Catechism Part 1, Section One, Chapter 3: "Man's Response to God" (142-184)

The Catholic Church begins this section by defining faith as "man's response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life." (26) An adequate response to God's revelation is faith, by the submission of one's intellect and will to God.

Article 1: I Believe (144-165)
I: The Obedience of Faith (144-149)
To obey is to hear or listen to in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God who is Truth itself. The Old Testament is rich in witnesses to this faith that Abraham is the father of all who believe. Mary most perfectly embodies the obedience of faith, as her faith never wavered even when her Son died on the cross.
Through the examples of Abraham and Mary, the Church shows that belief requires obedience and submission to God.
II: "I Know Whom I Have Believed (150-152)
Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. Christian faith differs from our faith in humankind. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be false and futile to place such faith in a fellow creature. For Christians believing in God cannot be separated from believing in the One he sent, his Son Jesus Christ. One cannot believe in Jesus Christ without sharing in his Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals to men who Jesus is. No one knows the thoughts of God except the Holy Spirit, therefore he is God through the Trinity.
III: The Characteristics of Faith (153-165)
Faith is both a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him, and a human act.  Before this faith can be exercised, man must have interior help from the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth. The human act, believing, is possible only by grace and the interior help from the Holy Spirit. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths he has revealed are contrary to neither human freedom or reason. In faith, the human intellect and will cooperate with divine grace.What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason; we believe because of the authority of God himself, who reveals himself, who can neither be deceive nor be deceived. Faith is certain as it is founded on the Word of God.  Faith seeks understanding. It is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love. Though faith is above reason there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Man's response to God must be free and therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will.  Believing in Jesus and in One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made a shipwreck of their faith. To live, grow and persevere in faith until the end, we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; it must work through charity, abound in hope, and be rooted in the faith of the Church.  Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. So faith is already the beginning of eternal life.  Faith can be put to the test by our world that we live in. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice, and death seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it. It is then we must turn to the witnesses of faith, Abraham and Mary, and learn from their lives obedience and trust in God.

Article 2: We Believe (166-175)
While faith is a personal act, it is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone as no one can live alone. You have not given yourself faith as you have not given yourself life. The believer has received faith from others and should hand it on to others. Our love for Jesus and for our neighbour impels us to speak to others about our faith. Each believer is thus a link in the great chain of believers. I cannot believe without being carried by the faith of others, and by my faith I help support others in the faith.  As the Apostles' Creed begins with "I believe", the faith of the Church is professed personally by each believer, especially during Baptism. As the Nicene Creed  begins with "We believe," it is the faith of the Church confessed by the bishops assembled in council or more generally by the liturgical assembly of believers. Both " I believe" and "We believe" are the Church's responsibility to teach to the believer.


I: "Lord, Look Upon the Faith of Your Church" (168-169)
The Church is what bears, sustains, and nourishes the  individual's faith. It is through the Church that we receive faith and new life in Christ by Baptism. Salvation comes from God alone, but because we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our Mother. Because she is our Mother, she is also our teacher in faith.


II: The Language of Faith (170-171)
The Church does not believe in formulae of the faith, but the realities they express in communal celebration. The Church guards the memory of Christ's words it; is she, from generation to generation, that hands on the apostles' confession of faith. As a mother she teachers us the language of faith in order to introduce us to the understanding and the life of faith.

III: Only One Faith (172-175)
Through the centuries, in many languages, cultures, peoples and nations, the Church has constantly confessed this one faith, received from the one Lord, transmitted by one Baptism, and grounded in the conviction that all people have only one God and Father. The Church's message is true and solid in which one and the same way of salvation appears throughout the whole world.

Catechism Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraph 1: I Believe in God (199-231)

This first affirmation, belief in God, is the most fundamental. The whole Creed speaks of God, and when it also speaks of man it does so in relation to God. All the other articles of the Creed depend on the first. Through the prophets God calls Israel and all nations to turn to him, the one and only God.
First of all, the Church asserts that there is only one God, but belief in Jesus and the Holy Spirit does not contradict this, for they are of the same essence.
Second, God made Himself known by revealing His divine name, "I AM WHO I AM," which is a mystery. By revealing his name, God also reveals his faithfulness. Man discovers his own insignificance in God's presence, but God can forgive those who realize they are a sinner. God is merciful, gracious, and faithful. God is unique, and there are no gods like Him. He transcends the world and history. He made heaven and earth. Through His name we learn that He IS who he is and does not change from everlasting to everlasting .
God is Truth itself, and can be trusted. His truth is wisdom, and His teaching is true instruction. God is also Love, and revealed Himself out of His love. His love is everlasting, and is like a father to his son. In addition, God's very being is love.
 The implications of faith in one God means coming to know God's greatness and Majesty by serving God first. Another implication of faith is living in thanksgiving because we have received all from him. A third implication means knowing the Unity and true dignity of all men. Fourthly it means making good use of created things faith in God, the only One, leads us to use everything that is not God only insofar as it brings us closer to him and to detach from it insofar as it brings us closer to him, and to detach ourselves from it insofar as it turns away from him. Fifthly it means trust in God in every circumstance, even in adversity.

Catechism Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraphs 2-3: God the Father Almighty (232-278)

Paragraph 2: The Father (232-267)
Christians are baptized "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ."Before receiving the sacrement they respond to a three part question when asked to confess the Father, the Son, and the Spirit " I do" The faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity. Christians are baptised in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit not in their names, for there is only One God , the almighty Father, his only Son, and the Holy Spirit the Most Holy Trinity. The mystry of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystry of Christian faith and life. It is the mystry of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightnens them.It is th emost fundemental and essencial teaching in the "hiearchy of the truths of faith" The whole history of salvationn is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God , Father, Son, and Holy Spirit , reveals himself to men and reconciles and unites withhimself those who turn away from sin. The fathers of the church distinguish theology as refering to the mystery of God most inmost  life within the Blessed Trinity. The economy of the Trinity is defined as all the works by which God reveals himslf and communicates his life. The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God. To be sure God , has left traces of his Trinitarian  begin in his work of creationand in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his imost Being as holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccebtable to reason alone or even or even to Isreal's faith before the incarnation of God's Son  and the sending of the Holy Spirirt. Many religions invoke God as a Father. The deity is often considered the father of goads and of men. In Israel God is called Father inasmuch as he is the creator of the Earth. God is Father because of his covenant and gift of the law to Israel his first born son. God is also called Father of the king of the orphaned and the widowed , who are under his loving protection. By calling God  Father the language of faith indicates two things: that God is the first origin of everlasting and transcendent authority ; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God's paternal tenderness can also be expressed by the image of Motherhood, which emphasizes God's immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. Human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. No one is Father as God is Father. Jesus revealed the God is Father in an unheard of sense: he is not only in being Creator;he is eternally Father by his relationship through his only Son Jesus Christ. The apostles confess Jesus to be the Word of God made flesh. Following the apostolic tradition, the Church confessed at the first ecumenical council at Nicaea that the Son is one only God with him. The second ecumenical council held at Constantinople in 381 kept this expression in its formation of the Nicene Creed and confessed "the only -begotten Son, of God, eternally begotten of the Father, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father. " The Holy Spirit is revealed as another divine person with Jesus and the Father. The eternal origin of the Holy Spirit is revealed in his mission in time. The Spirit is sent to the apostles and to the Church both by the Father in the name of the Son, and by the Son in person, once he had returned to the Father. The sending of the person of the Spirit after Jesus glorification reveals in its fulness the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The apostolic faith concerning the Spirit was confessed by the second ecumenical council at Constantinople 381 " We believe in the Holy Spirit , the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father" The Church recognizes the Father as the source of origin of the whole divinity. The Holy Spirit , the third person of the Trinity, is God, one and equal with the Father and the Son, of the same substance and also the same nature. The creed of the Church from the council of Constantinople confesses:"With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified". The Latin tradition of the Creed confesses that the Spirit " proceeds from the Father , and the Son (filioque). The Council of Florence in 1438 explains: "The Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son;He has his nature and substance at once(simul) from the Father and the Son. ...Since the Father  has through generation given to the only begotten  Son everything that belongs to the Father, except from being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. The affirmation of the filiouge is not in the Constantinople Creed of 381 however it is confessed by Pope Leo I following the ancient Latin and Alexandrian tradition in 447 , even before Rome, in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon it was confessed. From the beginning , the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church 's living faith , principally by means of Baptism. During the first centuries the Church sought to clarify its Trinitarian faith, both to deepen its own understanding of the faith and to defend it against the errors that were deforming it. This clarification was the work of the early councils, aided by the theological work of the Church Fathers and sustained by the Christian people's sense of faith. The Church uses the term " substance" to also known as the "essence" or "nature"  to designate the divine being in its unity the term "person" or " hypostsatsis" to designate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the real distinction among them and the term "relation" is used to designate the fact that their distinction lies in the relationship of each to the others. The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons , the consubstantial Trinity. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire. The divine persona are really distinct from one another. They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: " It is the Father who generates , the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds" . The divine unity is Triune. The divine persons are relative to one another. God is eternal blessed, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity.

Paragraph 3: The Almighty (268-278)
Of all the divine attributes, only God's omnipotence is named in the Creed: to confess this power has great bearing in our lives. We believe that his might is universal, for God who created everything also rules everything and can do everything. God's power is loving for he is our Father, and mysterious, for only faith can discern it when it " is made perfect in weakness" . The Holy Scriptures repeatedly confess the universal power of God. He is called the Mighty One of Jacob , the Lord of hosts, the strong and mighty one. If God is almighty in heaven and on earth it is because he made them. Nothing is impossible with God, who disposes his works according to his will. He is the Lord of the universe, whose order he established and which remains wholly subject to him and at his disposal. He is master of history, governing hearts and events in keeping with his will.God is the Father Almighty whose fatherhood and power shed light on one another: God reveals his fatherly omnipotence by the way he takes care of our needs; by the filial adoption that he gives us. finally by his infinite mercy, for he displays his power at its height by freely forgiving sins. God's almighty power is in God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God;s power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect. In the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil. Christ's crucifixion is thus the power of God and the wisdom of God. Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God's almighty power. The Virgin Mary is the supreme model of believing the mysterious ways of God's almighty power. Nothing is more apt to confirm our faith and hope that holding it fixed in our minds that nothing is impossible with God. Once our reason has grasped the idea of God;s almighty power, it will easily and without any hesitation admit everything that[the Creed] will afterwards propose for us to believe ---- even if they be great and marvellous things, far above the ordinary laws of nature.

Catechism Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraphs 4-5: Creator of Heaven and Earth (279-354)

Paragraph 4: Creator (279-324)
Scripture begins by saying that God created the Heavens and the Earth .The readings of the Easter Vigil, the celebration of the new creation in Christ, begin with the creation account. Creation was the beginning of the history of salvation, and the first step in God's covenant with His people. God alone is the Creator, and created the everything out of nothing with no aid. The existence of God the Creator can be known with  through his works , and  by the light of human reason. This is why faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understandings of this truth. The truth about creation is so important that God in his tender mercies wanted to reveal to his People everything that is salutary to know on the subject. God progressively revealed to Israel the mystery of creation.Creation is revealed as the first step towards this covenant , the first and universal witness to Gods all-powerfull love. The New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal Word , his beloved Son. The Church's faith also confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit the giver of life the Creator Spirit the source of every good. The Old Testament suggest and the New Covent reveals the creative action of the Son and the Spirit, inseparably one with the Father. This is confirmed by the Church's rule of Faith: There exists but one God... he is Father, God the creator, the author, the giver of order. He made all things by himself, that is , by his aWord and his Wisdom, by the Son and the Spirit who , so to speak, are his hands . Creation is the common work of the Holy Trinity. Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: The world was made for the glory of God.St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it, for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness. The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. For the glory of God is man fully alive;moreover man's life is the vision of God:if God's revelation through creation has already obtained life for all beings who dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God. The ultimate purpose of creation is that God who is the creator of all things may at last become all in all,thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude. We believe that God created the world in according to his wisdom. It is not a product of any necessity whatever, nor blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from Gods free will he wanted to make his creatures to share his being,wisdom, and goodness.
He created out of nothing freely with no aid. Since God could create everything out of nothing , he can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection.Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered.Because creation comes from God's goodness it shares in Gods goodness.
Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection,but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the creator. The universe was created in a state of journeying toward an ultimate perfection yet to be obtained to which God has destined it. We call divine providence the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection. By his providence God protects and governs, all things which he has made , "reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well". For "all are open and laid bare to his eyes" even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures. The witness of Scripture is unanimous that divine providence is concrete and immediate ; God cares for all . from the least things to the great events of the world and its history. The sacred books powerfully affirm God's absolute sovereignty over the course of events. And so we see the Holy Spirit , the principal author of the Sacred Scripture, often attributes actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children's smallest needs. God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures cooperation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of almighty God's greatness and goodness. For God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of actioning on their own, of being causes and principals for each other, and thus of cooperating in the accomplishments of his plan. The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world , cares for al his creatures, why does evil exists? To this question there is  no quick answer. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to these question:  the goodness of creation, the drama of sin, and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit , his gathering of the Church , the power of the sacraments , and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which , by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance . There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil. But why did God create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying toward its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of  certain beings and the disappearance of others. the existence of the more perfect stuctive gorces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached pefection.  Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures have to journey towards their ultimate destines by their free choice  and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed they have sinned. Thus has mortal evil  incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is no way indirectly  or directly the cause of mortal evil. He permits it, however because he respects the freedom of his creatures, and mysteriously , knows how to derive good from it: For almighty  God because he is supremely good would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself. In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring good from the consequences of an evil, even a mortal evil, caused by his creatures.St Catherine of Siena said to those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind. St Thomas More , shortly before his martyrdom consoled his daughter:" Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best" Dame Julian of Norwich: " Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith... and that at the same time I should take my stand on  and earnestly believe in  what our Lord shewed in this time-----that all manner [of] thing shall be well. We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases,when we see God, will we fully know the ways by which even through the dramas of evil and sin God has guided  his creation to that definitive sabbath rest for which he created heaven and earth.

Paragraph 5: Heaven and Earth (325-354)
The Apostles Creed professes that God is Creator of heaven and earth. The Nicene Creed makes it explicit that this profession includes all that is seen and unseen. The Scriptural expression heaven and earth means all that exists, creation in its entirety. It also indicates the bond, deep within creation, that both unites heaven and earth and distinguishes the one from the other; the earth is the world of men, while heaven or the heavens can designate both the firmament and God's own place  our Father in heaven and consequently the heaven to which is eschatological glory. Finally, heaven refers to the saints and the place of spiritual creatures, the angels who surround God. The The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council affirms that God from the beginning of time made at once  out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is the angelic and the earthly and then the human creature who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body. St. Augustine says" Angel is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature it is spirit; if you  seek the name of their office it is angel from what they are spirit from what they do angel." With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures as the splendour of their glory bears witness.Christ is the center of the angelic world. They are his angels. They belong to him because they were created through him and for him.They belong to him still more because he has made them messengers of his saving plan.  Angels have been present since creation and throughout history of salvation, announcing this salvation from afar or near and serving the accomplishment of the divine plan: they closed paradise;protected Lot; saved Hagar and her child; stayed Abraham's hand; communicated the law by their ministry; led the People of God; announced births and callings; and assisted the prophets, just to cite a few examples.From the birth of Christ to his accession Jesus was surrounded by the adoration and service of angels. In her liturgy the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God. She invokes her assistance in the Roman Canons Almighty God we pray that you angel...; in the funeral liturgy. More over in the  Cherubic Hymn of the Byzantine Liturgy, she celebrates the memory of certain angels more particular ( st. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels). From infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. Besides each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.
God himself created the visible world in all  richness, diversity, and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine work, concluded by the rest on the seventh day. On the subject of creation the the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to recognize the inner nature, the value, and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God. Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection. Each of the variations creatures, willed in its being reflects in its own way a ray of God's infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.God wills the interdependence of creatures. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tell us that no creature is self sufficient. Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other. The beauty of the universe: The order and harmony of the created world results from the diversity of beings and from relationships which exist among them. Man discovers them progressively as the laws of nature. The beauty if creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man's intellect and will. The hierarchy of creatures is expressed by the order of six days from the less perfect to the more perfect.Man is the summit of the Creators work as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures. There is a solidarity among all creatures arising from the fact that all have the same Creator and all are ordered to his glory. The sabbath  the end of the work of the six days.In creation God laid a foundation and established laws that remain firm on which the believer can rely with confidence, for they are the sign and pledge of the unshakable faithfulness of God's covenant. For his part man must remain faithful yo this foundation and respect the laws which the Creator has written into it.Creation was fashioned with a view to the sabbath and therefore for the worship and adoration of God. Worship is inscribed in the order of creation. The sabbath is at the heart of Israel's law. To keep the commandments is to correspond to the wisdom and the will of God as expressed in his work of creation. The eighth day. But for us a new day dawned: the day of Christ's Resurrection. The seventh day completes the first day of creation. The eighth day begins the new creation. Thus, the work of creation culminates in the greater work of redemption. The first creation finds meaning and its summit in the new creation Christ, the splendour of which surpasses that of the first creation.