#1 Question Asked

Let’s start with the big picture. We are on earth (duh) and know there is a humongous universe way out there in outer space—something like a billion or more light years from end to end. (If you like to travel, you don’t have to worry about being bored in eternity.) We naturally wonder how we got here, why we are here, and if this is all there is for us—birth, life, and death.  Different groups of people have different answers for those questions. And lots of groups have God or god in their answers.

But during our lifetime, we have transitioned from a religious—or for many countries like the USA, a Judeo-Christian culture—to a secular one. Science is all the rage and there is a HUGE mistaken notion that God and science are not compatible. This is so wrong and causes so much misunderstanding that we’ll talk about it later in more detail. For now, let’s get back to the NUMBER ONE question young people are asking: Is there a God?

Christians, of course, respond with an emphatic yes! Christians believe that the entire universe was made by God. We believe that God is a Person—three, to be exact, in One God whom we call the Blessed Trinity (a mystery we’ll get into later.) God is a living Person, not some rock or statue that a human made, and not even a sun or planet that God Himself made. He’s the real alpha; the beginning.

Christians also believe God made us humans for a reason: He wants a loving relationship with us. (Yes, He wants us to follow commandments and love each other, but again, there is so much misunderstanding that we’ll have to address that in length at another time.)

Christians believe God reveals (shows) Himself to us so we will respond by getting closer to Him and loving Him. We believe God revealed Himself in a BIG way in His only son, Jesus Christ. And we believe we need to learn about Jesus through the bible (also called the Sacred Scriptures) because the bible—both the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) and the New Testament—is God’s Word. Humans wrote it, but they were divinely inspired by God to write what they did.

Now then, Protestant Christians (we’ll get into why there are different “kinds” of Christians later, too) believe that the bible is the only source of Divine Revelation. Sola scriptura in Latin. But Catholic Christians (what the Church started out as and continued to be for 1500 of its 2,000 years) believe the bible and Sacred Tradition go hand-in-hand. Let’s take a vocabulary break to find out why.

Bible: the written record of God and His relationship with His people

Sacred Tradition: the oral record of the teachings and practices of Jesus and his Apostles. As John says at the end of his Gospel, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.” (Jn 21:25)

Therefore, Catholics strongly believe that the creeds, worship, and the other practices of the Apostles—who lived, talked with, and learned from Jesus—are authentic and very important ways to know God. As the Catechism says, “Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 82)

I often think of Sacred Tradition when I read about the road to Emmaus (see Luke 24:13-35). After Jesus’ Resurrection, He was walking to the town of Emmaus with some of His followers—but they didn’t recognize Him in His resurrected state until “He sat down to eat with them, took the bread, and said the blessing; then he broke the bread and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Even though that event was written down, the point is they recognized Him from His action. Sacred Tradition is made up of those things the Apostles “absorbed” and then incorporated into the new Church.

Critics of Catholicism, and Catholics themselves, often said Catholics don’t read the bible. For centuries leading up to the 1950s, Catholics were cautioned not to interpret the bible, but many understood that to mean not to read it at all, which the Popes didn’t say. Even before Vatican II, Catholics heard the bible at daily and Sunday Mass (four readings.) We learned the bible as we studied the Catechism (a book of bible lessons at age-appropriate levels for different grades of school.) Since Vatican II, Catholic bible studies have proliferated in parishes, in small groups, and all over social media. Catholics definitely read the bible.

Fun fact, in case you need the word for a crossword puzzle someday: The office of the Church that takes care of the teaching of Scriptures and Tradition is called the Magisterium.

Next time: 1^st stop on the timeline of world (universe!) history