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UNDERSTANDING THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
I am the Lord your God;
you shall not have other gods besides Me.
Þ Our
duty towards God is to believe in Him and to bear witness to Him. Humans
are required to nourish and protect their faith with prudence and
vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to faith.
Þ Hope
is the confident expression of divine blessing and the beatific vision of
God in eternity. Sins against hope are despair (a human ceasing to hope
for one’s personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for
the forgiveness of one’s sins. Despair is contrary to God’s goodness,
to His justice, and to His mercy) and presumption (relying only upon
one’s own capacities to save one’s self without help from on high or
one presumes God’s almighty power or mercy for the forgiveness of sins
with conversion and glory without merit).
Þ The
First Commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all
creatures for Him and because of Him.
Sins
against the First Commandment
Superstition--attributing an importance in some way magical
to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary;
Idolatry--honoring and revering a creature in place of
God, whether this be gods or demons, power, pleasure, race, ancestors,
money, etc.;
Divination & magic--consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm
reading, interpretation of omens, the phenomena of clairvoyance and
recourse to mediums, practices of magic or sorcery (ouija boards),
attempts to tame occult powers;
Tempting God--putting His almighty power to test by word or
deed;
Sacrilege--profaning or treating unworthily the
sacraments and other liturgical actions, as well as persons, things, or
places consecrated to God;
Simony--the buying or selling of spiritual things.
(continued
next week)
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