Read the Catechism in a Year
Day 249 - The 5 Precepts of the Church
What are the “Five Precepts of the Church”?
(1) You shall attend Mass on Sunday and holy days of obligation and abstain from work or activities that offend against the character of the day. (2) You shall receive the sacrament of Penance at least once a year. (3) You shall receive the Eucharist at least during the Easter season. (4) You shall observe the prescribed seasons of fasting and days of abstinence (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday). (5) You shall contribute to the material support of the Church.
What is the purpose of the precepts of the Church, and how binding are they?
Believing is a path. One learns how to stay on this path, in other words, how to act rightly and to lead a good life, only by following the instructions in the Gospel. The teaching authority ( Magisterium) of the Church must remind people also about the demands of the natural moral law.
There are not two truths. What is humanly right cannot be wrong from the Christian perspective. And what is right according to Christianity cannot be humanly wrong. That is why the Church must teach comprehensively about moral issues.
Why is “not practicing what you preach” such a serious deficiency in a Christian?
Agreement between one’s life and one’s witness is the first requirement for proclaiming the Gospel. Not practicing what you profess is therefore hypocrisy, a betrayal of the Christian duty to be “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”.
Paul was the one who reminded the Church in Corinth: “You show that you are a letter from Christ … written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor 3:3). Christians themselves, not the things they say, are Christ’s “letters of recommendation” (2 Cor 3:2) to the world. (YOUCAT question 345-347)
Dig Deeper: Corresponding CCC section (2041-2051) and other references here.
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