The Ten Commandments

First Commandment
Exodus 20: 2 -3 I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods besides me

- This commandment obliges us to render to God alone the honor and homage that is due Him
as sovereign lord and creator of all things, the all true, all-merciful, and all good creator of
everything that exists.
- In a sense, all other commandments are but consequences of this first one since it is by doing
his will in all things that we honor him.

FRUITS OF THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

1. Liberating Truth adoration of the one God frees us from slavery to and idolatry of the
world.
2. Reconciling Truth since God us a Father of us all, makes us one family despite the
endless struggles between nations and peoples, and our own ordinary conflicts and
misunderstandings, we realize God created the whole world for unity and order.

3 Theological Virtues: (they have God himself as their direct and immediate object)

1. Faith through faith, we adhere to God as the sovereign truth who cannot deceive nor be
deceived.
2. Hope through hope, we adhere to God as the all powerful and all merciful of the
strength we need to reach heaven.
3. Charity/Love through love, we adhere to God as infinitely good and lovable above all
things and for his own sake.

FAITH Is a supernatural or infused virtue which enables us to give our intellectual assent to all
the truth God has revealed not because of their intrinsic evidence but on account of the authority
of God revealing who can neither deceive nor be deceived.
- We humbly submit our minds to revelation even though we do not and cannot fully
understand the truths they contain since they surpass the limited capacity of our intelligence.
Our only reason for accepting them is because God is all knowing and truthful.

Duties of Faith:
1. We have the duty to study the Catholic faith well.
2. We are obliged to make frequent acts of faith.

Sins against Faith:
1. Apostasy a wholesale rejection of the catholic religion.
2. Heresy pertinacious refusal to accept one of the revealed truth proposed to us by the
church for belief.
3. Schism refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff over the entire
church.
4. Religious indifferentism or the belief that all religion are the same: mistaken notion =
conscience is the supreme arbiter of morality.

HOPE is the virtue whereby we look with certainty at the attainment of heaven because we are
confident of securing all the divine help we need to get there. ( We cannot do it on our own.
We need God to give us the necessary graces for us to sustain..)
- The virtue of hope, therefore, rests on the omnipotence, mercy and faithfulness of God.

SIN AGAINST HOPE:
- Despair in its extreme form means refusing the offer of heaven because one considers it
impossible to attain. The more common sin of despair comes in the form of discouragement
over ones repeated falls and the difficulty encountered in resisting temptations. This leads a
person to sloth or spiritual laziness, characterized by the lack of a determined effort to keep
up with our habitual prayers, acts of self-denial and other practices of virtue.

- PRESUMPTION consists in a misconstrued confidence in God thinking that He will save
us even though we exert no effort to correspond to His grace or that we can attain salvation
by relying on our own efforts alone. (e.g. exposing oneself to bad books, magazine,
pornography, masturbation etc.)

CHARITY/LOVE It is the most excellent among all virtues virtues which gives life to other
virtuesin theology it is called the form of other virtues. Because it is what unites us
intimately to God. It is the supernatural virtue infused by God in our souls in which we love God
above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor for the love of God.
- God is the primary object of the virtue of charity while, we ourselves and our neighbor are
called secondary objects.
- E.g. loving others even though we be love less by them. Refusing to a friends request
when they would ask us to do something that is not good.(not easily carried away by peer
pressure).. correcting others tactfully even at the risk of hurting his feelings.

SINS AGAINST CHARITY
1. Hatred for God
2. Spiritual laziness/ lukewarmness or sloth - a sloth person shuns the effort and self denial
that caring or ones spiritual life entails.
3. Disorderly love of creatures


RELIGION a moral virtue that inclines our will to give God due worship as Creator of all
things. Its immediate object is the worship that is given to God.


PROHIBITION

NO CARVED IMAGES

God reserves for Himself alone the right to express and produce images of Himself.
1. God created Adam in His own image (Gn. 1:26) this is shown first by giving him a
share in the divine dominion over creation.
2. By creating them male and female (Gn. 1:27) thus reflecting Gods own creative
community of the Father, Son and Spirit.
3. The image of the invisible God who is Christ (Col. 1:15)

But as embodied spirits, we experience and express the spiritual realities touching our lives
in a physical, material way, through signs and symbols. Thus did Christ act and teach
throughout his public ministry, using physical touch, bread and fish, wine and water, to
bring Gods grace palpably present among the people. Therefore, the Gospel itself grounds
the use of images in the service and worship of God.

An image can either bring the reality it represents to mind, to aid devotion and attention,
or it can become a substitute for the reality itself, and thus be an object of idolatry. Thus
the first commandment forcefully reminds us that God, the Creator, is infinitely beyond
any of His creatures; no image or mental concept can ever capture Him. Deus semper
major-God is always greater.

TEMPTATION:
From merely reminding us of God, the material image tends to gradually become a
god, an idol.

The First Commandment forbids any other god than the Lord that any created thing
should take the place of God and receive the worship due to Him alone.
a.) It thus rules out all forms of idolatry (refers to false pagan worship. It consists in
divinizing what is not God.) - which is the substitution of someone or something else for
God e.g. wealth, honor, success, power, sex, drugs, nation, and race.
b.) More serious; (superstition)- is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this
feeling imposes. forms of magic, sorcery, witchcraft, Satanism, astrology, fortune-telling,
and all ways of seeking to manipulate events for self-interest, or discover hidden
knowledge by means of alien to God.


VENERATION OF SAINTS, RELICS, AND SACRED IMAGES
Homage and reverence is rendered to God alone. It is called adoration or worship (Lt.
Latria). As for the saints, we render them simple veneration(dulia). As for the blessed virgin
Mary, we owe special veneration to her as the mother of God(hyperdulia)



SINS AGAINST RELIGION
1. Atheism denial of Gods existence, a grievous sin.
- Practical atheism modern type of idolatry i.e. puts wealth, power, career, sex, drugs, self
seeking interest over and above God.
2. Superstition/astrology and other forms of fortune telling they all involve attributing to
creatures the power of knowing or determining the future which is prerogative that only
God possesses.
3. Sacrilege or abuse and disrespectful treatment of something sacred.
4. Simony- or buying or selling of something sacred.