make it monumentally clear that this pattern or syllabus for the teaching is the faith in the three Divine Persons together with the response: of personal prayer, Gospel morality and Eucharistic living” (Kevane 173). In 1273, the great Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) completed a set of catechetical instructions and delivered it to the people of Naples (Collins 16). These instructions are “clear and simple explanations of the Creed, the Commandments, the sacraments, Our Father and Hail Mary. (They) were used extensively throughout Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as manuals for priests and teachers of religion” (Collins 17). St. Thomas’ instructions are systematic and comprehensive. They already encompassed the four basic themes (or “pillars”) of modern Catechism: the profession of faith, the sacraments, Christian morality, and prayer.

        Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, the Church saw an essential need to provide a handbook “to instruct pastors, and others who have the care of souls, in those things that belong properly to pastoral care and are accommodated to the capacity of the faithful” (Marthaler 36). In accordance with the order of the Council of Trent, St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) was appointed to lead a commission of three bishops and one theologian to carry out the work in preparing a catechism for pastors and catechists (Marthaler 35). The catechism was published by the order of Pope Pius V in 1566, entitled The Catechism of the Council of Trent, also known as The Roman Catechism (Collins 23; Marthaler 36). The Catechism of the Council of Trent contains “a full and authoritative exposition of the Creed, Commandments, sacraments, and prayer, amply correlated with scriptural and patristic reference” (Collins 23). The Catechism of the Council of Trent stood the test of time very well. The modern Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992 describes it as “a work of the first rank as a summary of Christian teaching” (CCC 9). “Without being polemical it relies on authority – proof-texts from Scripture and the Church Fathers – to expound and defend Catholic doctrine. As a handbook of Catholic teaching it managed to be relatively complete without confusing basic doctrine with theological conclusions, substance with details” (Marthaler 40).

        The modern Catechism is a six-year collaborative effort of bishops, theologians and laymen (Ratzinger 9). Like The Catechism of the Council of Trent, it features the same four pillars, which must be read in unity, directing the reader to God who is love that never ends. Although the Catechism is divided into four parts, Catholic faith “is not a series of isolated propositions to be believed, but a unified whole, rooted in the unity of God. The Catechism is calling for a holistic understanding of the faith and a holistic transmission of the faith” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan 2). The first part, modelled along the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed is essentially a profession of the triune God – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is also our profession of faith in baptism. This lays the foundation of the hierarchy of truths. “Christian faith is simply faith in God. Everything else is an unfolding of that” (Ratzinger 18). “The linking of the doctrine of faith to the baptismal profession of faith also makes it clear that catechesis is not simply the communication of a religious theory. Rather it intends to set a life-process in motion: namely, growth in the life given through baptism, growth in communion with God” (Ratzinger 18). The second part presents the seven sacraments, which are signs of salvation and of grace, “instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us” (CCC 1131). The sacraments are “the Church in action” (Ratzinger 18). The third part on morality is “a teaching about the nature of love. What the Catechism tells us on this point is that the essence of true love has been manifested visibly in the Person of Jesus Christ: in his words, but also in his life and death” (Ratzinger 16). The fourth part on prayer is applied faith. Obviously, prayer is inseparable with the liturgy and sacraments. On the other hand, “prayer and morality are also inseparable: only when man turns to God does he find the paths leading to his true being” (Ratzinger 19). With the Catechism, the Christian faith is “protected and taught in its integrity and organic unity” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan xxxiv).

        As already pointed out, the aim of catechesis is to enable people to know Jesus, establish a personal relationship with him, to be configured to him and in communion with him. “At the heart of catechesis we find a Person: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. He is the living unity of God and man. Thus all words of the faith always point in the whole: this organic, united reality” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan xxxiii). The gospel message “is a reality” for the Catechism, which “must be told” as such (Ratzinger 61). The Catechism, “reading the Gospels with faith-filled courage as a many-layered and reliable whole, restores to us an amazingly rich and vivid portrait of Jesus” (Ratzinger 68). The Jesus of the Gospel is not something historical and “never merely a thing of the past; all of it is preserved in him and in communion of his disciples as a thing of the present that still touches me today” (Ratzinger 69). “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). The Paschal Mystery is the mystery of God, the mystery of love which is revealed to each of us and it asks for our response. On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus accompanied the two disciples and walked with them. He showed to them that the Scripture is fulfilled in his own person, opened their eyes to see him by the breaking of bread, and sent them back to Jerusalem to be his witnesses. As a Christian, the living Jesus accompanies me “in all the stages of my life, in my successes and failures, in my hopes and my suffering” (Ratzinger 71). However, Jesus died not only for me, but “he died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:15). He sent us to proclaim the love of God to everyone we meet. “When we are able to announce it to others as the message of truth, evangelization takes place. Then we know that the kingdom of God is near. And this knowledge gives us the strength to live and act out of this nearness” (Ratzinger 71).

        In proclaiming the kingdom and the gospel message to others, it is most important for catechists to know that Jesus is the only Teacher, the divine Teacher. Thus, every catechist should wholeheartedly and faithfully teach Christ and his message to others. In handing on the deposit of faith to other people, catechists should always bear in mind the Lord’s saying: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me” (John 7:16). They serve as a “herald,” who was historically the “official spokesman for the town council” (Kevane 257). He is qualified for the spokesman job with “his absolute fidelity to the message from the ruler: he simply delivers it, without addition or subtraction, without any negotiation” (Kevane 257). Resembling St. Peter’s heralding the Jerusalem kerygma, a catechist “must communicate the message exactly as handed to him by the authority whom he serves and represents, for the essential point about a herald is the fact that nothing in the content of the message comes from himself” (Kevane 161).

        Catechists also need to differentiate between doctrines and theology. The Catechism essentially “contains doctrines, not theology – theology being the activity of reflecting upon doctrine” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan xxxi). It is “doctrine that is the province of catechesis. Catechists proclaim the Church’s doctrine, her teaching; they do not teach the theology” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan xxxi). Yet, it does not mean that catechists should teach the entire and same set of doctrines to all the people in every situation. Neither would it be fruitful for catechumens to know the faith but do not pray and act according to it. “Catechists, acting in inward harmony with the faith of the Church, with the message of Jesus Christ, must creatively mediate the Catechism to given situations and persons” (Ratzinger 59).

        The mission of a catechist is to enable an integral formation of the faith of the whole human person. “As the vitality of the human body depends on the proper function of all of its organs, so also the maturation of the Christian life requires that it be cultivated in all its dimensions: knowledge of the faith, liturgical life, moral formation, prayer, belonging to community, missionary spirit” (GDC 87). The work of catechists is thus to ensure in their teaching the unity of “belief, worship, and life – is expressed in the Latin saying lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi – the ‘law,’ or rule of prayer (orandi), of faith (credendi), and of life (vivendi) follow one another” (Willey, de Cointet, Morgan 33). Obviously, catechists also have to be exemplary in their faith and willing to undergo continuous formation and conversion in order to lead others and accompany them in their journey to follow Christ. Let’s conclude with St. Pope John Paul II’s saying about the aim of catechesis:

Catechesis aims therefore at developing understanding of the mystery of Christ in the light of God’s word, so that the whole of a person’s humanity is impregnated by that word. Changed by the working of grace into a new creature, the Christian thus sets himself to follow Christ and learns more and more within the Church to think like Him, to judge like Him, to act in conformity with His commandments, and to hope as He invites us to (Catechesi Tradendae 20).

Christ is the image of the invisible God (c.f. Colossians 1:15). Our divine image, disfigured by sin is restored to the original beauty by his redemption (CCC 1701). In the loving union with him, it becomes possible for Christians to live out the gospel to pray for our enemies and love them as our neighbors. Acting as his living witnesses in our words and in our deeds, we will follow the Lord’s command to evangelize the world.

Works Cited

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Kevane, Eugene. Jesus the Divine Teacher: What the Prophets Really Foretold. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005. Print.

Marthaler, Berard. “Chapter 3: Four Pillars of Catechesis: The Catechism of the Council of Trent,” The Catechism Yesterday and Today: The Evolution of a Genre. The Liturgical Press, 1995. Print. pp. 33-41.

Pope John Paul II. Catechesi Tradendae. Vatican, n.d. Web. 11 March. 2017. 

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