Source: https://media.christendom.edu/2003/06/the-churchs-moral-teaching-holiness-and-personal-vocation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 08:57:42+00:00

Document:
In her moral teaching, the Church frequently appeals, and rightly so, to the universally binding principles and norms of the natural law. Catholic faith holds that God himself has entrusted to the magisterium of the Church the awesome responsibility of authoritatively interpreting the natural law precisely in order to help men and women make good moral choices in the light of the truth. The Church also teaches that the natural law – which is rooted in God’s eternal, divine law – is fulfilled and perfected by the “law of the gospel” and her teaching on the meaning of our existence as moral beings is ultimately based on truths that completely surpass anything discernible by human reason.
Here I want to draw attention to these magnificent truths that God himself has made known to us preeminently through the life, death, and resurrection of his only-begotten s on who, for love of us, became “flesh” (Jn 1.14). I will do so by first comparing the “law of the gospel,” the “law of grace,” with the natural law with respect to the persons to whom these laws are given and the purpose of these laws. I will then reflect on the moral significance of our baptismal commitment as being both a call to holiness and a summons to participate, in a personal way, in the redemptive work of Christ.
The natural law is given, on creation, to every human being, i.e., to those bodily beings who have been made “in the image and likeness of God” (Gn. 1:27), for it is a law rooted in their nature (see Dignitatis humanae, § 14). The natural law is, in fact, the uniquely human way in which human beings “participate in” “the highest norm of human life,” i.e., “the divine law-eternal, objective, and universal-whereby God orders, directs, and governs the entire universe and all the ways of the human community according to a plan conceived in his wisdom and in love” (Dignitatis humanae, §3), for “man has been made by God to participate in this law, with the result that, under the gentle disposition of divine providence, he can come to perceive ever increasingly the unchanging truth.
All creatures are subject to God’s divine and eternal law insofar as they are ruled ruled and measured by it – all, as it were, “participate in” it passively. But God wills that intelligent and self-determining creatures – and this is what men are-participate more nobly in his divine and eternal law as befits their nature as beings made in his image. Thus, they participate in it not only passively, by being ruled and measured by it, but also actively by coming to know ever more deeply its unchanging truth (see Dignitatis humanae, §3) and in this way enabling them selves to rule and measure their own free choices and actions in accord with its truth. For the purpose of this law is to provide human beings with the truth needed to guide their choices and actions.
The natural law, in other words, is given to all human beings to enable them to judge truly about what they are to do and in the light of this truth to make good moral choices. Yet the natural law does not enable human beings to do the good or to avoid the evil they come to know, for they can, as experience sadly bears witness, choose to act against the truth-they can freely choose to do what they know is morally bad. Moreover, the human beings to whom the natural law is given are persons wounded by sin, for all are subject to original sin and to its effects -and, in addition, all who have attained the use of reason know in their own hearts that they have sinned personally. As John says, “If we say, ‘We are free of the guilt of sin,’ we deceive our selves; the truth is not found in us” (1 Jn 1.8). The human beings to whom the natural law is given are persons into whose hearts concupiscence has entered.
Concupiscence, which comes from sin and leads to sin,makes it difficult for men to come to a knowledge of the truth, i.e., of the “imperatives” of the divine and eternal law. Indeed, as St. Paul testifies, he finds within himself a twofold law-the “law of his mind” (the natural law) and the “law of his members” (the law of concupiscence, the lex fomitis [Rom. 7:23]), with the result that he does not do the good he wants but rather the evil that he hates (Rom. 7:15). Because of sin and concupiscence human hearts have been “hardened” (see Mt. 9:8). Indeed, although the first and common principles of natural law can never be obliterated from the human heart, knowledge of its more specific moral precepts is imperiled as a result of sin and concupiscence. It is precisely for this reason, the Catholic tradition holds, that God has graciously made known to us through revelation the most basic specif moral norms that we need in order to guide our everyday choices and actions, for it is these norms that he gave to mankind in the law given to Moses, the law engraved on tablets of stone.
The persons to whom the new law of love or grace is given are Christ’s faithful, i.e., those who have been “regenerated” in the waters of baptism. These persons have, through baptism, entered into the paschal mystery of Christ: they have, in, with, and through Christ, died to sin and, again, in, with, and through Christ, risen to a new kind of life. They have “put on Christ,” become incorporated into his body, the Church, and have been made children of God, members of the divine family. They are the ones who can say, with John, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God! Yet that is what we are” (1 Jn 3:1). And the purpose of the new law of love, inscribed in the hearts of God’s very own children, is to enable them to live in Christ, to live worthily as children of God and members of the divine family. This brief account of the persons to whom the new law of grace is given and the purpose of this law needs to be more fully developed if we are to understand its enormous significance for our lives as moral beings and the ways in which it “perfects” or “fulfills” the natural law.
The first way in which the new law of love fulfills the natural law is by “recreating” the persons to whom the natural law is given. It “re-creates” or “regenerates” them by uniting them to Christ. To grasp this truth rightly we must look to Jesus, the one who “fully reveals man to himself ” (Gaudium et spes, § 22).
Jesus is true God and true man. He is true God, for “in him all the fullness of God and was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19). He is God’s eternal, unbegotten “Word” (Jn. 1:1). And Jesus is true man, for He is God’s eternal Word made flesh, i.e., man (Jn. 1:14). “Born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4), He is “like his brothers in every respect” (Heb. 2:17), “tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Heb. 4:15). Insofar as He is man, Jesus achieves human fulfillment by living a perfect human life, one manifesting God’s goodness in a unique and special way: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work you gave me to do” (Jn 17.4). And His Father crowns His work by raising him-and all persons who are one with Him – from the dead. As St. Paul teaches, “Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep. Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:20-22). Again, as man, Jesus is the “first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15), and is completed by creation united under him: God “has let us know the mystery of his purpose; the hidden plan He so kindly made in Christ from the beginning to act upon when the times had run their course to the end; that He would bring everything together under Christ as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth” (Eph. 1:910; see Eph. 1:22-23).
of God” (1 Jn. 3:1; 5:1).
This indeed is the first great truth of our existence that Jesus, whom St. Thomas Aquinas rightly calls “our best and wisest friend,”15 reveals to us: God wills us into being precisely so that he can offer us his own life and make us his very own children. This is the mystery of divine filiation. We – weak human beings that we are – are the ones of whom it is written: “You are my son; this day I have begotten you” (Ps. 2:7).
Human persons are “re-generated,” “reborn” as members of God’s divine family when they are baptized, when they “die” to the old humanity wounded by Adam’s sin (see Rom. 5:12) and “rise” to a new kind of life, the kind made possible by union with the risen Lord: “when we were baptized we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life” (Rom. 6:4). Through baptism we have “put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27) and live in union with him.
At the heart of baptism is a free, self-determining choice whereby one renounces a life of sin and commits oneself to live henceforward worthily as a child of God, a member of Christ’s body, a person called to be holy, to be “perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). The baptized person, like Jesus to whom he is united, is one whose “food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (Jn. 4:34).
Most of us were baptized as infants and, at that time, could not actually make free choices for ourselves. But others, our godparents, stood as our proxies, responding in our name to the call to die to sin and to live in a way worthy of God’s own children, to be holy. And as we grew in the household of the faith, we renewed our baptismal commitment when we received the sacrament of confirmation; we are given the opportunity to reaffirm this commitment throughout our lives, particularly during the liturgy of the Easter vigil.
Baptism, in short, requires the kind of choice rightly called a commitment. It is, as Germain Grisez has noted, the fundamental option of the Christian,20 whereby the Christian freely commits himself or herself to a life in union with Jesus. In his encyclical Veritatis splendor, John Paul II emphasized that the “choice of freedom” which “Christian moral teaching, even in its biblical roots, acknowledges” as fundamental “is the decision of faith, of the obedience of faith” (see Rom. 16:26). This is the free choice, he continues by citing a passage from Vatican Council II (Dei Verbum, §5), which in turn cites a passage from Vatican Council I (Dei Filius), “by which man makes a total and free self-commitment to God, offering the ‘full submission of intellect and will as he reveals”’ (§66). This choice is precisely the choice to be baptized. In and through this overarching choice the Christian commits himself to become holy, to be, like his brother Jesus, a child faithful to the Father. By freely accepting in faith God’s offer of grace and friendship, we commit ourselves to be holy. This is the second great truth about ourselves that, Jesus makes known to us: we are called to sanctity, to holiness. As we know, the universal call to holiness is one of the central themes of Vatican Council II. This theme was luminously set forth in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, which insists that “all in the Church, whether they belong to the hierarchy or are cared for by it, are called to holiness, according to the apostle’s saying: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thes. 4:3; cf. Eph. 1:4). This holiness of the Church is constantly shown forth in the fruits of grace which the Spirit produces in the faithful, for so it must be; it is expressed in many ways by the individuals who, each in his own state of life, tend to the perfection of love, thus edifying others” (Lumen gentium, §39). Continuing, this document affirms: “It is therefore quite clear that all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love, and by this holiness a more human manner of life is also fostered in earthly society” (ibid., §40).
Sanctity of life, holiness, then, is not meant only for an elite few Christians. It is rather the raison d’être of all Christians, for all who have been “re-generated” by the waters of baptism. Indeed, in and through our baptismal commitment we personally consecrate our lives, our whole being, to the pursuit of holiness in the choices and actions of our everyday lives, in everything that we do.
Our baptismal commitment requires us to take up the “sword given by the Spirit” and use it as a weapon in the spiritual combat (Eph. 6:17). God indeed is our Savior and Redeemer. It is through his initiative that we are now, by virtue of the love he has poured into our hearts, saved (Ti. 3:5; Eph. 2:5, 8; 1 Cor. 15:1). He has sanctified us (1 Cor. 1:2; 6:11), filling us with the fullness of Christ (Col. 1:10), making us new men and women (Eph. 1:15), clothing us in Christ (Gal. 3:27) and making us new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17), pouring his love into us through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), so that we are indeed called by him and chosen (Rom. 1:6; 8:28, 33; 1 Cor. 1:24; Col. 3:12) and made into his children, the children of light (Eph. 5:8; 1 Thes. 5:5; 1 Jn. 3:1). But God’s work in us is not completed by baptism. God continues to save us (1 Cor. 1:18; 2 Cor. 2:15), to make us holy and blameless (1 Thes. 5:23; 3:13). And we are called and empowered by his grace to respond freely and be his co-workers in perfecting our holiness (2 Cor. 7:1) by wholeheartedly dedicating ourselves to a life of righteousness and sanctification (Rom. 6:19). It is our task continually to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14), casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light (Rom 13:2; Eph 5:8-11). As the children of the God who is love, our call and commitment is to “abide in him” (1 Jn. 2:28; 4:13 ff.) and walk in the light and not in darkness (1 Jn 1:7).
Jesus, our best and wisest friend, is our redeemer. The “work” He came to do was to redeem human persons and, indeed, the entire cosmos. Precisely because of our union with Him-the union initially effected by our free acceptance of His saving faith in baptism-we commit ourselves to co-operate with him in his redemptive work. Jesus Himself tells us that “if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mk 8:34). St. Paul, writing to the Colossians, said that “even now I find my joy in the suffering I endure for you. In my own flesh I fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church” (Col 1:24). As persons united to Christ, it is our mission to complete His redemptive work in the world in which we live. An essential component of our call to holiness is the call to participate in Christ’s redemptive work.
All Christians have the common vocation to holiness and to participate in Christ’s redemptive work. It is precisely for this reason that all Christians are obliged to shape their choices and actions in accord with the truth with the moral teaching of the Church, their mother and Christ’s spotless bride.
For the whole of the community of the People of God and for each member of it what is in question is not just a specific ‘social membership’; rather,for each and every one what is essential is a particular ‘vocation.’ Indeed, the Church as the People of God is also…‘Christ’s Mystical Body.’ Membership in that body has for its source a particular call united with the saving action of grace. Therefore, if we wish to keep in mind this community of the People of God, which is so vast and so extremely differentiated, we must see first and foremost Christ saying in a way to each member of the community, ‘Follow Me’ (Redemptor hominis, §71).
is that we are personally called to participate in Jesus’ redemptive work in our own unique way.
Thus, one of the most central moral obligations of a Christian is to discern, through prayer and the grace of the Holy Spirit, his or her personal vocation to participate in Christ’s redemptive work and to shape his or her life in fidelity to this vocation.
The moral teaching of the Church, in which the truths of the natural law are indeed central, is ultimately rooted in the great supernatural truths revealed to us by Jesus. These are the truths that (1) God has made us to be the kind of beings we are precisely because he wills to give to us his very own life and make us to be his children, members of the divine family; (2) he has called us to a life of holiness in this world, in the everyday actions of our lives; and (3) he gives to each of us a personal vocation, a personal summons to participate in the redemptive work of his only-begotten Son.
1 Thus, for example, in Gaudium et spes, §74, the Fathers of Vatican Council II teach that there is a “natural and Gospel law” (lex naturalis et evangelica) which establishes “limits” that must be observed even by one who is defending his rights against unjust oppression. Gaudium et spes likewise proclaims that there is not just one universal principle of the natural law with unchanging binding force, but that there are many (Gaudium et spes, §79). On this issue see John Finnis’s excellent essay, “The Natural Law, Objective Morality, and Vatican II” in Principles of Catholic Moral Life, ed. William E. May (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1981), 113-150.
2 On this see Vatican Council II, Dignitatis humanae, §14: “The Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth. It is her duty to proclaim and teach with authority the truth which is Christ and, at the same time, to declare and confirm by her authority the principles of the moral order which spring from human nature itself” (emphasis added).
3 See Dignitatis humanae, §3: “the highest norm of human life is God’s divine law-eternal, objective, and universal – whereby God orders, directs, and governs the entire universe and all the ways of the human community according to a plan conceived in his wisdom and love . . . God has enabled man to participate in this law of his so that, under the gentle disposition of divine providence, man may be able to arrive at a deeper and deeper knowledge of unchanging truth.” On this issue see my An Introduction to Moral Theology Rev. ed. (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1994), 54-59.
4 See Gaudium et spes, § 16: “By conscience, in a wonderful way, that law is made known which is fulfilled in the love of God and one’s neighbor,” with footnote references to Mt. 22:37-40 and Gal. 5:14.
5 The material in Part 1 below summarizes and develops some reflections originally set forth in my essay, “Christian Faith and Its ‘Fulfillment’ of the Natural Moral Law,” Anthropotes 7 (1991), 155-169.
7 See Summa theologiae, 1-2, q. 91, a. 2, ad 3.
8 Ibid., q. 91, a. 2 and q. 93, a. 6. On this point it is worth consulting D. O’Donoghue, “The Thomist Concept of Natural Law,” Irish Theological Quarterly 22 (1955) 89-109, especially 93-94.
9 See Summa theologiae, 1-2, q. 91, a. 2.
10 See St. Augustine, De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia I, 25 (PL 44, 429430). The Council of Trent made St. Augustine’s nteaching on concupiscence its own; see Henricus Denzinger and Adolphus Schoenmetzer (eds.), Enchiridion Symbolorum (34th ed. Romae: Herder, 1973), §1515.
11 Thus in Dignitatis humanae, §3, the Council Fathers speak of man perceiving and acknowledging the “imperatives of the divine law,” while in Gaudium et spes, § 16, they note the baleful effects sin can have on human conscience.
12 On this see Summa theologiae, 1-2, q. 91, a. 6.
13 See Summa theologiae, 1-2, q. 94, a. 6.
14 See ibid., q. 91, a. 4; q. 94, a.2.
16 Ibid, q. 106, a. 1.
17 See ibid., q. 106, a. 1, ad 2.
19 Ibid., 3, q. 69, a. 5.
20 Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lordlesus, Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 551.
21 Saint Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God (New Rochelle, NY: Scepter Press, 1986), 271, §312.
22 Grisez, Christian Moral Principles, 559.
23 Ibid., 560. All references to Redemptor hominis are from John Paul II, Redemptor hominis (4 March 1979), Vatican translation: The Redeemer of Man (Boston: St. Paul Books and Media, n.d.).

References: § 14
 §3
 §3
 § 22
 §5
 §39
 §40
 §71
 §74
 §79
 §14
 §3
 § 16
 §1515
 §3
 § 16
 §312