1. JESUS CHRIST: GOD’S REVELATION TO THE WORLD
MICHAEL PENNOCK
AVE MARIA PRESS, 2010

2. CHAPTER 1: SEARCHING FOR GOD
TRUE HAPPINESS
“Money can buy happiness.”
“Happiness is a choice.”
“If you love what you are doing, you will be happy.”
“Happy the people so blessed. . . Happy the people whose God is the Lord.” (Psalm 144: 15)
What is your definition of happiness?

3. GOD: THE SOURCE OF TRUE HAPPINESS
We all want to be happy because we were made
to be happy only if we understand, accept, and live God’s plan for us.
“True happiness is found . . .In God alone, the source of every good and of all love” (CCC1723)
God wants to share His love.

4. THE RESTLESS HUMAN HEART
Nothing in this life can make us fully content or perfectly happy.
Why is this?
God gave us a hunger for happiness – an unquenchable hunger and a deep yearning for completeness.
Only God can fulfill this hunger because He placed it in us.
“Our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
(St. Augustine – Confessions)

5. QUESTIONING MINDS Do you ever wonder what is beyond the stars?
Do you ever question the meaning
of life?
Do you ever think about where your
life is going?
Do you ever wonder what will happen
to you after you die?
Humans have searched for answers to these questions from the beginning.
Being made in God’s image endows us with the abilities to choose and think.

6. WE ARE RELIGIOUS BY NATURE
In spite of the prevalence of irreligion and secularism,
most people still belong to an organized religion.
We have always searched
for God and given expression
To this quest.
God speaks to us through
our reason, through prayer,
through our hearts –
He calls us first.

7. Religion: “reconnecting to God”; a body of beliefs and a set of practices which expresses itself as worship and service to all people and creation
Throughout history, humans have discovered that they are not whole or complete persons unless they are connected to God.
Prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations (Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, Native American tribes)

8. Irreligion: a vice that
Monotheistic: belief in one God (Christianity, Islam, Judaism)
Polytheistic: belief in many gods and goddesses
Atheist: a person who denies the existence of God
Secular Humanism: person as the center of the universe
Agnostic: a person who believes that God’s existence cannot be known
Irreligion: a vice that
directs us away from
God and what we owe
to God in justice
Secularism: an
indifference to
religion; desire to
exclude religion from
civic affairs and
education

9. KNOWING GOD THROUGH NATURAL REVELATION
Something does not come out of nothing!
There must be a Creator behind everything that exists
Johannes Kepler ( ): German astronomer who discovered elliptical orbits

10. CONTEMPLATING CREATION

11. Because we are created in God’s image, we are endowed with intelligence.
Look at the world around us!
Where did all these beautiful things come from if not from the One who created them?
The Church teaches that human intelligence can discover God.

12. “CONVERGING AND CONVINCING ARGUMENTS” OF GOD’S EXISTENCE –
FIVE PROOFS FOR GOD’S EXISTENCE
(ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS)
Unmoved Mover (First Mover): World in motion; Had to be a “First Mover” who started everything
First Cause: Nothing causes itself.
Big Bang Theory: small amount of matter and energy created by God
Everything Comes From Something (“Cosmological Argument”): “Nothing” cannot create “something.”
Supreme Model: Compare qualities of goodness, beauty, truth, justice to a reference point (God)
Grand Designer: world with beauty, symmetry, order

13. CONTEMPLATING THE HUMAN PERSON
Our lives have meaning!
Joy in the presence of beauty and truth: hints of what God’s beauty and truth are like
Conscience: tells us to do good and avoid evil (subjective)
Free will enables us to love
Intelligence enables us to think
Our limited human reason and
perception: “original sin”
(fallen state of human nature)

14. KNOWING GOD THROUGH DIVINE REVELATION
God is all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing.
Human language and human reason cannot fully describe God or really know what God is like.
God is truly a mystery!
That is why God not leave us to our own limited knowledge – He gives us Divine Revelation.

15. WHAT IS DIVINE REVELATION?
God’s free gift of self-communication by which He makes known His divine plan
God tells us who He really is through the events of Salvation History
God invites us to live in covenant with Him
A binding and solemn agreement
A whole-hearted commitment of unconditional love
The greatest sign of God’s love was the sending of His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Savior from sin to death.

16. SALVATION HISTORY
Gradual revelation of God to humans as a preparation for the fullest Revelation (the sending of Jesus Christ)
Story of God’s saving activity for humankind in the OT and NT (events and people)
God intended from the very beginning to invite humans to live in intimate union with Him
God remains faithful to us despite our sinfulness

17. Creation begins Salvation History (Genesis)
A series of covenants (open-ended contracts of love in which God commits Himself totally to human beings)
Covenant with Noah (flood)
Covenant with Abraham (circumcision)
Covenant with Moses, the Sinai Covenant
(YHWH, Adonai)
Kings and Prophets (promise of land in Canaan)
David as King; Jerusalem as capital city
Solomon built the Temple
Northern and Southern Kingdoms
Prophets (“one who speaks before others”)
warned against abuses

18. Wisdom Literature (proverbs, riddles, stories, questions)
Psalms express every single emotion
Jesus Christ, the New Covenant (the climax of Salvation History; God’s total Word; God’s fullest Revelation)

19. HANDING DOWN DIVINE REVELATION
Deposit of Faith: heritage of faith handed down in the Church from the time of the Apostles to the Magisterium (official teaching authority – bishops and Pope); inspired by the Holy Spirit
Sacred Tradition
Tradition means “handing down”
The Apostles preached the Gospel to all nations.
They chose men to succeed them – bishops headed by the Bishop of Rome (Pope).

20. Sacred Scripture Bible means “books”
Jesus gave the Apostles the authority to interpret the divinely inspired Scriptures
Old Testament: History of the Chosen People (46 books)
New Testament: Story of Jesus Christ and the early Christian communities (27 books); 4 Gospels as most important part of the Bible
Magisterium teaches with Christ’s authority
Dogma: a central truth of Revelation that Catholics must believe

21. FAITH: OUR RESPONSE TO DIVINE REVELATION
A gift from God; our response to God which comes to us through the Church; our personal knowledge of God
Makes it possible for us to
accept Jesus Christ as
Our Lord
FAITH: a theological virtue
(firm attitude)
with hope (trust in God’s
Salvation), and charity (love of
God and neighbor as one loves
oneself
Requires free acceptance
Necessary for our
salvation
Enables us to partake of
the life of the Holy Spirit

22. ST. PETER Impetuous Brave Headstrong Compassionate Heroic Born Leader
Humble fisherman
Brother of Andrew
Nicknamed “ the Rock”
Acts of the Apostles
Martyred in Rome under Nero (AD 64)
Crucified upside down