The first paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church says,

“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.”

If this is true—if God created us to know Him and live in Him—then there must be a concrete way that we can do this, otherwise life just doesn’t make sense.

Throughout history, God gradually revealed himself to man and this Revelation culminated in the coming of His only Son: the 2nd Person of the Trinity, God made flesh. Jesus Christ is the fullness of God’s revelation, and He shows how deeply personal God’s love for us is.

Christ chose to hand on the Revelation of Himself to the Church in three distinct, but interrelated ways.

Through: Sacred Tradition

• The teaching given to the Apostles by Christ and is that which is handed down from generation to generation through Apostolic Succession, traced back from pope to pope—bishop to bishop—all the way back to the time of Christ.
  • Helps us know with certainty what it means to live in the family of God
  • Handed on in two ways:
    • Through the oral teachings of the faith
    • In writing, by the Apostles and other men who were closely associated with the Apostles, who communicated the message of salvation in writing

Tradition is distinct from Sacred Scripture, but closely connected to it. Through Sacred Tradition, “The Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she is herself and all that she believes.”—Dei Verbum 8

Sacred Scripture

• Tells us about the way the family of God is to live
• Teaches us how to live life and how to live it well
• The speech of God, as put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church

• The teaching office of the Church (the Bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the pope and bishop of Rome)
  • Charged by Christ (under the power of the Holy Spirit) with the task of authentically interpreting the Word of God (whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition)
  • Teaches only what has been handed on to it, no more, no less
  • Tasked with the duty of listening devotedly to God, guarding His Revelation with dedication, and to expounding it faithfully.

As Christians, we are called to embrace the fullness of Divine Revelation, as revealed through the teachings of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and all that is handed on through the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

It is through these three means that Christ chose to preserve and safeguard the fullness of His Revelation of Himself to us. We cannot remove, forget, or ignore any one of these three things because to do so would mean diminishing the fullness of God’s Divine Revelation.

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