I. God Reveals His "Plan of Loving Goodness"

“It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will. His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature.”1

God, who “dwells in unapproachable light”, wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son.2 By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity.

The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously “by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other”3 and shed light on each another. It involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome, by stages, the supernatural Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.