Lumen Fidei - page 62

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God and can thus kindle in others the desire to
draw near to him.
Similarly important is the link between faith
and the Decalogue. Faith, as we have said, takes
the form of a journey, a path to be followed, which
begins with an encounter with the living God. It
is in the light of faith, of complete entrustment to
the God who saves, that the Ten Commandments
take on their deepest truth, as seen in the words
which introduce them: “I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (
Ex
20:2). The Decalogue is not a set of negative com-
mands, but concrete directions for emerging from
the desert of the selfish and self-enclosed ego in
order to enter into dialogue with God, to be em-
braced by his mercy and then to bring that mercy
to others. Faith thus professes the love of God,
origin and upholder of all things, and lets itself be
guided by this love in order to journey towards the
fullness of communion with God. The Decalogue
appears as the path of gratitude, the response of
love, made possible because in faith we are recep-
tive to the experience of God’s transforming love
for us. And this path receives new light from Jesus’
teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (cf.
Mt
5-7).
These, then, are the four elements which
comprise the storehouse of memory which the
Church hands down: the profession of faith, the
celebration of the sacraments, the path of the ten
commandments, and prayer. The Church’s cat-
echesis has traditionally been structured around
these four elements; this includes the
Catechism of
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