First

Commandment
 I. Meaning
• The first commandment is the CENTER of
the other commandments.
• It is found on the First Tablet of the Law.
• The first Commandment helps us to keep
the great Commandment of the love of
God because it commands us to adore
God alone.
• It is in knowing and loving God that we
can truly live in our life.
Do not make a
representation of
anything that is
with Me
Value of
FAITH
 “If you have great
faith, you will have great
blessing. If you have a little
faith, you will receive a little
blessing. But if you have no
faith, God's blessing will not
be in your life.”
 This 1st
Commandment, in
proclaiming the Lordship of one
true God, expresses this duty of
worship.
Worship – recognition of God’s
Lordship expressed in filial devotion
and service.
The First Commandment fosters all
the elements of the virtue of
religion:
• Adoration – the first act of the
virtue of religion. To adore God is
to acknowledge, in respect and
absolute submission, the
“nothingness of the creature” who
would not exist but for God.
•Prayer – indispensable
condition for being able
to obey God’s
commandments.
•Sacrifice – a sign of
adoration and gratitude,
supplication and
communion.
•Love, Honor, Respect
– to love and to serve God
in faith and hope is our first
duty and privilege.

•Faith – believing without

doubting whatever God has
revealed.
•Hope – trusting God that
will give us eternal life and
all the means necessary to
obtain it.
•Charity – loving God
above all things and our
neighbor as ourselves for
- Is the deviation of religious feeling
and of the practices
- It is an irrational, but usually
deep-seated belief in the magical
effects of a specific action or
ritual, especially in the likelihood
that good or bad luck will result
from performing it.
- Does not only refer to false pagan
worship.
- Idolatry consists of divinizing what is
not God.
- Substitution of someone or something
for God.
- Idolatry is vividly portrayed in the
Biblical story of the “Golden Calf”
“Golden Calf”
 Divination/Fortune
Telling
It is the art of foretelling
the future or
discovering hidden
knowledge by
supernatural means.
All practices of magic and sorcery by
which one attempts to tame occult
powers, so as to place them at
one’s service and have supernatural
power even if this were for the sake
of restoring their health are gravely
contrary to the virtue of religion.
These practices are in fact more to be
condemned when accompanied by
the intention of harming
someone, and especially when they
have recourse to the intervention of
demons.
Wearing charms is also
reprehensible.
Spiritism often implies divination or
magical practice.
God’s first commandment
condemns the main sins
of irreligion:
Tempting God – consist in
putting His goodness and
almighty power to test by
word or deed.
Sacrilege – consist in profaning or
treating unworthy of the sacraments
and other liturgical actions, as well as
persons, thing or place consecrated
to God.
– is a grave sin especially
when committed against the
Eucharist, for in this sacrament the
Body of Christ is made present for
us.
Simony – defined as the
buying or selling of spiritual
things.

“You received without pay,

give without pay.” – Peter
thus held the words of
Jesus.
Graven Images – The
divine injunction
included the prohibition
of God by the hand of
man.