GROUP 1

REVELATION

Revelation - Gods disclosure of Himself

- It is Gods personal loving communication to us who He is and His plan to save us all in His
love. It is God reaching out to us in friendship, so we get to know and love Him.

- “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).

- 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.

Our Response: We Believe

Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see.
(Heb 11:1)

Faith is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and through him, with the Father,
through the Holy Spirit, a decision to commit oneself to Christ, follow him, strive to know and accept the
truths he continues to teach through his Church. (Cf. PCP II 64-65)

For most people, faith simply means “believing in God.”Christian Faith is believing in the God revealed by
Jesus Christ.Catholic Christian Faith means believing that Christ reveals God to us in and through the
Catholic Church, the body of Christ, united in the Holy Spirit. “Believing” here means realizing that God is
calling us to share His divine life __ that is Hispagpapakilala to us. Faith is our personal response as “disciples
of Christ” of accepting him “as Lord and Savior.” “It is our ‘Please come in!’ to Christ who stands at the door and
knocks (Rv 3:20)” (PCP II 64). But how do we come to know the way to respond to Him? What is this
response we call “faith”?

We use “faith” today to mean different things. Sometimes it means our total response to God’s revelation.
“It is to know, to love, to follow Christ in the Church he founded” (PCP II 36). Or we can use “faith” to
mean the virtue (believing) as distinct from hoping and loving. Faith in this sense means our personal
knowledge of God in Christ, expressed in particular beliefs in specific truths by which we adhere to Christ.

Our response to revelation is FAITH. Many of the truths revealed by God to us are beyond the power of
our human comprehension. Yet because we believe that God, who is all good “cannot deceive nor be
deceived” we say “AMEN” even to things we do not fully understand.
REVELATION THROUGH CREATION
Creation is the first act of God’s revelation

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).

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.

REVELATION THROUGH HISTORY

The Bible records God’s entering into a special covenantrelationship 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).
Biblical Signs

69. God revealed Himself in stages. In the Old Testament, God revealed Himself through biblical
signs made up of both deedsand 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
theprophets’ 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.

REVELATION THROUGH PROPHETS

In religion, a prophet is an individual regarded as being in contact with a divine being and said to speak on
that entity's behalf, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from
the supernatural source to other people. The message that the prophet conveys is called a prophecy.
Historians enable us to remember significant events. The PROPHETS of God, both ancient and modern,
help us to see historical events with God’s own eyes.
While prophets may tell of future events, prediction of the future is just incidental to prophecy. The main
task of a prophet is to convey the message of God by interpreting the signs of the times.

Although God used many methods, the “prophet” was the most recognized form of divine communication.
The prophets were God’s official representatives before His people. The priest’s calling was hereditary;
the prophet was specifically called by God.
Prophets have been the most visible channel in God’s communication system. “Surely the Lord God does
nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). “The Lord God of their
fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had
compassion on His people” (2 Chron. 36:15).

God spoke to each of His prophets directly through visions and dreams. They saw them succinctly and with
clarity, and upon awaking, recorded precisely what they saw and heard.
God spoke with a love that desired to be heard and seen and known. These same loving words are branded
upon the written page today, waiting to speak to your own heart.
Read what Isaiah wrote when he woke up from a dream: "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted
up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each had six wings: with two he
covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:
'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory'" (Isaiah 6:1b-3 ESV). Upon
awakening, each remembrance was stark in clarity and the words were still ringing with vibrancy.

REVELATION THROUGH JESUS CHRIST

Jesus Christ, by becoming man like us, he revealed to us everything we need to know about God, using a
language that we can understand and relate to.

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).

REVELATION THROUGH THE CHURCH

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 signsof 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.
Deposit of Revelation
WHERE WE FIND GOD’S REVELATION

Scripture and Tradition

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).
This shows how the written Gospels grew out of oral tradition, and were composed in view of the concrete
“people of God” of the early Christian communities. Through His inspired Word in Scripture, God continues
to reveal Himself to us today.

83. Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together. . . flowing out from the same
divine well spring, moving towards the same goal and making up a single sacred deposit of the Word of
God (cf. DV 9, 10). Tradition can be taken either as the process by which divine revelation, coming from Jesus Christ
through the apostles, is communicated and unfolded in the community of the Church, or as the content of
the revelation so communicated. Thus the living Tradition of the Church, which includes the inspired word of God in
Sacred Scripture, is the channel through which God’s self-revelation comes to us.

84. As Sacred Scripture grew from Tradition, so it is interpretedby Tradition __ the life, worship, and
teaching of the Church. Tradition depends on Scripture as its normative record of Christian origins and
identity, while Scripture requires the living Tradition of the Church to bring its Scriptural message to the
fresh challenges and changing contexts confronting Christians in every age.