The Catechism of the Catholic Church is so awesome.

So every time I help prepare teens for Confirmation I rekindle my friendship with a great book called the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I'm currently doing some prep for a talk on Theology of the Body this weekend. Here are the latest gems....

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I. "In the image of God"
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Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his creator." He is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake," and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundatmental reason for his dignity:
What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her, for my love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good. (St. Catherine of Siena)

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Rarely can you read something where every phrase is important. The catechism is so packed with knowledge! I don't know, I just love it. Gives me goosebumps.

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Each for the other "--A unity in two"

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God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him." None of the animals can be man's partner. The woman God "fashions" from the man's rib and brings to him elicits on the man's part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Man discovers woman as another "I," sharing the same humanity.

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Man and woman were made "for each other" - not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be "helpmate" to the other, for they are equal as persons ("bone of my bones...") and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that by forming "one flesh," they can transmit human life: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator's work.

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The Catholic Church is so beautiful. What an amazing vessel of grace Christ has left us.