•
in the breaking of bread around the table of the Lord, find meaning in sharing ecclesial fellowship with one another and
with Christ, their Priest and Eucharist;
•
in meeting the Crucified Savior are sustained in the sufferings and hardships of life, and receive forgiveness for
their sins through his Sacraments;
•
commit ourselves to our Risen Lord and his mission
through the gift of Faith, celebrated in great Hope in the Sacraments, and lived out in Love and service of their fellowmen;
•
form our world-vision led by the Spirit of the Risen Christ,
experienced in the Christian
community, the Church,
which sustains us in our pilgrimage of life-in-Christ; and
•
approach and live out this Christian life within the powerful inspiring
presence of Mary,
our Mother and Model.
INTEGRATION
53.
This “doctrine” about the identity, meaning, suffering,
commitment
and world view of Filipino Catholics is lived out according to Christian morality,
especially
Christ’s basic commandment of love. We Filipinos are by nature
person-centered, spontaneously giving priority to personal feelings, emotions,
relationships, beyond any legal demands or impersonal tasks. Christ’s
message and Spirit continue to purify this natural
personalism of undue family-centeredness and elitist tendencies. For
while our natural environment as Filipinos is always the family, the barkada, relatives and friends, Christian social morality
leads us beyond these limited groups to the larger community’s common good.
54. Even more striking is our love for
celebrating. Our Christian
identity as Filipinos is naturally bound up with Christian worship in our celebration of Christmas, Holy Week, fiestas and Marian Feasts __ each in a very special Filipino manner. Again,
Christ’s Spirit works from within to purify the warm piety of Catholic Filipino
devotions from all superstitious practices and magical faith-healers. Authentic
Spirit-inspired Christian prayer helps direct these simple expressions of
heartfelt love through Christ to the Father. Of particular importance are the
traditional Filipino Marian devotions which draw on and express the deep yearnings of the
Catholic Filipino.
QUESTIONS
AND ANSWERS
55. Who are Christians?
Christians are men and
women who are baptized in the faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who
became man to be Savior of all. United in the Church as Christ’s “people of
God,” they live out this faith in personal conviction, committed witness, and
Spirit-inspired worship of God their Father.
56. How can we become more
truly Filipino by becoming more truly Christian?
By discovering and
proclaiming Jesus Christ in our personal and national Filipino culture, we
Filipino Catholics invite Christ to purify and heal us, and enrich us with
fuller life in his Spirit in the Church.
57. How does the Church relate
“being Christian” with our Filipino culture?
There is a mutual
relationship:
•
“being Christian” is part of our Filipino identity,
•
maturing in Christian Faith comes only from personally interiorizing Jesus’
message in our Filipino ways of thinking, loving and valuing.
The Church teaches that we
Filipino Christians must know our own culture, and by our Christian Faith in
Christ, purify, guard, develop, and perfect it.
Likewise, we must
“inculturate” our Catholic Faith into our Filipino ways. (Cf. AG 21; PCP II
202-11.)
58. What are some of the basic
characteristics of the Filipino?
Filipinos are
family-oriented, meal-oriented, patient and long-suffering, hero-followers, and
firm believers in the spiritual world.
59. How does Jesus
Christ as presented in Catholic teaching correspond to Filipino character
traits?
Jesus Christ as Son of God and Son of Man:
•
brings us into the family of God our Father;
•
nourishes us as Eucharist;
•
redeems us as Suffering Servant;
•
calls us to personal commitment to Him as our Risen Hero-King;
•
is experienced in his community, the Church;
•
gives us his Mother Mary to be our Mother in grace.
60. What is our vocation as
Catholic Filipinos in Asia?
We are called both
personally, as individual believers, and ecclesially, as members of the Church,
to share Jesus Christ with our Asian brethren by word and witness, through
active commitment to truth, justice, freedom and universal Christian love.
This means “going forth in-spirited to renew the face of the world __ the wider world of Asia and beyond, giving of ourselves unto the
renewal and unity of God’s whole creation” (PCP II 7).
Our vocation is to move from being truly “Church of the Poor,” through “Renewed
Integral Evangelization,” toward becoming a real “Community of Disciples of
Christ” before the world (cf.
NPP).
Chapter 2
God’s Call: Revelation
Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and him whom you
have sent, Jesus Christ.
(Jn 17:3)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has bestowed
on us in Christ every spiritual blessing in the heavens! God has given us the
wisdom to understand fully the mystery, the plan he was pleased to decree in
Christ, to be carried out in the fullness of time: namely, to bring all things
in the heavens and on earth into one under Christ’s headship. In Him you too
were chosen.
(Eph 1:3,9-10,13)
OPENING
61. “It pleased God, in His goodness and wisdom to
reveal Himself . . . By this revelation, then, the invisible God, from the
fullness of His love, addresses men as His friends, and moves among them in
order to invite and receive them in His own company” (DV 2). Christian
life is based on the conviction that God has spoken to us and that the central
truths of our Faith are given in this revelation. The Christian Scriptures
attest that “in times past God spoke in varied ways to our fathers through the
prophets; in this, the final age, He has spoken to us through His Son” (Heb
1:1-2).
CONTEXT
62. But how does this idea of “revelation” relate
to ordinary Filipino life? The answer is in
our personal relationships. One of the best things you can say about a Filipino
is: “Marami siyang kakilala” (He knows many people), or “Maraming
nakakakilala sa kanya” (Many people know him). On the other hand, one of
the worst things to say about a Filipino is “Wala siyang kakilala”
(Nobody knows him), or “Walang kumikilala sa kanya” (No one gives him
recognition). So in our family relationships and friendships we reveal our
personal selves to others, and openly receive their self-giving to us. This is
what uplifts the Filipino.
63. Now the first one to know us, the first one to
show us recognition and reach out to establish a personal relationship with us __
to become our kakilala __ is God. Only in relation to
God do we become our full selves. Only in coming to know God do we grow to the
full stature of our true selves. But how do we come to know the one true God?
64. Perhaps few countries in the world can compare
to the Philippines
when it comes to trying to make God known. Newspapers, radio, TV and movies are
filled with new preachers, religious celebrations, public devotions, and
never-ending appeals for new chapels and churches. Faith healers abound in
every community. Self-proclaimed mediums claim to lead their gullible
devotees in mysterious ways to supposedly closer contact with God, or the Sto.
Niño, or the Blessed Virgin Mary. With so many different people claiming to
reveal God, who can we believe? How does the one true God actually reveal
Himself to us today?
EXPOSITION
I.
GOD REVEALS HIMSELF
A. In
Creation
65. The first way God reveals Himself to us
is through creation. “The heavens
declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims His handiwork” (Ps
19:1). In creation, man holds a special place. God said: “Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gn 1:26). God even gives us a share in His own
creativity: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gn 1:28). God creates the whole
world for us, to support us in life and reveals Himself to us through His
handiwork. “Since the creation of the world. . . God’s eternal power and
divinity have become visible, recognized through the things He has made” (Rom
1:20).
66. Our Fourth Eucharistic Prayer clearly
expresses this recognition of God’s Self-revelation through creation:
Father in
heaven, You are the one God, living and true . . .
Source of
life and goodness,
You have
created all things
To fill Your
creatures with every blessing
And lead all
men to the joyful vision of Your light . . .
Father, we
acknowledge Your greatness:
All Your
actions show Your wisdom and love,
You formed
man in Your own likeness,
and
set him over the whole world
To serve
You, his Creator, and to rule over all creatures.
Natural
Signs
67. For us Filipinos, then, the world and everything in it are natural signs
of God __ the initial way God makes Himself known to us. Yet
in our everyday experience, we meet not only love, friendship, the good and the
beautiful, but also suffering, temptation and evil. All creation has become
affected by sin __ “sin entered the world, and with sin
death” (Rom 5:12). The
“natural signs” of the Creator have thus become disfigured by pollution,
exploitation, injustice, oppression and suffering. So God chose to reveal
Himself in a second, more intimate way, by entering into the history of the
human race He had created.
B. In
Scripture, through Salvation History
68. The Bible records God’s entering into a
special covenant relationship with His chosen people, the race of
Abraham, the people of Israel.
“I will dwell in the midst of the Israelites and will be their God” (Ex 29:45).
Again, we pray in the Eucharistic Prayer IV:
Even when
man disobeyed you and lost your friendship,
You did not
abandon him to the power of death,
But helped
all men to seek and find you.
Again and
again you offered a covenant to man,
and through
the prophets taught him to hope for salvation.
Biblical Signs
69. God revealed Himself in stages. In the Old
Testament, God revealed Himself through biblical signs made up of both deeds
and words. He made covenants with Noah, with Abraham, and
with Moses. He performed great works for His Chosen People, and
proclaimed their saving power and truth through the prophets’ words
(cf. DV 2; CCC 56-64). Through chosen men and women __
kings, judges, prophets, priests and wisemen, God led, liberated, and corrected
His people. He forgave their sins. He thus revealed Himself as Yahweh,
He-who-is-with His people. He is “the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow
to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity” (Ex 34:6). Today, through
His inspired word in the Old Testament, God still reveals Himself to us, and
inspires us to respond to His covenant.
70. Yet, even God’s revelation in history was
weakened by the infidelities and hardness of heart of His Chosen People. But
God so loved the world, that in the fullness of time, He sent His only Son to
be our Savior, like us in all things except sin (cf. Jn 3:16; Gal 4:4; Heb 4:15; CCC 65). Jesus Christ “completed and
perfected God’s revelation by words and works, signs and miracles, but above
all by his death and glorious resurrection from the dead” (DV 4). Thus
the Risen Christ, prefigured in the Old Testament and proclaimed by the
apostles, is the unique, irrevocable and definitive revelation of God.
C. In
the Church
71. But God’s definitive revelation in Jesus
Christ did not stop with Christ’s ascension to his Father. Jesus himself had
gathered around him a group of disciples who would form the nucleus of his Church.
In this Church, the “Good News” of Jesus Christ would be proclaimed and spread
to the ends of the earth by the power of the Holy Spirit, sent down upon
the apostles at Pentecost (cf. Acts 1:8). “What was handed on by the
apostles comprises everything that serves to make the People of God live their
lives in holiness and increase their faith. In this way the Church in her
doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all
that she herself is, all that she believes” (DV 8; cf. CCC 77-79). PCP
II summarizes this by stating that Sacred Scripture and the living
tradition of the Church transmit to us the teachings of Jesus” (PCP II 65).
Liturgical/Ecclesial Signs
72. God
continues to manifest Himself today through the Holy Spirit in the
Church. He is present in the Church’s preaching the truth of Scripture,
in its witness of loving service, and through the celebration of
its Christ-given Sacraments. Christ’s revelation in the Church is “the new and
definitive covenant [which] will never pass away. No new public revelation is
to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord, Jesus Christ (1
Tim 6:14; Ti 2:13)” (DV 4).
73. In summary, then, Filipino Catholics
experience God’s Self-revelation today. First, God shows Himself in the natural
signs of the beauty and abundance of our natural resources and our rich
Filipino culture. Second, the biblical signs in God’s inspired
Word in Scripture, the book of the Church, reveal Him. Third, through
the Church’s liturgical signs, we encounter the Risen Christ in the
Sacraments. Finally, God makes Himself known to us through the ecclesial
signs of the Church’s proclamation of the Creed and in her moral
teachings and commitment to service.
D. In
Other Religions
74. But many Filipino Catholics ask if non-Christians receive God’s
revelation. The Church, in her prophetic mission of “reading the signs of the
times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel” (GS 4),
discerns the seeds of the Word in the history and culture of all
men of good will. Thus, even non-Christians “who do not know the Gospel of
Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and,
moved by grace, try in their actions to do His will as they know it through the
dictates of their conscience, may achieve eternal salvation” (LG 16).
75. For whatever is true and holy in non-Christian cultures and religions is
accepted by the Catholic Church since it “often reflect[s] a ray of that truth
which enlightens all men.” Filipino Catholics, therefore, should “acknowledge,
preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians,
also their social life and culture” (NA 2).
PCP
II provides guidelines for this inter-religious
dialogue. It must be based firmly on the fact that salvation in Jesus Christ is
offered to all, and that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation since
she possesses the fullness of the means to salvation (cf. UR 3). This makes possible “openness in
understanding the religious convictions of others. [For] ‘dialogue based on
hope and love will bear fruit in the Spirit’ (RMi 56)” [PCP II
112-13].
II.
JESUS CHRIST:
AGENT,
CONTENT AND GOAL OF REVELATION
76. Nevertheless we Catholics must “witness to [our] own faith and way of
life” in the Catholic Church which “proclaims, and is duty-bound to
proclaim, without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth and the life” (NA
2). Jesus Christ is “himself both the mediator and the fullness of all
Revelation” (DV 2; cf. CCC 65).
PCP II
puts it sharply: “We are followers of Christ, his disciples. We trace his
footsteps in our times, to utter his word to others. To love with his love. To
live with his life . . . To cease following him is to betray our very identity”
(PCP II 34). Filipino Catholics, therefore, recognize in Jesus Christ
the goal, the content, and the agent
of God’s Self-revelation.
A. Goal
77. As goal, Jesus is “the key, the
center and the purpose of the whole of man’s history” (GS 10), in whose
image we all are to be conformed (cf. Rom 8:29). For it is through the Risen Christ that we
shall share the Trinitarian divine life of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Therefore our present earthly life is a challenge to “put on the Lord Jesus
Christ,” as St. Paul
admonishes us (cf. Rm 13:14).
B. Content
78. But Christ is not only the goal of God’s
revelation, He is also its content, the Revealed One. In
himself, Jesus reveals both God and ourselves. “Christ, the new Adam, in the
very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of His love, fully reveals man
to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (GS 22). Our Faith
centers on Christ precisely because we believe we “are called to union with
him, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we
live, and towards whom our whole life is directed” (LG 3).
C. Agent
79. Finally, besides being the goal and content of Revelation, Christ is
also its agent, the mediator (cf. DV 2). “God is one. One
also is the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave
himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:5-6). Christ is revealer through
his part in creation, through his becoming man, through his hidden and public
life, and especially through his passion, death and resurrection. After his
resurrection, the Risen Christ continues his revelation by sending us his Holy
Spirit, the Spirit of truth (cf. DV 4).
80. But
how does the revealing Christ touch the Filipino Catholic today? Clearly, through
his Church, the people of God, united in his name. “The one mediator,
Christ, established and ever sustains here on earth his holy Church, the
community of faith, hope and charity, as a visible organization through which
he communicates truth and grace to all men” (LG 8). The Church herself
receives Christ’s revelation. She regards “the Scriptures, taken together with
sacred Tradition, as the supreme rule of her faith.” For they present “God’s
own Word in an unalterable form, and make the voice of the Holy Spirit sound
again and again in the words of the prophets and apostles” (DV 21).
III.
WHERE WE FIND GOD’S REVELATION
A. Scripture
and Tradition
81. The Sacred Scriptures, collected in the Bible, are the inspired record
of how God dealt with His people, and how they responded to, remembered, and
interpreted that experience. The Scriptures arose, then, as the expression of
the people’s experience of God, and as a response to their needs. Collectively,
the Scriptures form “The Book of the People of God” __ the
book of the Church. The Bible was written by persons from the people of
God, for the people of God, about the God-experience of the
people of God” (NCDP 131).
82. The Scriptures, then, are never to be separated from the people of God
whose life and history (Tradition) formed the context of their writing and
development. This is best shown in the three stages of how the
Gospels were formed.
First
stage, the life and teaching of Jesus — what Jesus,
while he lived among us, really did and taught for our eternal salvation, until
the day he was taken up. Second stage, oral tradition. After
Jesus’ Ascension, the apostles handed on to their hearers what Jesus had said
and done. Third stage, the written Gospels. “The sacred authors,
in writing the four Gospels, selected certain elements that had been handed on
orally or already in written form, others they synthesized or explained in view
of the situation of their churches, while preserving the form of proclamation.
But always in such a way that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus” (DV
19; cf. CCC 126).
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