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A meaningful message for the human person
116. The Word of God, in
becoming man, assumed human nature in everything, except sin. In this way Jesus
Christ, who is "the image of the invisible God", (Col 1,15) is
also the perfect man. From this it follows that "in reality it is only in
the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes
clear". (398)
Catechesis, in presenting the Christian
message, not only shows who God is and what his saving plan is, but, as Jesus
himself did, it reveals man to man and makes him more aware of his sublime
vocation. (399) Revelation, in fact, "... is not... isolated from
life or artificially juxtaposed to it. It is concerned with the ultimate
meaning of life and it illumines the whole of life with the light of the
Gospel, to inspire it or to question it". (400)
The relationship between the Christian
message and human experience is not a simple methodological question. It
springs from the very end of catechesis, which seeks to put the human person in
communion with Jesus Christ. In his earthly life he lived his humanity fully: "He
worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, he acted with a human
will, and with a human heart he loved". (401) Therefore,
"Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives
it in us". (402) Catechesis operates through this identity of
human experience between Jesus the Master and his disciple and teaches to think
like him, to act like him, to love like him. (403) To live communion
with Christ is to experience the new life of grace. (404)
117. For this reason,
catechesis is eminently christological in presenting the Christian message and
should therefore "be concerned with making men attentive to their more
significant experiences, both personal and social; it also has the duty of
placing under the light of the Gospel, the questions which arise from those
experiences so that there may be stimulated within men a right desire to
transform their ways of life". (405) In this sense:
– in first evangelization, proper to the pre-catechumenate
or to pre-catechesis, the proclamation of the Gospel shall always be done in
close connection with human nature and its aspirations, and will show how the
Gospel fully satisfies the human heart; (406)
– in biblical catechesis, it shall help to
interpret present-day human life in the light of the experiences of the people
of Israel, of Jesus Christ and the ecclesial community, in which the Spirit of
the Risen Jesus continually lives and works;
– in explaining the Creed, catechesis shall
show how the great themes of the faith (creation, original sin, Incarnation,
Easter, Pentecost, eschatology) are always sources of life and light for the
human being;
– moral catechesis, in presenting what makes
life worthy of the Gospel (407) and in promoting the Beatitudes as the
spirit that must permeate the Decalogue, shall root them in the human virtues
present in the heart of man; (408)
– liturgical catechesis shall make constant
reference to the great human experiences represented by the signs and symbols
of liturgical actions originating in Jewish and Christian culture. (409)
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