CHAPTER SEVENLove for God

God, who is Love, has given every creature the greatest gift of all, his Son, Jesus Christ.

Nothing More to Give

Theological VirtuesFaith –

enables us to believe in God and what the Church proposes for our belief

Hope – leads us to

desire heavenand eternal life

through trust in Godand the graces of the

Holy Spirit

Charity – the greatest of

all virtues; enables us to love God

above all things and our neighboras ourselves.

Keeping the Commandments

covenant

The strongest possible pledge and agreement between two

parties

Keeping the Commandments

The 10 Commandments

Often called the Decalogue

Means 10 words

Keeping the Commandments

Love of God

I am the Lord your God: you shall nothave strange Gods

before me.

You shall not take the name of the

Lord your God inVain.

Remember to keep holy the Lord’s

Day.

Keeping the Commandments

Loving Neighbor

Honor your father and

mother

Youshallnot kill.

Youshallnot

commitadultery.

Youshallnot

steal.

Youshallnotbearfalse

witnessagainstyour

neighbor.

Youshallnot

covetyour

neighbor’s

wife.

Youshallnot

covetyour

neighbor’s

goods.

Church Tradition

The Decalogue is a unity.

Each commandment refers to each of the others and to all collectively.

To break one of the commandments is to break the whole Law.

Keeping the Commandments

You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.

This commandment teaches us to accept the one true God of love.

This means we must worship God.

The theological virtues enable us to relate to God and carry out this command.

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Faith

This virtue empowers us to say “yes” to God.

It enables us to believe everything God has revealed to us.

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Faith

Ways to strengthen faith:

Prayer

Read the Bible

Celebrate the sacraments

Study your faith

Associate with and listen to people of faith

Put your faith into action

Avoid temptations and sin that threaten to destroy the gift of faith

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

FaithAvoid these temptations and sin that threaten to destroy the gift of faith:

voluntary doubt – the decision to ignore or a refusal to believe what God has revealed or what the Church teaches.

incredulity – a mental disposition that either neglects revealed truth or willfully refuses to assent to it.

heresy – outright denial by a baptized person of some essential truth about God and faith that we must believe.

apostasy – The total rejection of Jesus Christ (and the Christian faith) by a baptized Christian.

schism – refusal to submit to the pope’s authority or remain in union with members of the Catholic Church

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Hope

We trust that God controls the future and is watching out for us.

Hope gives us confidence that God keeps all his promises

Ways to violate the virtue of hope:

Despair – losing hope that God can save us

Presumption – we can save ourselves without God’s help or God will automatically be merciful if we don’t repent.

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Charity

♥Agape – selfless, giving love

♥Agape love is the type of love Jesus has for us, and the kind of love we should show others.

♥ Latin word for love, caritas, means “holding someone close to one’s heart.”

♥Charity involves:♥Reverence

♥Sacrifice

♥Beginning

♥Rooting out sin:

♥Indifference

♥Ingratitude

♥Lukewarmness or spiritual laziness

♥Hatred of God

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Living the First Commandment

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Acts of Religion

Adoration

Prayer Sacrifice

Avoiding Offenses Against the First Commandment

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Idolatry (the worship of false gods)

Superstition, divination (attempts to unveil what God wants hidden by calling up demonic powers, consulting

horoscopes, the stars, or mediums, palm reading, etc.) , and magic

Avoiding Offenses Against the First Commandment

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

Atheism (denies God’s existences) and agnosticism (claims ignorance about God’s existence

claiming it cannot be proved.)

Irreligion – tempting God, sacrilege (profane or unworthy treatment of the sacraments, other liturgical actions, and persons, places, and things consecrated to

God.), and simony (the buying or selling of spiritual goods.)

Avoiding Offenses Against the First Commandment

Forms of non-belief in God:Humanism – a belief that defies humanity and human

potential to the exclusion of any belief in or reliance on God.

Freudianism – claims belief in God is mere wishful thinking

Materialism – a belief that the physical, material world is the only reality, and that spiritual existence, values and faith are illusions.

The First Commandment and the Theological Virtues

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

This commandment stresses the importance of respecting God’s name.

By respecting God’s name, we show respect for the mystery of God himself.

By taking care of how we invoke God’s name, we recognize that some things are sacred and holy.

This commandment also underscores the holiness of our own name because we are baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Second Commandment

Avoiding Offenses Against the Second Commandment

Breaking promises made in God’s name

Blasphemy (hateful, defiant, reproachful thoughts and words, or acts against God, Jesus, his Church, the saints, or

holy things.)

The Second Commandment

Avoiding Offenses Against the Second Commandment

The Second Commandment

Taking the Lord’s name in vain:

swearing (misuse of God’s name in making false promises,

cursing other people, or using God’s name frivolously), perjury (when one fails to keep a promise sworn under oath

or when one takes an oath with no intention of keeping it.), obscenity (indecent, lewd, or offensive language, behavior, appearance, or expressions), cussing (an informal word that means the same thing as cursing, the calling down of evil on

someone), and vulgarity (tasteless or coarse behavior or language).

Remember to keep holy the Lord’s day.

This commandment stresses the value of play (recreation) and prayer on the Sabbath day.

It is important to use this day as a day to praise, worship and adore God. Sabbath is our small gift to God in thanksgiving for all of his gifts.

For Christians, the Sabbath is Sunday, commemorating Easter and the beginning of the week.

The Third Commandment

Why We Go to Mass

We go to Mass to give as well as receive.

Jesus wants us to come together to experience him in the Eucharist, his scriptural word, and in each other.

As a community of believers, we thank God together through the Eucharist.

The Third Commandment

VocabularyFaithHopeCharityCovenantDecalogueVoluntary doubtIncredulityHeresyApostasySchismDespairPresumption

AgapeCaritasIdolatryDivinationSacrilegeSimonyHumanismMaterialismBlasphemySwearingObscenityCussingVulgarity