Catechism of the Catholic Church

Glossary 901 TEACHING OFFICE: See Magisterium. TEMPERANCE: The cardinal moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasure and pro- vides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the mastery of the will over instinct, and keeps natural desires within proper limits (1809). TEMPLE: The house of worship built in Jerusalem by Solomon as God’s dwelling-place, for the exercise of the priestly rites of sacrifice in the Jewish religion. After the capture of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. by the Romans, the second temple was destroyed and never rebuilt. Jesus recognized the Temple as God’s dwelling, and a house of prayer; he even identified himself with the Temple by presenting himself as God’s definitive dwelling-place. The Holy Spirit makes the Church “the temple of the living God” (583, 797; cf. 2580). TEMPTATION: An attraction, either from outside oneself or from within, to act contrary to right reason and the commandments of God. Jesus himself during his life on earth was tempted, put to the test, to manifest both the opposition between himself and the devil and the triumph of his saving work over Satan (538). TESTAMENT: The name given to the two major parts of the Bible; a synonym for “covenant,” as in Old and New Covenants. The Old Testament recounts the history of salvation before the time of Christ (46 books), and the New Testament unfolds the saving work of Jesus and the apostolic beginnings of the Church (27 books) (120-121, 124). See Covenant. THEOLOGY: The study of God, based on divine revelation (236, 2033, 2038). THEOPHANY: A revelation or visible appearance of God, as in the case of Moses at Mount Sinai (2059). TIME: See Eternal Life. TRADITION: The living transmission of the message of the Gospel in the Church. The oral preaching of the Apostles, and the written message of salvation under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Bible), are conserved and handed on as the deposit of faith through the apostolic succession in the Church. Both the living Tradition and the written Scriptures have their common source in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ (75-82). The theological, liturgical, disciplinary, and devotional traditions of the local churches both contain and can be distinguished from this apostolic Tradition (83). TRANSFIGURATION: The mysterious event in which Jesus, seen speaking with Moses and Elijah on the mountain, was transformed in appearance—in the sight of Peter, James, and John —as a moment of disclosure of his divine glory (554). TRANSUBSTANTIATION: The scholastic term used to designate the unique change of the Eucharistic bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. “Transubstantiation” indicates that through the consecration of the bread and the wine there occurs the change of the entire