The Christian Call Beyond Morality
Moral legalists can lose sight of the true end to morality. Indeed, the early Greek pagan philosophers likewise were interested in morality and virtue for insufficient reasons. That which is good should indeed be pursued for happiness, however not for happiness alone. Evil is a missing out, not just of happiness, but of love. If a lack of good, love, etc. is sown so then it shall be reaped. Out of purest and infinite love, we were fashioned, and it is in and through that love which we are called to live and live in and yet beyond the moral.
Part Four, Section One, Chapter Three of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, teaching on the “Life of Prayer”, begins by stating “Prayer is the life of the new heart. It ought to animate us at every moment.”.[1] These two sentences, at least for me, are a sufficient general guideline to living out the Way of the Christian life. Indeed, this Way, Christ Himself, is a Christians' very identity, cause, and end. The Catechism continues to describe the rhythmic structure of going out to those in need and returning to sup with the Lord. This is what it truly means to live a life with Christ, by Christ, for Christ, and through Christ. Indeed, by living “the life of the new heart” we become conformed to Christ.
Indeed, Sacred Scripture is saturated with this idea. The Apostle, John, emphasizes the centrality of “abiding” in Christ which is repeated heavily throughout his Gospel, and sacramentally in the sixth chapter concerning the Bread of Life and arguably culminating in the fifteenth chapter stating, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me…apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5 _RSVCE_) One may dismiss this at first as another parable stressed for emphasis, but “be fruitful and multiply” was God’s first command to man and is a consistent theme of the parables (cf. Genesis 1:28). As John 15 and the Catechism quote above imply we MUST live to be transformed into Christ. As Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Giertych, and the whole of the faith asserts, one may be capable of satisfying morality without the pursuit of a relationship with God, but if one is to move past moral code we must love, and that requires God. The saints embodied this transfiguration in the divine life, and this is why we have found something of the divine substance in their varying lives. “Sanctitas una nos efficit, quales vocatio divina exposcit: homines videlicet mundo crucifixos, et quibus mundus ipse sit crucifixus” or in the English, “Sanctity alone makes us what our divine vocation demands, men crucified to the world and to whom the world has been crucified”[2]
In conclusion, if we are to live as God asks us, then we must let ourselves be converted, transformed, and transfigured into the Divine. We must be free of worldly enticements, lures, ideologies, etc. that we may be able to accept that which the Spirit brings us. Thereby, we can become the glory of God “a human being fully alive”. For this very purpose, God took upon Himself, a human nature and experienced the greatest hardships and tragedies of human life.[3]
FN:
Part Four, Section One, Chapter Three of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, teaching on the “Life of Prayer”, begins by stating “Prayer is the life of the new heart. It ought to animate us at every moment.”.[1] These two sentences, at least for me, are a sufficient general guideline to living out the Way of the Christian life. Indeed, this Way, Christ Himself, is a Christians' very identity, cause, and end. The Catechism continues to describe the rhythmic structure of going out to those in need and returning to sup with the Lord. This is what it truly means to live a life with Christ, by Christ, for Christ, and through Christ. Indeed, by living “the life of the new heart” we become conformed to Christ.
Indeed, Sacred Scripture is saturated with this idea. The Apostle, John, emphasizes the centrality of “abiding” in Christ which is repeated heavily throughout his Gospel, and sacramentally in the sixth chapter concerning the Bread of Life and arguably culminating in the fifteenth chapter stating, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me…apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5 _RSVCE_) One may dismiss this at first as another parable stressed for emphasis, but “be fruitful and multiply” was God’s first command to man and is a consistent theme of the parables (cf. Genesis 1:28). As John 15 and the Catechism quote above imply we MUST live to be transformed into Christ. As Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Giertych, and the whole of the faith asserts, one may be capable of satisfying morality without the pursuit of a relationship with God, but if one is to move past moral code we must love, and that requires God. The saints embodied this transfiguration in the divine life, and this is why we have found something of the divine substance in their varying lives. “Sanctitas una nos efficit, quales vocatio divina exposcit: homines videlicet mundo crucifixos, et quibus mundus ipse sit crucifixus” or in the English, “Sanctity alone makes us what our divine vocation demands, men crucified to the world and to whom the world has been crucified”[2]
In conclusion, if we are to live as God asks us, then we must let ourselves be converted, transformed, and transfigured into the Divine. We must be free of worldly enticements, lures, ideologies, etc. that we may be able to accept that which the Spirit brings us. Thereby, we can become the glory of God “a human being fully alive”. For this very purpose, God took upon Himself, a human nature and experienced the greatest hardships and tragedies of human life.[3]
FN:
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 2697.
- Pope Pius X, Apostolic Exhortation to the Catholic Clergy on Priestly Sanctity Haerent animo (10 August 1908).
- Cf. CCC, 460
