Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down

through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by

Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journeyed together toward our heavenly home. This is Day 1. You guys, welcome. This has a few reminders before we get started. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It's going to be, you know, word for word. We're good there. You can download your own catechism into your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily notifications. That seems like something that, I don't know, it's worth saying. So I'll say it today. So today we'll be reading on day one. Gosh, you guys, here we go. There is this thing called the prologue at the very beginning of the catechism. It's 25 paragraphs long. Paragraphs aren't like massively long,

but they're just, you know, kind of bullet points. Well, you'll get the gist if you don't have the catechism in front of you. Essentially, the prologue is 25 paragraphs long. And it basically, it's kind of like syllabus day. I feel like today is like syllabus day, today and tomorrow. So today we're reading paragraphs 1 through 10 and then tomorrow we'll read the remaining paragraphs.

But it kind of like gives a lay of the land. But it's not just syllabus day. Syllabus day is, okay, here's what you'll be reading and here's how this is all going to be very boring. My goodness, you guys, the prologue is among the most beautiful stuff written. I am blown away by this because what we're going to talk about today is we're

going to talk about, okay, what is God's plan for human beings?

I mean, that's where they start.

The whole, the very first paragraph in the entire catechism begins by saying like,

here is the massive revelation of God to humanity.

And it's just so good.

The first three paragraphs are just, here's the story of salvation.

Here is who God is, here is who you are, and here is God's plan for us.

And then it goes on to say, okay, so since we know that in those first three paragraphs, what do we do

with it? And that we call that catechesis. So we're talking about catechesis, which is handing on

the faith or teaching the faith. And so we'll be talking about that. Catechesis is an education

and faith of children, young people, old people, talk all about that. And then basically,

in the last couple paragraphs of today in the prologue,

the church then says, okay, so because of all this and based off of people who are really,

really smart and really holy for the last 2,000 years, what we said about doing is we said about

writing a new catechism. And that's where we are right now. So that's what we're going to hear

about today. So let's say a prayer and just dive in to today oh my gosh father in

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