The Risk of Teaching Against Christ

At the beginning of his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul exhorts the newly baptized to strive for perfection and live under Christ and not against him. The attention should now focus on heavenly things and on embracing a life of grace, mercy, virtue, and fidelity to Christ and his Church. The narrative of this first chapter calls upon the faithful to forsake the world and place our entire disposition toward Christ in heaven.[1] The specificity by which St. Paul directs the faithful to live a life centered on Christ expresses the urgency to immediately begin to act on the gift of grace given to everyone who was initiated into the Catholic Church. The degree to which St. Paul emphasizes the necessity to engage a heavenly view of the world reveals the importance of forging an active relationship with Jesus Christ.

Another aspect of his teaching to the Colossians is the importance of spiritually elevating the soul from the ways of the past. He intends to assist the new Christian to engage the battle between good and evil with grace in order not to easily succumb to the wickedness of the world. St. Paul the Educator carefully instructs the faithful that Christ has now ransomed their lives. The way of the Cross is now understood differently and possesses a new identity for the newly initiated, that of the Corpus for the neophyte. He provides us with a reasonable approach to the teaching of religion focused on Jesus Christ, his teachings, and the institution of the Catholic Church, founded by Our Lord to safeguard what He taught.

The teaching of religion, which can also be identified as the process of catechetical instruction, or the re-echoing of the teachings of Jesus Christ, is described by St. John Paul II in the following way,

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