CCC 105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”¹
“For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”²

CCC 442 Such is not the case for Simon Peter when he confesses Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God”, for Jesus responds solemnly: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”³ Similarly Paul will write, regarding his conversion on the road to Damascus, “When he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. ..”⁴ “And in the synagogues immediately [Paul] proclaimed Jesus, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’”⁵ From the beginning this acknowledgment of Christ’s divine sonship will be the center of the apostolic faith, first professed by Peter as the Church’s foundation.⁶

CCC 448 Very often in the Gospels people address Jesus as “Lord”. This title testifies to the respect and trust of those who approach him for help and healing.⁷ At the prompting of the Holy Spirit, “Lord” expresses the recognition of the divine mystery of Jesus.⁸ In the encounter with the risen Jesus, this title becomes adoration: “My Lord and my God!” It thus takes on a connotation of love and affection that remains proper to the Christian tradition: “It is the Lord!”⁹

CCC 514 Many things about Jesus of interest to human curiosity do not figure in the Gospels. Almost nothing is said about his hidden life at Nazareth, and even a great part of his public life is not recounted.¹⁰ What is written in the Gospels was set down there “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”¹¹

CCC 575 Many of Jesus’ deeds and words constituted a “sign of contradiction”,¹² but more so for the religious authorities in Jerusalem, whom the Gospel according to John often calls simply “the Jews”,¹³ than for the ordinary People of God.¹⁴ To be sure, Christ’s relations with the Pharisees were not exclusively polemical. Some Pharisees warn him of the danger he was courting;¹⁵ Jesus praises some of them, like the scribe of Mark 12:34, and dines several times at their homes.¹⁶ Jesus endorses some of the teachings imparted by this religious elite of God’s people: the resurrection of the dead,¹⁷ certain forms of piety (almsgiving, fasting and prayer),¹⁸ the custom of addressing God as Father, and the centrality of the commandment to love God and neighbor.¹⁹

CCC 643 Given all these testimonies, Christ’s Resurrection cannot be interpreted as something outside the physical order, and it is impossible not to acknowledge it as an historical fact. It is clear from the facts that the disciples’ faith was drastically put to the test by their master’s Passion and death on the cross, which he had foretold.²⁰ The shock provoked by the Passion was so great that at least some of the disciples did not at once believe in the news of the Resurrection. Far from showing us a community seized by a mystical exaltation, the Gospels present us with disciples demoralized (“looking sad”²¹) and frightened. For they had not believed the holy women returning from the tomb and had regarded their words as an “idle tale”.²² When Jesus reveals himself to the Eleven on Easter evening, “he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.”²³

CCC 644 Even when faced with the reality of the risen Jesus the disciples are still doubtful, so impossible did the thing seem: they thought they were seeing a ghost. “In their joy they were still disbelieving and still wondering.”²⁴ Thomas will also experience the test of doubt and St. Matthew relates that during the risen Lord’s last appearance in Galilee “some doubted.”²⁵ Therefore the hypothesis that the Resurrection was produced by the apostles’ faith (or credulity) will not hold up. On the contrary their faith in the Resurrection was born, under the action of divine grace, from their direct experience of the reality of the risen Jesus.

CCC 645 By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with his disciples. He invites them in this way to recognize that he is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which he appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his Passion.²⁶ Yet at the same time this authentic, real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ’s humanity can no longer be confined to earth, and belongs henceforth only to the Father’s divine realm.²⁷ For this reason too the risen Jesus enjoys the sovereign freedom of appearing as he wishes: in the guise of a gardener or in other forms familiar to his disciples, precisely to awaken their faith.²⁸

CCC 659 “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.”²⁹ Christ’s body was glorified at the moment of his Resurrection, as proved by the new and supernatural properties it subsequently and permanently enjoys.³⁰ But during the forty days when he eats and drinks familiarly with his disciples and teaches them about the kingdom, his glory remains veiled under the appearance of ordinary humanity.³¹ Jesus’ final apparition ends with the irreversible entry of his humanity into divine glory, symbolized by the cloud and by heaven, where he is seated from that time forward at God’s right hand.³² Only in a wholly exceptional and unique way would Jesus show himself to Paul “as to one untimely born”, in a last apparition that established him as an apostle.³³

CCC 730 At last Jesus’ hour arrives:³⁴ he commends his spirit into the Father’s hands³⁵ at the very moment when by his death he conquers death, so that, “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,”³⁶ he might immediately give the Holy Spirit by “breathing” on his disciples.³⁷ From this hour onward, the mission of Christ and the Spirit becomes the mission of the Church: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”³⁸

CCC 788 When his visible presence was taken from them, Jesus did not leave his disciples orphans. He promised to remain with them until the end of time; he sent them his Spirit.³⁹ As a result communion with Jesus has become, in a way, more intense: “By communicating his Spirit, Christ mystically constitutes as his body those brothers of his who are called together from every nation.”⁴⁰

CCC 858 Jesus is the Father’s Emissary. From the beginning of his ministry, he “called to him those whom he desired;. .. And he appointed twelve, whom also he named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach.”⁴¹ From then on, they would also be his “emissaries” (Greek apostoloi). In them, Christ continues his own mission: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”⁴² The apostles’ ministry is the continuation of his mission; Jesus said to the Twelve: “he who receives you receives me.”⁴³

CCC 976 The Apostle’s Creed associates faith in the forgiveness of sins not only with faith in the Holy Spirit, but also with faith in the Church and in the communion of saints. It was when he gave the Holy Spirit to his apostles that the risen Christ conferred on them his own divine power to forgive sins: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”⁴⁴
(Part Two of the catechism will deal explicitly with the forgiveness of sins through Baptism, the sacrament of Penance, and the other sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Here it will suffice to suggest some basic facts briefly.)

CCC 1087 Thus the risen Christ, by giving the Holy Spirit to the apostles, entrusted to them his power of sanctifying:⁴⁵ they became sacramental signs of Christ. By the power of the same Holy Spirit they entrusted this power to their successors. This “apostolic succession” structures the whole liturgical life of the Church and is itself sacramental, handed on by the sacrament of Holy Orders.

CCC 1120 The ordained ministry or ministerial priesthood is at the service of the baptismal priesthood.⁴⁶ The ordained priesthood guarantees that it really is Christ who acts in the sacraments through the Holy Spirit for the Church. The saving mission entrusted by the Father to his incarnate Son was committed to the apostles and through them to their successors: they receive the Spirit of Jesus to act in his name and in his person.⁴⁷ The ordained minister is the sacramental bond that ties the liturgical action to what the apostles said and did and, through them, to the words and actions of Christ, the source and foundation of the sacraments.

CCC 1287 This fullness of the Spirit was not to remain uniquely the Messiah’s, but was to be communicated to the whole messianic people.⁴⁸ On several occasions Christ promised this outpouring of the Spirit,⁴⁹ a promise which he fulfilled first on Easter Sunday and then more strikingly at Pentecost.⁵⁰ Filled with the Holy Spirit the apostles began to proclaim “the mighty works of God,” and Peter declared this outpouring of the Spirit to be the sign of the messianic age.⁵¹ Those who believed in the apostolic preaching and were baptized received the gift of the Holy Spirit in their turn.⁵²

CCC 1441 Only God forgives sins.⁵³ Since he is the Son of God, Jesus says of himself, “The Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins” and exercises this divine power: “Your sins are forgiven.”⁵⁴ Further, by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to exercise in his name.⁵⁵

CCC 1461 Since Christ entrusted to his apostles the ministry of reconciliation,⁵⁶ bishops who are their successors, and priests, the bishops’ collaborators, continue to exercise this ministry. Indeed bishops and priests, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, have the power to forgive all sins “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

CCC 1556 To fulfill their exalted mission, “the apostles were endowed by Christ with a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, and by the imposition of hands they passed on to their auxiliaries the gift of the Spirit, which is transmitted down to our day through episcopal consecration.”⁵⁷

CCC 2839 With bold confidence, we began praying to our Father. In begging him that his name be hallowed, we were in fact asking him that we ourselves might be always made more holy. But though we are clothed with the baptismal garment, we do not cease to sin, to turn away from God. Now, in this new petition, we return to him like the prodigal son and, like the tax collector, recognize that we are sinners before him.⁵⁸ Our petition begins with a “confession” of our wretchedness and his mercy. Our hope is firm because, in his Son, “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”⁵⁹ We find the efficacious and undoubted sign of his forgiveness in the sacraments of his Church.⁶⁰

1 DV 11.
2 DV 11; cf. Jn 20:31; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pt 1:19-21; 3:15-16.
3 Mt 16:16-17.
4 Gal 1:15-16.
5 Acts 9:20.
6 Cf. I Th 1:10; Jn 20:31; Mt 16:18.
7 Cf Mt 8:2; 14:30; 15:22; et al.
8 Cf. Lk 1:43; 2:11.
9 Jn 20:28,21:7.
10 Cf. Jn 20:30.
11 Jn 20:31.
12 Lk 2:34.
13 Cf. Jn 1:19; 2:18; 5:10; 7:13; 9:22; 18:12; 19:38; 20:19.
14 Jn 7:48-49.
15 Cf Lk 13:31.
16 Cf. Lk 7:36; 14:1.
17 Cf. Mt 22:23-34; Lk 20:39.
18 Cf. Mt 6:18.
19 Cf. Mk 12:28-34.
20 Cf. Lk 22:31-32.
21 1 Lk 24:17; cf. Jn 20:19.
22 Lk 24:11; cf. Mk 16:11, 13.
23 Mk 16:14.
24 Lk 24:38-41.
25 Cf Jn 20:24-27; Mt 28:17.
26 Cf. Lk 24:30,39-40, 41-43; Jn 20:20, 27; 21:9,13-15.
27 Cf. Mt 28:9, 16-17; Lk 24:15, 36; Jn 20:14, 17, 19, 26; 21:4.
28 Cf. Mk 16:12; Jn 20:14-16; 21:4, 7.
29 Mk 16:19.
30 Cf Lk 24:31; Jn 20:19, 26.
31 Cf. Acts 1:3; 10:41; Mk 16:12; Lk 24:15; Jn 20:14-15; 21:4.
32 Cf. Acts 1:9; 2:33; 7:56; Lk 9:34-35; 24:51; Ex 13:22; Mk 16:19; Ps 110:1.
33 1 Cor 15:8; cf. 9:1; Gal 1:16.
34 Cf. Jn 13:1; 17:1.
35 Cf. Lk 23:46; Jn 19:30.
36 Rom 6:4.
37 Cf. Jn 20:22.
38 Jn 20:21; cf. Mt 28:19; Lk 24:47-48; Acts 1:8.
39 Cf. Jn 14:18; 20:22; Mt 28:20; Acts 2:33.
40 LG 7.
41 Mk 3:13-14.
42 Jn 20:21; cf. 13:20; 17:18.
43 Mt 10:40; cf. Lk 10:16.
44 Jn 20:22-23.
45 Cf. Jn 20:21-23.
46 Cf. LG 10 # 2.
47 Cf. Jn 20:21-23; Lk 24:47; Mt 28:18-20.
48 Cf. Ezek 36:25-27; Joel 3:1-2.
49 Cf. Lk 12:12; Jn 3:5-8; 7:37-39; 16:7-15; Acts 1:8.
50 Cf. Jn 20:22; Acts 2:1-14.
51 Acts 2:11; Cf. 2:17-18.
52 Cf. Acts 2:38.
53 Cf. Mk 2:7.
54 Mk 2:5, 10; Lk 7:48.
55 Cf. Jn 20:21-23.
56 Cf. In 20:23; 2 Cor 5:18.
57 LG 21; cf. Acts 1:8; 24; Jn 20:22-23; 1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6-7.
58 Cf. Lk 15:11-32, 18:13.
59 Col 1:14; Eph 1:7.
60 Cf. Mt 26:28; Jn 20:23.