Hi, my name's 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 it 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 Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journeyed together toward our heavenly home. This is Day 84. We're reading paragraphs 587 to 594. As always, 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. Also, if you want to download your own catechism in your reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates, daily notifications. As I said, I think it's day 84. We're reading about, oh, man, this is incredible. Yesterday, Jesus in the temple, the day before, Jesus and the law,

he fulfills both of them. Today, the big title, right, is Jesus and Israel's faith in the one

God and Savior. This recognition, here are the people of Israel. They have been formed over

centuries. They've come to know the one true God.

They've come to be able to hear his voice, right, spoken through the prophets, spoken through

the words and books of sacred scripture, of the Old Testament. And Jesus then comes on the scene

and he invites faith in himself in the same way and to the same degree that the Lord God

had invited faith and belief in himself in the old covenant. And so there is this scandalization

that happens, right? There's a scandal that happens. In fact, it says paragraph 587, if the law and the Jerusalem temple could be occasions of opposition to Jesus, his role in the redemption of sins, the divine work par excellence, was the true stumbling block for them. Jesus is teaching on the law, like I say to you, you know, you heard it was said, but I say to you, that's a stumbling block. Here's Jesus saying, you know, destroy the temple in three days. I'll rebuild it, raise it up again.

That's a stumbling block.

But Jesus claim to be the agent of redemption, the agent of salvation of the world.

Jesus has claimed to be able to forgive sins was the stumbling block, the primary, true stumbling block for them. But this is what Jesus claims, right? You know, there is a, I was going to ancient teaching that goes all the way back to the middle of the last century, which is not very ancient. But C.S. Lewis highlights this. He says, essentially, you know, some people will come along and they'll say, well, you know, I don't believe in Jesus, but I believe he was a good man. I don't believe in Jesus,

but I believe he was a holy man or a prophet. Lewis points out, he says, this is the one thing

you can't say about Jesus because he didn't just claim to be a prophet. He did not just claim

to be a holy person. He claimed to be God. And if he wasn't God, he was either lying

because he knew he wasn't God and he tried to convince people, or he was disconnected from reality,

right? He was crazy because he wasn't God and didn't know he wasn't God. The only third option is

that he was God and he knew he was God.

He actually truly is who he says he is. And that's what we're left with. This big decision, we've

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