Credo Flashcards
- What does the word Christian mean?
A Christian is a baptized person, thereby incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ and called to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ.
- What is a Catholic?
A person baptized into the one Church established by Jesus Christ, bound to believe and profess the entirety of His doctrine and remain in the unity of His Mystical Body, the Church — by receiving the sacraments He instituted and submitting to the legitimate pastors He commissioned.
- Why is the Christian name called a grace of God?
Grace is a supernatural gift of God given to intellectual creatures (men, angels) for their eternal salvation. The glory of the Christian name is therefore a grace, a divine gift made available to us through God’s own pure goodness and love for us.
- Does this gift bestow upon us a great dignity?
Yes. By the wondrous gift of sanctifying grace, we become adopted children of God the Father, brethren of the Eternal Son, and living temples of the Holy Spirit.
- What kinds of duties do Christians have?
We have duties to God, to ourselves, and to our neighbour.
- What are our duties to God?
We must follow the first and greatest of all commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37). We must strive to know, love, and serve Him in this life, so to be happy with Him forever in the next.
- What are our duties to ourselves?
We must “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 13:14), “the new man” (Eph 4:24), by ridding ourselves of sin, error, and disordered attachments to earthly things. We must conform ourselves to the new life of God’s grace in our souls, being thereby “imitators of God” (Eph 5:1), mindful that “he who loves iniquity hates his own soul” (Ps 10:6).
- What are our duties to our neighbour?
We must observe the second of all commandments: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Mt 22:39). We must act for our neighbour’s good, and above all for his eternal salvation. “Love one another, as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34*).
- What is the symbol of the true Christian?
The sign of the cross: a symbolic gesture reminding us of our dignity and duties in Christ. “What else is the sign of Christ but the Cross of Christ? For unless that sign be applied, whether it be to the foreheads of believers, or to the very water out of which they are regenerated, or to the oil with which they receive the anointing chrism, or to the sacrifice that nourishes them, none of them is properly administered.”
