CFC [P.211 - 215]

and weekly Eucharist celebrations. Our parish liturgy is a “school” which helps form our affections on the model of Christ’s own affectivity. But most of all, it is through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit whom our heavenly Father sends us, that our affections are ever more closely conformed to the image of His Son (cf. Rom 8:29).

       In summary, faith gives rise to and calls for a consistent life commitment. Through moral life, especially our works of charity, our faith becomes a confession, a witness before God and our neighbors of our gift of self, like that of Jesus, the Source, Model and Means of our moral life (cf. VS 89).

A.   The Kingdom of God

739.     Having sketched the general relationship between Christian Faith and Morality, we now focus on the essentials of Christian moral living. They are neatly summarized in the “Kingdom of God,” the central image of Christ’s teaching in the Gospels. Jesus opened his public ministry by proclaiming: “The Reign of God is at hand! Reform your lives and believe in the Gospel!” (Mk 1:15). In this basic proclamation, there is, first, the condition for entry into the Kingdom: repentance. As sinners, our first step must always be reform of life. Second is the nature of membership in the Kingdom: discipleship, or the following of Christ. Third is the life characteristic of the Kingdom: love. Fourth, the Kingdom’s norm, is the New Law of the Spirit. Lastly, the charter of the Kingdom is set forth in the Beatitudes.

740.     Repentance. In our praying for the coming of the Kingdom in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask “forgive us the wrong we have done . . . deliver us from the Evil One” (cf. Mt 6:9-13). John the Baptist prepared for the kingdom by “proclaiming a baptism of repentance which led to the forgiveness of sins” (Lk 3:3). The repentance needed for the Kingdom demands a total personal conversion, a change of life-style and of priorities. “I assure you, unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the Kingdom of God” (Mt 18:3). As Nico-demus learned, this is impossible “without being born of water and Spirit” (Jn 3:5). Thus we who are “baptized into Christ Jesus are baptized into his death . . . so that we might be slaves to sin no longer

. . . but dead to sin, alive for God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:3, 6, 11).

       Conversion is the first and perduring condition for Christian moral living. However, as PCP II makes plain, it cannot be merely a private, individualistic turning to God, but must entail commitment to “social transformation” (cf. PCP II 271-76).

741.     Discipleship. The preceding chapter dealt with the personal factors in following Christ: the human person, responsible freedom, conscience. But what does this “following Christ” entail? PCP II stressed the theme of “discipleship”: responding to the Call of Christ, in his Community, the Church (cf. PCP II 64-153). Perhaps the sharpest Scriptural description is contained in Christ’s “Gospel Paradox,” found in all four Gospels: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save it” (Mk 8:35). At the Last Supper Christ told his disciples: “Let the greater among you be as the younger, the leader as the servant. I am among you as the one who serves” (Lk 22:26f). Christ commissioned his disciples to carry on his work (cf. Mt 28:19f), allowing no interference: “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God. . . Whoever puts his hand to the plow but keeps looking back is unfit for the Kingdom of God” (Lk 9:60-62). Personal commitment to being Christ’s disciple is the key to all Christian morality.

742.     Love. The life that is love in the Kingdom of God is first of all “not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and sent His Son as an offering for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). The basis for moral living, then, is not our good intentions or efforts, but rather the incredible fact of God’s love for us. Now, since “God has loved us so, we must have the same love for one another” (1 Jn 4:11), a love that is “forgiving” (cf. Eph 4:32), universal, “for all” (cf. 1 Thes 3:12), and necessary, for without love we are merely “a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal” (cf. 1 Cor 13:1). Two direct effects of this love are fellowship (koinonia) and service (diakonia). Fulfilling the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Rom 13:9) creates community fellowship, the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor 13:13). So too we bear one another’s burdens and serve “in all humility” (Acts 20:19), “in the newness of the Spirit” (Rom 7:6).

743.     New Law. Before the New Law of the Kingdom, the Christian cannot have a legalistic attitude, but must have a filial one. He acts neither out of fear, like a slave, nor out of calculation, like a businessman; but out of love like a child. He knows he must do everything possible to respond to the love of the one who “loved us first” (1 Jn 4:19). The rule of the Kingdom interiorized the old prescriptions, forbidding not just killing, but even anger; not only adultery, but even lustful looks; not just false oaths, but even swear words (cf. Mt 5:22, 28, 34). It is not external show but the “quality of the heart” that matters. “What emerges from within a man, that and nothing else, is what defiles” (Mk 7:20). The “weightier matters of the law ^__ justice and mercy and fidelity” (Mt 23:23) are what count for Christian moral living. The norm is: “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all [other] things will be given besides” (Mt 6:33).

744.     The Beatitudes. At the start of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ laid down the charter or “marks” of the Kingdom — a new, mysterious life-giving vision (cf. PCP II 272, 276). The beatitudes are not a series of commands: be merciful! act as peacemakers! Rather they picture for us the face of Christ in sketching the vocation of every disciple of Christ, drawn to share in his Passion and Resurrection. They spotlight the essential qualities, actions, and attitudes of Christian living; they offer the paradoxical promises which sustain hope in our tribulations; they announce the blessings and reward already obscurely experienced by the faithful and manifested in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints (cf. CCC 1717).

745.     The blessings of the Kingdom are promised to the poor and the powerless; to the gentle and the afflicted; to those who seek eagerly for a righteousness beyond external observance; to the compassionate and the pure-hearted; to those who turn from violence and seek reconciliation. To these Jesus promises a unique type of happiness: to inherit God’s Kingdom, to possess the earth, to be a child of God, to receive mercy, to see God. This sharp contrast with the secular values of the world will be taken up in the next chapter.

B.    Response to the Kingdom

746.     Christian moral life has often been presented in terms of a Call-Response pattern. The Kingdom of God just described has provided a particularly good picture of God’s call. In similar fashion, the response to the Kingdom can be sketched as three dimensional: respect for the worth of others; solidarity with all; and fidelity to God and to one another.

747.     First, respect for one another (cf. CCC 1929-33). As members of God’s Kingdom our dignity and intrinsic worth comes from God. Therefore Paul exhorts us: “Love one another with the affection of brothers . . . Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same regard for all; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly” (Rom 12:10-16). “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each of you looking to others’ interests rather than his own” (Phil 2:3-4).

748.     Second, solidarity, “the firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the good of all and of each individual because we are all really responsible for all” (SRS 38). This means that we cannot even offer true worship to God unless we “go first to be reconciled with your brother” (cf. Mt 5:24). This solidarity “helps us to see the ‘other’ ^__ whether a person, people or nation ^__ not just as some kind of instrument, . . . but as our ‘neighbor,’ a ‘helper’ to be made a sharer on a par with ourselves in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God” (cf. SRS 39; CCC 1939-42).

749.     Third, fidelity to God and to one another. It is to the faithful disciple that the joy of the Kingdom is granted: “Well done my good and faithful servant . . . come share your Master’s joy” (Mt 25:21). But this fidelity demands watchfulness and prayer:

Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith, realizing that the brotherhood of believers is undergoing the same sufferings throughout the world” (1 Pt 5:8-9).

750.     The life-or-death importance of this fidelity or trustworthiness is portrayed in the biblical stories of the two gardens. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent sows the seed of distrust, and Adam and Eve prove unfaithful to God and to each other (cf. Gn 3). In the other garden, Gethsemane, betrayed by Judas, Christ remains faithful to his Father and to his mission of saving all by the blood of his Cross (cf. Mk 14:32-42; Col 1:20). However, our human experience of fidelity is not a once-and-for-all reality, but a continuing challenge with consequences. The betrayals of Judas and Peter clearly illustrate this dimension: Judas’ infidelity led him to suicide (cf. Mt 27:5), while Peter’s opened him to repentance, forgiveness and renewed commitment (cf. Jn 21:15-19).

751.     Filipinos schooled in the traditional catechesis have been taught to view this fidelity to God and neighbor in terms of VIRTUES. Today great stress is placed on VALUE FORMATION. Both come to much the same thing, if our moral values are recognized as “fruits” of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (cf. Gal 5:22f). Moreover the basic human values of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance (the “cardinal virtues”) are strengthened by the grace and Gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord (cf. Is 11:2), and grounded and purified by the “theological virtues” of Faith, Hope and Charity (cf. CCC 1804-32).

752.     PCP II adds an important note in emphasizing the need to study “how the values that we have from our Christian faith can strengthen the good in our cultural values or correct what is excessive in them and supply for their deficiencies” (PCP II 22).

C.   Parables of the Kingdom

753.     We conclude this section on the Kingdom of God and Christian moral life with two of Christ’s parables. In comparing the Kingdom to a treasure buried in a field and to a pearl of great price (cf. Mt 13:44-46), Christ indicated something of the structure of the moral response called for in the Kingdom. Both parables manifest the same threefold pattern: first, discovery; second, divesting oneself of everything (selling); thirdly, action (buying). This sketches a moral response of:

a) An alert open-mindedness that discovers where the Spirit is at work building up God’s Kingdom. [“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”]

b) A metanoia or conversion that transforms the whole person. [“Reform your lives!”]

c)  Responsible attitudes and actions, cooperating with God’s grace for the common good of all. [“Believe in the Gospel!”] (Mk 1:15).

II. The Church and Morality

754.     Church as Context. The response to the Kingdom is not made alone. The task of becoming authentic disciples of Jesus Christ in word and deed can only be accomplished in community. The Church, the Christian community, supports us with the ministry of God’s Word and of the Sacraments (cf. CCC 2030). Christian moral teaching looks to God’s abiding word as its unfailing source and guide. The Word of God, including Scripture and the living Tradition of the Church, is a fount of constant inspiration and new life.