Living The Catechism of The Catholic Church, Vol 3 by Schoenborn Christoph Cardinal

Author:Schoenborn, Christoph Cardinal [Schoenborn, Christoph Cardinal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898708356
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

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Called to holiness

Our short expedition through the elements of Christian morality (which theologians call “fundamental morals”) is at an end. The Catechism has organized these elements and presented them in an arrangement that takes its orientation both from Saint Thomas Aquinas and also from the Second Vatican Council.

Setting out from the final goal of man, his happiness, which he can find only in God, we first considered human acts and attitudes (works and virtues), by which we, as individuals and in community, strive to attain our final goal but also to reach the concrete intermediate goals in a conducive manner, in a way that is morally good. Part of the Christian message, though, is that we can reach neither particular goals nor our final goal by our own strength alone. Without God’s external and internal help, without his law and his grace, we are hopelessly lost. This is a truth of the faith, strictly speaking. Jesus answers the uneasy question of his disciples: “Who then can be saved?”: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Mt 19:2526). But in the same way it is an indisputable truth of the faith that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). Even more: God wills that, through his Son, all men “become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life” (CCC 1).

The Council says nothing else but this when it speaks about the universal call to holiness (CCC 2013). The goal of human life is divine life. We find the deepest fulfillment, not in ourselves, but in God. Only in God will we be entirely ourselves. Then the commandment that Jesus gave us is fulfilled: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).

But what is holiness? It begins when there is cooperation between our actions and God’s working, when we comply with God’s word and prompting and, by his help, allow ourselves to be led by him. How does that happen? Only through love that is lived day by day Claire de Castelbajac, a radiant figure who has become a model for many young people (she died at the early age of twenty-one on January 22, 1975), wrote: “Holiness is the love of living entirely commonplace things for God and with God, by his grace and his power.” There is no other way to holiness than that of love, and this way is open to all, in every state of life and in every age. This is the real “equal opportunity” in the Church. Only along this way does the Church renew herself. “ ‘The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church’s history’ ” (John Paul II, CL 16, 3, quoted in CCC 828).

The way of holiness, of concrete love for God and for neighbor in all situations of life, leads through the narrow gate of the Cross.

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