On the Call to Holiness in Today's World

We continue to share excerpts of Gaudete et Exsultate: 

"Ultimately, the lack of a heartfelt and prayerful acknowledgment of our limitations prevents grace from working more effectively within us, for no room is left for bringing about the potential good that is part of a sincere and genuine journey of growth.  Grace, precisely because it builds on nature, does not make us superhuman all at once.  That kind of thinking would show too much confidence in our own abilities.  Underneath our orthodoxy, our attitudes might not correspond to our need for grace, and in specific situations we can end up putting little trust in it.  Unless we can acknowledge our concrete and limited situation, we will not be able to see the real and possible steps that the Lord demands of us at every moment, once we are attracted and empowered by his gift.  Grace acts in history; ordinarily it takes hold of us and transforms us progressively.  If we reject this historical and progressive reality, we can actually refuse and block grace, even as we extol it by our words" (50).

". . . We cannot celebrate this free gift of the Lord's friendship unless we realize that our earthly life and our natural abilities are his gift.  We need to 'acknowledge jubilantly that our life is essentially a gift, and recognize that our freedom is a grace.  This is not easy today, in a world that thinks it can keep something for itself, the fruits of its own creativity or freedom'" (55).

"Some Christians insist on taking another path, that of justification by their own efforts, the worship of the human will and their own abilities.  The result is a self-centered and elitist complacency, bereft of true love.  This finds expression in a variety of apparently unconnected ways of thinking and acting: an obsession with the law, an absorption with social and political advantages, a punctilious concern for the Church's liturgy, doctrine and prestige, a vanity about the ability to manage practical matters, and an excessive concern with programs of self-help and personal fulfillment" (57).

"Once we believe that everything depends on human effort as channeled by ecclesial rules and structures, we unconsciously complicate the Gospel and become enslaved to a blueprint that leaves few openings for the working of grace" (59).

"Amid the thickets of precepts and prescriptions, Jesus clears a way to seeing two faces, that of the Father and that of our brother.  He does not give us two more formulas or two more commands.  He gives us two faces, or better yet, one alone: the face of God reflected in so many other faces.  For in every one of our brothers and sisters, especially the least, the most vulnerable, the defenceless and those in need, God's very image is found.  Indeed, with the scraps of his frail humanity, the Lord will shape his final work of art.  For 'what endures, what has value in life, what riches do not disappear?  Surely these two:  the Lord and our neighbor.  These two riches do not disappear" (61).