God is All Good Grade 4: Unit 1

Session 1: God Is Good

Good Things “God is the supreme or ultimate good and the source of all good things” (CCC 2052). Therefore, the good things in our lives ultimately come from God because He is good. There is nothing that is truly good that is not from God. We should respond to God’s goodness, and to the good things He has given us, with thanksgiving and with the pursuit of holiness.

Session 2: Made in God’s Image and Likeness

Adam and Eve’s Roles Being made in God’s image and likeness does not mean we look like God. It means that we were created with specific roles in our lives. Just as we have different roles in our lives, the fact that Adam and Eve were made in God’s image and likeness means that they were also created with different roles. These roles are priest, prophet, king, son or daughter of God, and spouse.

Adam and Eve’s Roles The main job of a priest is to offer sacrifice. That means that he gives things to God to worship Him. A prophet proclaims God’s word to others. A king rules and governs his land and subjects. A son or daughter is a child of his or her parents and is their heir. In other words, the child inherits what is the parents’. A husband and wife love each other in a committed relationship that makes a family, and all of us have a spousal relationship with Christ as His Church. Jesus is the groom and the Church is His bride.

Man and Woman God made human beings to be in relationship with each other. The communal nature of men and women is part of human nature. The man recognized that he is different from all other creatures in creation. He alone could know and recognize his Creator, and he alone was self-aware and possessed personal freedom. No other creature was this way, and the man came to this conclusion after naming all the animals and seeing that none was like him.

Man and Woman The fact that God took a rib from the man’s side to create woman suggests that men and women are different but equal. The ribs are located in the middle of the body, and near the heart, showing that neither man nor woman is “above” or “below” the other, but in fact are created near to each other’s hearts in equality. The man’s first words when he sees the woman, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” show that the man instantly recognized that the woman was like him and possessed the same self-awareness and personal freedom that he had.

Man and Woman This understanding about the creation of man and woman, combined with the statement “a man … clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body” emphasizes that from the beginning God intended man and woman to be united in marriage. The love exchanged between man and woman as spouses is the primary and foundational human community from which all other human relationships flow. Marriage also is understood as an image of God Himself, who is the Trinity, three Persons in one God, an eternal exchange of love.

Session 3: The Reflection of God in Creation

Image and Likeness Read Colossians 1:15. In this passage, St. Paul is explaining that Jesus is the image of God. Jesus reveals to us fully and completely what it means to be made in God’s image. Jesus gives us a model to follow so that we can more fully become like God. Every human soul has been gifted with intellect (ability to think), free will (ablility to choose), and the ability to love.

Human Life God makes all human beings in His image and likeness. We know that the new life inside a mother’s womb is a human life. God told the prophet Jeremiah, and he tells all of us: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you’ (Jeremiah 1:5). Today, some new mothers, for different reasons, choose to end the life of their unborn children through abortion. We should pray for these unborn children often, that they might be given the chance to live a full life in God’s image and likeness.