If you are Catholic, this is post-Vatican II wrap-up and short
catechism, and an invitation to deeper faith. If you are a
no-longer-practicing Catholic, this is an invitation to take a
fresh look at your old family. If you come from a different
religious tradition, welcome to this overview of what Catholics
stand for. If you have no religion, we hope this will be a new
opening to God.
Vatican II reminded us that there is
only one holiness in the Church—God's. "They are really made
holy...All the faithful of Christ, of whatever rank or
status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and
to the perfection of charity" (Dogmatic Constitution on
the Church, #40). There are to be no second-class
citizens in the Church, as if clergy and religious were an
elite. A regular Joe or Mary is called to receive God's
holiness just as strongly as a Carmelite nun.
What does God ask us to do? Simply to
be wholeheartedly centered on responding to his
initiative of love—loving. praising, pleasing him—and
showing this love by the way we treat others. Our task,
like that of Jesus, is to help bring God's salvation,
healing, peace and wholeness to the human family, setting
all men and women, especially the neediest, free of sin,
oppression and injustice of every kind and removing the
barriers to their development as God's children. Our
responsibility is itself a gift. We are to be as consciously
dependent on God as a little child on its mother and father.
We are to be as trustful of God as the lilies of the field.
We are to be single-minded. There is one value above all—a
mature and spiritually childlike relationship to God in
Jesus.
Knowledge is essential, but faith is
not just in the head. Faith is openness to God—whatever he
asks. It is surrender to God in both heart and mind, a way
of life. It includes hope, the absolute certainty that God
is and will be with us. The response of faith is love—not
just any love, but the love of our neighbor that is as
generous as our love for ourselves.
This is a fearful task, therefore
possible only as God-given. Its opposite, sin, is the
response of refusing to accept God's call and empowerment to
do the loving thing here and now. If we persist in this
refusal, our sinfulness can deepen to one big fatal way of
life: We can destroy our relationship with God by "mortal"
(fatal) sin.
Therefore, we are called to
continuous conversation. The weeds are never gone—they
must be uprooted every morning. We must "repent and believe
the Good News" again and again.
Hence the Commandments. We must not
only honor God (the first three commandments), but we must
also love our neighbor—the other seven. Family life must be
protected (fourth). We do not kill life, but protect and
nourish it (fifth). We must not abuse God's gift of
sexuality by perverting it to selfishness and the using
of another person (sixth). We must honor the goods of
others, both their work and its true value, and their
property as sacred possession (seventh). We must respect
truth, no matter where it leads (eighth). And we realize
(ninth, tenth) that sin and virtue are first of all in the
mind and the heart.
The commandments of Jesus are
found in the Gospels. They go far beyond the Ten
Commandments. They are ways (like the Ten) in which we live
out our relationship with God. To be a follower of Jesus and
a child of the Father is to be aware of this
relationship—and to communicate with this loving God. Prayer
is consciously being in God's presence—silently or verbally,
alone or with others, or in the liturgy. It is a conscious
moment or hour with "Abba," with Jesus, with the
gentle, ever-present Spirit.
Finally, Jesus' followers can expect
the same treatment he received. "If you find that the world
hates you, know it has hated me before you" (John 15:18).
All through history Jesus' friends have been beaten, jailed,
crucified. It is an honor to suffer with him, provided it is
because of him.