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Teaching

Collected together here are some of the reflections and teachings - good, true and beautiful - of our holy fathers on the events in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and the creeds of our faith.

Through the Liturgy of the Church we are invited to live the mysteries of our faith in our daily lives, through the seasons of the year celebrating the solemnities & feast days of:

The Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary of Our Lord - 25th March
The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth - 31st May
The Nativity of Jesus - Christmas day, 25th December, & Octave
The Holy Family - Sunday after Christmas
Mary, Mother of God, Theotokos - New Years Day, 1st January
The Epiphany - 6th January
The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple - 2nd February
The Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan - Sunday after the Epiphany
The Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor - 6th August
Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem & the Passion - Palm Sunday & annual World Youth Day
The Last Supper - Holy Thursday (beginning of the Easter Triduum)
The Crucifixion of Our Lord - Good Friday
Jesus in the tomb - Holy Saturday
The Resurrection of Jesus - Easter Sunday & Octave
Divine Mercy - 8th day, 2nd Sunday of Easter
The Good Shepherd - 4th Sunday of Easter
The Ascension of Jesus Christ - Thursday, 40 days after Easter Sunday
Pentecost - Sunday, 10 days after the Ascension
Mary, Mother of the Church - Monday after Pentecost
Jesus, the Eternal High Priest - Thursday after Pentecost
The Most Holy Trinity - Sunday after Pentecost
The Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus - Thursday after Trinity Sunday, Feast of Corpus Christi
The Sacred Heart of Jesus - Friday in the week following Corpus Christi
The Exaltation of the Cross - 14th September
Christ the King - last Sunday in the Liturgical Year
The Immaculate Conception of Mary - 8th December
The Birth Day of Mary - 8th September
The Assumption of Mary - 15th August
The Queenship of Mary - 22nd August
Chair of St Peter - 22nd February
Saints Peter and Paul - 29th June
All Saints - 1st November
All Souls - 2nd November

There are also the encyclicals, apostolic exhortations & apostolic letters of Pope Francis, Benedict XVI, St John Paul II, St Paul VI, St John XXIII, Pius XII, Pius XI, Benedict XV, St Pius X & Leo XIII, and the documents of Vatican II. The Totus2us recordings included are on the podcasts Papa's Words, Catechesis with St JPII, Catechesis with BXVI, Catechesis with Francis , 3 2us & Novenas.

There's catechesis by Saint John Paul II on:
Catechesis (from December 1984 - March 1985 - 7 catecheses)
God the Father (from January 1985 till August 1986 - 64 catecheses)
God the Son (from August 1986 till April 1989 - 97 catecheses)
God the Holy Spirit (from April 1989 till 1991 - 82 catecheses)
the Church
(from July 1991 till August 1995 - 137 catecheses)
Mary, Mother of God (from September 1995 till November 1997 - 70 catecheses)
Salvation History (from November 1997 till March 2001 - 119 catecheses)

There's catechesis by Benedict XVI on:
the Relationship between Christ and the Church (in 2006 - 7 catecheses)
the Creed (given during the Year of Faith & completed by Pope Francis).

There's also catechesis by Pope Francis on:
the Church (from June - November 2014)
the Holy Mass (November 2017 - April 2018)
the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation (April - June 2018)

Chronological list of St JPII's catechesis listed here.
Chronological list of BXVI's catechesis listed here.
Chronological list of Francis's catechesis listed here.

Pope St John Paul II's Catechesis on Evangelization
General Audience, Wednesday 21 February 1979 - also in French, Italian, Portuguese & Spanish

"1. Today, too, I wish to refer to the subject of the third Conference of the Latin-American Episcopate: to evangelization, it is a fundamental subject, a subject that is always topical. The Conference, which ended its work at Puebla on 13 February, bears witness to this. It is, moreover, the subject "of the future"; the subject that the Church must live continually and prolong in the future. The subject, therefore, constitutes the permanent perspective of the Church's mission.

To evangelize means making Christ present in the life of man as a person, and at the same time in the life of society. To evangelize means doing everything possible, according to our capacities, in order that man "may believe"; in order that man may find himself again in Christ, in order that he may find again in him the meaning and the adequate dimension of his own life. This finding again is, at the same time, the deepest source of man's liberation, St Paul expresses this when he writes: "For freedom Christ has set us free" (Gal 5:1). So, liberation, then, is certainly a reality of faith, one of the fundamental biblical themes, which are a deep part of Christ's salvific mission, of the work of Redemption, of his teaching. This subject has never ceased to constitute the content of the spiritual life of Christians. The Conference of the Latin-American Episcopate bears witness that this subject returns in a new historical context; therefore it must be taken up again in the teaching of the Church, in theology, and in the apostolate. It must be taken up again in its own depth, and in its evangelical authenticity. There are many circumstances that make it such a relevant subject today. It is difficult, here, to mention them all. Certainly it is recalled by that "universal desire for dignity" on the part of man, of which the Second Vatican Council speaks. The "theology of liberation" is often connected (sometimes too exclusively) with Latin America; but it must be admitted that one of the great contemporary theologians, Hans Urs von Balthassar, is right when he demands a theology of liberation on a universal scale. Only the contexts are different, but the reality itself of the freedom "for which Christ set us free" (cf. Gal 5:1) is universal. The task of theology is to find its real significance in the different concrete historical and contemporary contexts.

2. Christ himself links liberation particularly with knowledge of the truth: "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (Jn 8:32). This sentence testifies above all to the intimate significance of the freedom for which Christ liberates us. Liberation means man's inner transformation, which is a consequence of the knowledge of truth. The transformation is, therefore, a spiritual process, in which man matures "in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph 4:24). Man, inwardly mature in this way, become a representative and a spokesman of this "righteousness" in the various environments of social life. Truth is important not only for the growth of human knowledge, deepening man's interior life in this way; truth has also a prophetic significance and power. It constitutes the content of testimony and it calls for testimony. We find this prophetic power of truth in the teaching of Christ. As a Prophet, as a witness to truth, Christ repeatedly opposes non-truth; he does so with great forcefulness and decision and often he does not hesitate to condemn falsehood. Let us re-read the Gospel carefully; we will find in it a good many severe expressions, for example, "white-washed tombs" (Mt 23, 27), "blind guides" (Mt 23, 16), "hypocrites" (Mt 23, 13,15,23,25,27,29) which Christ utters, aware of the consequences that are in store for him.

So this service of truth, as participation in Christ's prophetic service, is a task of the Church, which tries to carry it out in the various historical contexts. It is necessary to call by their name injustice, the exploitation of man by man, or the exploitation of man by the Stale, institutions, mechanisms of systems and regimes which sometimes operate without sensitivity. It is necessary to call by name every social injustice, discrimination, violence inflicted on man against the body, against the spirit, against his conscience and against his convictions. Christ teaches us a special sensitivity for man, for the dignity of the human person, for human life, for the human spirit and body. It is this sensitivity which bears witness to knowledge of that "truth which makes us free" (Jn 3, 32). It is not permitted for man to conceal this truth from himself. It is not permitted to "falsify it". It is not permitted to make this truth the object of a "tender". It is necessary to speak of it clearly and simply. And not to "condemn" men, but to serve man's cause. Liberation also in the social sense begins with knowledge of the truth.

3. Let us stop at this point. It is difficult to express in a short speech everything involved in this great subject, which has many aspects and, above all, many levels. I stress: many levels, because it is necessary, in this subject, to see man according to the different elements of all the riches of his personal and at the same time social being; his "historical" and at the same time, in a certain way, "supertemporal" being. (History, among other things, bears witness to this "supertemporality" of man). The being that the "thinking reed" is (cf. B. Pascal, Pensées, 347) — everyone knows how frail a reed is — precisely because it is "thinking" always goes beyond itself; it bears within it the transcendental mystery and a "creative restlessness" which springs from the latter.

We will stop for the present at this point. The theology of liberation must, above all, be faithful to the whole truth about man, in order to show clearly, not only in the Latin-American context but also in all contemporary contexts, what reality is this freedom "for which Christ set its free".

Christ! It is necessary to speak of our liberation in Christ, it is necessary to proclaim this liberation. It must be integrated in the whole contemporary reality of human life. Many circumstances, many reasons, demand this. Just in these times, in which it is claimed that the condition of "man's liberation" is his liberation "from Christ", that is, from religion, just in these times the reality of our liberation in Christ must become, for us all, more and more evident and more and more full.

4. "For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth." (Jn 18, 37).

The Church, looking to Christ who bears witness to the truth, must always and everywhere ask herself, and in a certain sense also the contemporary "world", how to make good emerge from man, how to liberate the dynamism of the good that is in man, in order that it may be stronger than evil, than any moral, social evil, etc. The third Conference of the Latin-American Episcopate bears witness to the readiness to undertake this effort. We want not only to recommend this effort to God, but also to follow it for the good of the Church and of the whole human family."