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Unlocking the Beauty of the CatechismThe Creed: Part Two

Novo Millennio PressPO Box 160La Crescent, MN 55947www.ChristopherRuff.com

Nihil obstat: Rev. Jesse D. Burish, S.T.L.Censor Librorum

Imprimatur: William Patrick Callahan, OFM Conv. Bishop of La CrosseJanuary 30, 2013

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed.

Copyright © 2013 by Christopher Ruff. ISBN 978-0-9831257-5-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, except for brief quota-tions in printed reviews, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America copyright © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. - Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with Permission.

Cover art: Manuel Panselinos, Christ Enthroned. Protaton church, Mount Athos, Greece, ca 1290.Image compliments of skete.com. Graphics and Design:Alice J. Andersenwww.alicejandersen.com.

The Discipleship Series

Novo Millennio Press

Introduction

Keys to a Successful Catechism Study

Session 1: Jesus’ Suffering and DeathSummary of nn. 571-623

Session 2: From the Tomb to the Right Hand of the FatherSummary of nn. 624-682

Session 3: The Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of LifeSummary of nn. 683-747

Session 4: I Believe in the Holy Catholic ChurchSummary of nn. 748-810

Session 5: One, Holy, Catholic and ApostolicSummary of nn. 811-870

Session 6: One Body, Many MembersSummary of nn. 871-945

Session 7: Communion of Saints, Forgiveness of SinsSummary of nn. 946-987

Session 8: Resurrection of the Body and Life EverlastingSummary of nn. 988-1065

Table of Contents

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Introduction

Welcome to Part Two of Unlocking the Beauty of the Catechism: The Creed. On the presumption that you have completed the eight sessions of Part One, we will dispense with a few pages of the introductory material contained in that book.

Once again I would like to acknowledge with grati-tude the encouragement and support of Bishop William P. Callahan of the Diocese of La Crosse, the skillful editing and design of Alice Andersen Socha, and the continued patience of my wife, Clare, and my children as I do this writing on “home time.”

Unlocking a Treasure without Equal

It is an unfortunate reality that many Catholics find the Catechism intimidating. They often prefer to turn to simpler adaptations or to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. These are wonderful tools, but they simply cannot match the richness of the Catechism itself.

And so this series of study resources seeks to facili-tate the reading experience of Catholics as they en-counter the Catechism, providing solutions to the most common challenges it poses:

• Length – At nearly 700 pages (not counting the adjunct materials), the Catechism can intimidate by its sheer volume, and so the study resources are divided into manageable sessions, each covering about 15 pages of the Catechism.

• Density – Not only is the Catechism long, but virtually every paragraph is packed with meaning. That is its richness, but also its challenge. Even after reading a mere 10-20 pages, one can find oneself saying, “That was beautiful, but help me remember what I just read!” And so each study session offers a con-cise summary of the main points covered.

• Vocabulary – The Catechism makes full use of the Church’s rich theological language. Again, that is both a blessing and a challenge. Even if a Catholic has heard a particular expression many times—such as “Paschal Mystery”—he or she may have only a vague sense of its meaning. For that reason, each session con-tains a Vocabulary aid.

• Loftiness – The Catechism communicates with eloquent beauty the riches of the faith. And yet it must find its ultimate value in reaching down from the heights of theological discourse to the nitty-gritty of our daily lives. And so each session begins and ends with prayer and contains discussion questions and a “Growth in Discipleship” section that pro-voke personal reflection and application.

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Unlocking the Beauty of the Catechism

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Keys to a Successful Catechism Study

Establishing Small Groups

• Recruit small group participants through per-sonal invitation, parish announcements, bul-letin inserts, etc. Spread the word to existing groups, such as bible study networks, parish committees, men’s and women’s organizations, young adults groups, etc. For resources, visit www.ChristopherRuff.com and click on “Parish Launch Kit.”

• For most people, once or twice a month is the most calendar-friendly meeting schedule, though weekly meetings can work well during Lent. Typical length for a session is about 90 minutes. Whatever time frame a group estab-lishes, it should be rigorously respected.

• Each group needs a facilitator. It can be the same person at each meeting, or the facilitator role can rotate. The facilitator does not need expertise in the Catechism. His/her primary role is to start and end the meeting on time, to help keep things moving and on topic, and to foster a friendly, supportive environment in which everyone feels invited to contribute. Each facilitator will need to have a Facilita-tor’s Guide.

• It is up to each group to decide where they would like to meet. It is ideal to hold the ses-sions in one another’s homes since a key goal is

The summaries that form the main body of each session are brief and meant to be memory aids, captur-ing and commenting on a few principal themes. They could be compared to Internet maps that let the user zoom out from street level detail to high altitude “big picture.” The summaries provide that big picture, help-ing the reader to keep his or her bearings in the midst of the rich but sometimes daunting detail of the Cat-echism.

But the map is meant only to make the trip easier, not to substitute for it. And so it is vital that partici-pants prepare for each session by doing the assigned reading from the Catechism, which is really quite mod-est. It is there that they will experience the exquisite beauty of the journey through the Faith!

Christopher Ruff, S.T.L.

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to bring faith into daily life. If this is not work-able, a room on church grounds is fine, or some combination of the two.

Acquiring the Necessary Resources

In addition to a copy of this study guide, Unlocking the Beauty of the Catechism, each participant will need to have:

• A copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church —preferably the second edition, which reflects the changes made in 1997.

◊ I recommend the version published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bish-ops. It is green, and replaces the first edition, which was tan. It also includes appendices that available “compact” versions don’t have, and its larger format features larger print. It is avail-able in softcover only (the hardcover has been discontinued).

◊ If someone really wants a more compact ver-sion and is content not to have the appendices, a compact hardcover 2nd edition is published by Doubleday. This would be acceptable.

• A Catholic Bible.

◊ I recommend the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, which is the version used in the Catechism itself and in this study guide. It is readily available from Ignatius Press.

◊ The second-best choice is the New American Bible, but any Catholic edition of the Bible is acceptable.

Preparing for the Sessions

In advance of each meeting, each participant is ex-pected to:

1. First, read the material for the coming session from this study guide. It will summarize and highlight what to look for as you turn to the Catechism.

2. Then read the corresponding paragraphs of the Catechism itself, indicated on the session’s title page (for example, for Session 2 read para-graphs 624-682).

3. Jot down answers to the discussion questions in the spaces provided, so as to come to the meet-ing prepared to share ideas.

Conducting the Session

1. The facilitator calls the gathering to order and all pray together the opening prayer.

2. The group participants then take turns reading aloud the study guide material for that session (one or two paragraphs at a time—whatever seems reasonable). This rotating pattern should continue through the discussion questions.

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• NOTE: Consistent feedback has confirmed that this practice of reading aloud the study guide material enhances the group experi-ence, even though participants have already read it on their own. Starting with the open-ing prayer, it typically takes only 10-15 min-utes to arrive at the first discussion question.

3. If a discussion question asks for some passages of Scripture to be read, this should also be done aloud if time permits, though it is presumed that people have done this on their own in preparation for the meeting.

4. The facilitator has a Facilitator’s Guide with “answer prompts” for some questions, and this may be helpful if the discussion stalls or there is confusion. But the guide should be used sparing-ly or it will get in the way of genuine discussion. The group should try to answer every question as thoroughly as possible before there is any consultation of the Facilitator’s Guide.

5. If in the course of the discussion there arises a

question or controversy that cannot be resolved in the group, the facilitator should consult the pastor or another resource person with a solid theological formation between sessions, bringing their response back to the group.

6. When there are 10-15 minutes left in the al-lotted schedule for the meeting, the facilitator should note that it is time to draw the discus-sion to a close (even if some discussion questions

remain) and to move on to reading the brief “Growth in Discipleship” section, and praying the “Group Prayers of Intercession.”

7. The purpose of the “Growth in Discipleship” sec-tion is to provide ideas for personal application. These can be discussed if people wish, but there is no need for any commitments to be made pub-licly, unless people want to plan, for example, to pray the rosary together, or carry out some work of service, etc.

8. The “Group Prayers of Intercession” are intend-ed to be spontaneous prayer intentions. They direct the power of prayer to various needs and simultaneously deepen the spirit of fellowship in the group. Conclude with the Lord’s Prayer.

9. The session should end on time, even if mem-bers are eager to keep going. This is vital for the health and longevity of the group. The date and place of the next meeting should be confirmed.

10. It is good to follow the meeting with fifteen to twenty minutes of social time for those who are able to stay. Simple refreshments are a nice touch, with emphasis on the word simple. Otherwise people feel pressured to keep up with high expectations.

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Group Etiquette

• Pray for the members of your group between sessions.

• Maintain confidentiality.• Be a good listener and encourage everyone to

contribute to the discussion, without any-one monopolizing. Members that are more talkative should allow everyone a chance to respond to a discussion question before they speak a second time.

• Love your neighbor by speaking charitably and refraining from any kind of gossip.

• Be on time, come prepared, and actively take part in discussion and prayer.

• Be open and expect God’s action in your life and prayer—expect to be changed!

Unlocking the Beauty ofThe Catechism

The Creed: Part Two

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Session 1

Reflection on nn. 571-623

We begin Part Two of this study of the Creed with the Catechism’s focus on the mysteries of the suffering and death of Christ.

Jesus’ Suffering and Death

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Session 1 - Jesus’ Suffering and Death

Opening Prayer

Come, Lord Jesus, Bring the fire of your Spirit,Who is light to our minds and warmth to our

hearts.Help us to ponder and embrace the truth and

beauty of our Catholic Faith.May the insights we gain be food for our souls, Giving shape and meaning to our lives.

O Lord, how remarkable and moving it is that you have called us your friends and laid down your life for us,1 when we have so often betrayed you by our sins! And yet it is precisely to redeem us from those sins that you suffered humiliation, agony and death on the cross. Help us really to grasp this, to feel it in our hearts, that we might more firmly resolve to avoid sin out of love for you. We ask also for the grace to join our own sufferings to yours, so that our personal crosses might be made worthy to contribute to our deeper conversion and that of the world.

Amen.

1cf. Jn 15:13-17.

Summary of nn. 571-623

“Jesus Christ Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was Crucified, Died, and was Buried”

Paragraph 1: Jesus and Israel

This paragraph helps us to understand why many of the Jewish leaders saw Jesus as a terrible danger. Je-sus seemed to them to threaten the three most impor-tant pillars of their life: Jewish Law, the Temple, and their belief in one God.

But in fact, as nn. 577-586 illustrate, Jesus, himself a Jew, revered the Law and the Temple. It is just that he knew himself to be the fulfillment of both. For the Jewish leaders, this notion was blasphemous.

Yet that was nothing compared to what they judged a far greater blasphemy—Jesus’ claim to be God. An enormous leap of faith was needed for the Jews to ac-cept this. They expected a Messiah anointed by God to liberate them from their oppressors and restore Israel to glory. But a Messiah equal to God, a Messiah who was himself divine? This they did not expect.

Indeed, to them this would logically have implied the existence of two Gods instead of one, seemingly in

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direct violation of the First Commandment—“I am the Lord your God…you shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:2-3). The idea that the unity of the one God could be preserved in spite of a distinction of more than one Person (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) would have been a new and very challenging concept for them. Though it is true that the Old Testament contains what might be called glimpses of the Trinity (Prov 8, Ps 50:13, 104:30), it is only from our perspective of already having a belief in the Trinity that these can readily be understood as such. This challenge to the Jewish mind in Jesus’ day—this need for a whole new way of thinking—helps explain why even his own disciples were deeply perplexed by the question of Jesus’ identity, asking, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?” (Mk 4:41).

Paragraph 2: Jesus Died Crucified

This paragraph, like the first, helps us to under-stand the Jewish context of Jesus’ day in such a way that we do not blindly condemn the Chosen People. The remarkable thing is that, in spite of the challenges posed by belief in Jesus as Divine Messiah, many, even among the leaders, did believe in him. So if we are to look for blame in the Crucifixion of the Son of God, we must look first to ourselves and our own sins, for we have a far more developed knowledge of Christ than the first-century Jews had!

The Catechism goes on to examine a great mystery: the redeeming death of Christ is both the plan of God prophesied in the Scriptures, and the result of free hu-man choices. In other words, God did not make Judas betray Jesus as a kind of destiny. Rather, knowing from all eternity that Judas, Herod, Pilate and others would freely conspire to kill His Son, God allowed it to happen, weaving these free choices into his plan. God is outside time, and the world’s past, present and future are all present to him at once (a mystery far surpassing our understanding).

In his humanity, Jesus is the Head of all mankind, united in a mysterious way to every man. His redeem-ing death on our behalf, accepted in loving and free

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obedience to the Father’s plan, redeems our sinful dis-obedience from the time of Adam. In Jesus’ death, pro-phetic images from the Old Testament come into focus: the Paschal (Passover) lamb (Ex 12:3-14); the sacrificial blood of the Covenant on Mt. Sinai (Ex 24:8); and the Suffering Servant (Is 53), among others.

Jesus’ sacrifice was an act of Absolute Love: “He knew and loved us all when he offered his life” (n. 616). Because we are united to him in his humanity, through grace our sufferings can be joined to his loving sacri-fice. In fact, as the Catechism tells us, “Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven” (n. 618).

Next session we will consider Jesus’ burial, descent into hell, Resurrection and ascent into heaven.

Vocabulary

The precepts of the Law (574) – The Law given to Moses on Mt. Sinai was embellished in many ways by the Scribes and the Pharisees, leading to superficial precepts about ritual hand washings and the like. Jesus angered many Jew-ish leaders by overruling these precepts in favor of the real core of the Law.

Casuistry (579) – Detailed application of minute precepts at the expense of a true understanding of the heart and mean-ing of the Law. See Luke 11:39-54 for an excellent illustra-tion of this.

Pedagogical meaning [of the dietary law] (582) – The “teaching” value. Jewish dietary law focused in extreme ways on purity, on foods that were “clean” or “unclean” (like pork). Jesus acknowledges the importance of purity, but leads his disciples to understand that true purity is rooted in the heart.

Messianic banquet (589) – The glory and joy of heaven, often imaged by Christ as a Wedding Feast.

Sanhedrin (596) – A 71-member council that constituted the supreme court of the Jewish nation, in both religious and secular matters. The Romans permitted this, but did not al-low it to pass a death sentence. That is why Jesus had to be turned over to the Romans to be put to death.

Suffering Servant (601) – A mysterious person presented by the author of Isaiah 53, writing more than five hundred years before the birth of Christ. This person saves his people by taking their sins upon himself and dying for them, like a “lamb led to the slaughter” (cf., Is 53:7).

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Paschal Sacrifice (613) – “Pasch” comes from the Hebrew Pesach, which means Passover. In his Paschal sacrifice, Je-sus is the fulfillment of the Passover lamb that foreshadowed him, the unblemished lamb that was sacrificially slain and eaten, with its blood poured on the doorposts of the Israelites to save them from the angel of death. Just as this sacrificial lamb saved the Israelites from slavery and death in Egypt, so does the Lamb of God lead us out of the slavery and death of sin, by His sacrifice.

Sacrifice of the New Covenant (613) – The Old Covenant was sealed by the blood of oxen at the foot of Mt. Sinai. The New Covenant is sealed by the blood of Christ on Calvary and in the Eucharist.

Discussion Questions

1. Have someone read the account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-32). Now have someone (or perhaps 2 people, as it is a bit long) read Isaiah 53, written more than 500 years before Jesus’ birth. It must certainly have been one of the Scriptures proclaimed by him that made the dis-ciples’ hearts “burn” within them. Imagine yourself listening to Jesus in their place and discuss how you would have felt and reacted.

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2. History reveals that Christians have sometimes blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus. What obser-vations of the Catechism in nn. 574-598 are helpful in presenting a more balanced view?

3. Sometimes we have a tendency to think of sin as simply doing something “against the rules.” We feel guilty and hopefully go to Confession. That is better than excusing ourselves, but n. 598 reminds us of the deeper significance of sin.

• If we look at sin in this deeper way, what changes inside us?

• What difference does it make when tempta-tion comes along?

• Is our repentance for sin a different sort of repentance?

• How would you communicate this deeper understanding of sin to a child? What would you say?

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4. In n. 612 we read that Jesus felt a natural “hor-ror” at the thought of being put to death. He even prayed that the Father “let this cup pass” if pos-sible.

Do you think this could be of comfort to people in the face of their own suffering? Discuss.

5. The devotional life of the Church offers us a variety of ways to pray and meditate on the suffering and death of Christ for our salvation (prayerful reading of the Passion accounts in the Gospels, the Sor-rowful Mysteries of the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, etc.). Which of these are particularly meaningful to you, and why?

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6. Pope John Paul II suffered a great deal from the assassination attempt, from various surgeries, from the humiliating infirmities of old age, and finally from the last stages of the disease that robbed him of his ability to speak (how humbling for the once great orator!) and ended in his death. He often urged the sick and the elderly not to “waste” their suffering.

• What is at the heart of the difference between wasted suffering and fruitful suffering?

• Do you think Catholics today are as likely to “offer up” their sufferings as they were a gen-eration or two ago? Why or why not?

• If you have children (or grandchildren), do you encourage them to offer up their pains and sacrifices?

Growth in Discipleship

Possible ways to put the themes of this session into ac-tion:

• Frequent Confession • Reading the Passion of Christ in the Gospels• Praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary• The Stations of the Cross• Devotion to the Sacred Heart or Divine Mercy • Offering up personal suffering• Loving Christ in one’s suffering neighbor

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Group Prayers of Intercession

8 to 10 Minutes – Conclude with the Lord’s Prayer.

the discipleship series - amazon s3...12 unlocking the beauty of the catechism 13 the discipleship...

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