October 14, 2008 | In: character, Conversion, Last Things
The Goal of the Moral Life
The moral life is too often separated from the rest of the Cristian life. If you ask Catholics what is the goal of the moral life, they are likely to say, “To avoid sin.” Some may take it further and say, “To get to heaven,” but morality is often seen as the grumpy aunt in the Christian family. In contrast, asking what is the goal of the Christian life will immediately get responses such as to get to Heaven, to love God and neighbor, grace, forgiveness, peace and joy. The truth is that all of these answers in response to both questions are true of both questions. The goals of the moral life and the Christian life are one and the same. Ultimately, our goal is to live in an eternal loving relationship with God. To get there, we need transformation, or conversion. Prayer, the sacraments, the Church, faith, hope, love and the moral life all lead us to this goal. What does this transformation look like? The short answer is Jesus Christ. We are called by the Christian life and by the moral life (which is, after all, just part of the Christian life) to become like Christ. Specifically, our goal is to become like this:
If even it could be said of us that all our words were enlightenment and solace and strength, our touch always a healing touch, our eyes wise & gentle, our whole life an epiphany of the power of love – then it would mean that we had been fully faithful at last to the greatest of all the sacraments, because of us, as of Him in whom we live, men would be able to say “we have seen their glory; and of their fulness we have all received.”
There is no reason for morality to be the grumpy aunt. The goal of morality is beautiful.
I am currently meditating on this book during Eucharistic adoration. Read it for yourself (buy it right from us)!
Divine Pity by Rev. Gerald Vann.
Father Vann uses the beatitudes as a springboard for a discussion on living the Divine Life as fully as possible. He identifies the subtle ways that Christians fail to fully live out the beatitudes, the virtues and the life of love. The social implications of the Beatitudes (the subtitle of the book) comes in with Father Vann’s persistent theme that we do not exercise the Christian life in a vacuum, but within a family.
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