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A comprehensive and hierarchical message
114. This message transmitted
by catechetics has a "comprehensive hierarchical character",
(388) which constitutes a coherent and vital synthesis of the faith.
This is organized around the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, in a
christocentric perspective, because this is "the source of all the other
mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them". (389)
Starting with this point, the harmony of the overall message requires a
"hierarchy of truths", (390) in so far as the connection
between each one of these and the foundation of the faith differs.
Nevertheless, this hierarchy "does not mean that some truths pertain to Faith
itself less than others, but rather that some truths are based on others as of
a higher priority and are illumined by them". (391)
115. All aspects and
dimensions of the Christian message participate in this hierarchical system.
– The history of salvation, recounting the
"marvels of God" (mirabilia Dei), what He has done, continues to do
and will do in the future for us, is organized in reference to Jesus Christ,
the "centre of salvation history". (392) The preparation for
the Gospel in the Old Testament, the fullness of Revelation in Jesus Christ,
and the time of the Church, provide the structure of all salvation history of
which creation and eschatology are its beginning and its end.
– The Apostles' Creed demonstrates how the
Church has always desired to present the Christian mystery in a vital
synthesis. This Creed is a synthesis of and a key to reading all of the
Church's doctrine, which is hierarchically ordered around it. (393)
– The sacraments, which, like regenerating
forces, spring from the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, are also a whole. They
form "an organic whole in which each particular sacrament has its own
vital place". (394) In this whole, the Holy Eucharist occupies a
unique place to which all of the other sacraments are ordained. The Eucharist
is to be presented as the "sacrament of sacraments". (395)
– The double commandment of love of God and
neighbour is—in the moral message—a hierarchy of values which Jesus himself
established: "On these two commandments depend all the Law and the
Prophets" (Mt 22,40). The love of God and neighbour, which sum up
the Decalogue, are lived in the spirit of the Beatitudes and constitute the
magna carta of the Christian life proclaimed by Jesus in the Sermon on the
Mount. (396)
– The Our Father gathers up the essence of
the Gospel. It synthesizes and hierarchically structures the immense riches of
prayer contained in Sacred Scripture and in all of the Church's life. This
prayer, given by Jesus to his disciples, makes clear the childlike trust and
the deepest desires with which one can turn to God. (397)
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