Day 231: Our Calling (1691-1698)

• It’s Day 231!!

• PILLAR 3: HOW WE LIVE

• OUR CALLING

• Paragraph 1698 says, “The first and last point of reference of this catechesis will always be Jesus Christ himself, who is ‘the way, and the truth, and the life.’”

• EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE IN JESUS

• What is the high call of the Christian?

• Yes, we hear the Gospel proclaimed

• We are brought into communion with the Father through the Son, and the Holy Spirit through the sacraments

• We are called to live in this way

• We are called to live this new life

• We become children of God

• We have been filled with the Holy Spirit

• We are partakers of the divine nature

• And now we have to live a life worthy of the Gospel of Christ

• The Holy Spirit, God, gives us this gift

• He gives us the ability, by His grace, by the grace of Christ, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit

• BUT…

• We have to LEARN

• ANd that is why we are going to take these next steps for quite a while

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we give you thanks and praise. We thank you for yesterday. Thank you for Dr. Mary Healy. Thank you for not only, just, like we talked about when it came to marriage, the invitation and the challenge. When it comes to the Christian life, the invitation and the challenge, the blessing and the burden, the rights we have as sons and daughters of God, and the responsibilities we have as sons and daughters of God. God, thank you. Thank you. But also, please help us. Help us as we take these next steps to recognize our dignity, to recognize the high call, and to recognize your mercy when we fail, to recognize the ways in which we do need to be shaped, that our consciences do need to be formed, that we do need to be trained in this catechesis. Help us to be open to your Holy Spirit. Help us to be open to this high call. Help us to be open to both the conviction of sin and the conviction of mercy. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• PILLAR 3: HOW WE LIVE

• OUR CALLING

• This high call comes from what?

• The high call comes from God Himself and from the dignity with chich he’s given to us

• St. Leo the Great says in Paragraph 1691, “‘Christian, recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Never forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God.’”

• This is the beginning for what it is to live the life of the Christian

• This journey through the Catechism is information transfer

• We are trying to teach

• We are getting new information

• BUT…

• This is about vastly more than information transfer

• THIS IS ABOUT TRANSFORMATION!!

• We let the Church teach us what it is to believe, the Creed

• What is it we know about who God is and how He loves us, who we are, and what we are made for?

• We accept that

• The Church teaches

• God comes to us and reaches us in the sacraments

• We are healed in the sacraments

• We are united in the sacraments

• We serve in the sacraments

• BUT…

• We start this new challenging phase today

• Some people say, “I just don’t know if I can believe what the Church teaches.”

• Almost always they are not saying, “I don’t know if I can believe in the Trinity, that God is one nature, but three Divine persons.”

• They are not saying, “I can’t believe that Jesus is actually God. I can’t believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. I can’t believe that.”

• USUALLY IT IS ABOUT MORALITY!!

• When it comes to our struggle with faith, it is a greater challenge to put our faith in this revelation that God is Three Persons in one Divine Being

• That takes VASTLY MORE FAITH than any of these Commandments we are going to come up against

• The Commandments make sense to live

• Do not lie

• Do not bear false witness

• Yes, makes sense

• This morality is not challenging because it’s not believable

• It is challenging because we think a person could not possibly LIVE like this

• That is why over these next months we are going to be MASSIVELY PRAYING 

• Recognize your DIGNITY and that you have been rescued by Jesus from the power of darkness

• We are all called to live as children of God

• We are called to live a life WORTHY of the Gospel of Christ

• Paragraph 1692 says, “Coming to see in the faith their new dignity, Christians are called to lead henceforth a life ‘worthy of the gospel of Christ.’ They are made capable of doing so by the grace of Christ and the gifts of his Spirit, which they receive through the sacraments and through prayer.”

• We strive and we fall

• We go for it and we fail

• BUT…

• The Lord sustains us

• The Lord gives us His grace through the sacraments and through prayer

• We are called to live life in this way as well

• We are called to participate in the life of the Risen Lord

• Jesus has gone ahead of us

• He is our head

• We are His members

• Where He has gone, we need to follow

• THAT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY!!

• The way He lived in trusting, loving obedience to His Father, we are also called to live in that trusting, loving obedience to the Father

• The way of Christ is the way that leads to life

• There is a contrary way that leads to destruction

• Jesus makes it very clear in Matthew Ch 7 with the Parable of the two ways

• One leads to LIFE

• One leads to DESTRUCTION

• That is an expansion of Deuteronomy Ch 30

• There are two ways before us are placed life and death, blessing and a curse

• God says, “Choose life, therefore, that you and your descendants may have life.”

• In the Didache, the teaching of the Apostles, it says, “There are two ways-the one of life, the other of death. But between the two, there is a great difference.”

• Paragraph 1697 says, “Catechesis has to reveal in all charity the joy and the demands of the way of Christ. Catechesis for the ‘newness of life’ in him should be: -a catechesis of the Holy Spirit, the interior Master of life according to Christ, a gentle guest and friend who inspires, guides, corrects, and strengthens this life; -a catechesis of grace, for it is by grace that we are saved and again it is by grace that our works can bear fruit for eternal life; -a catechesis of beatitudes, for the way of Christ is summed up in the beatitudes, the only path that leads to the eternal beatitude for which the human heart longs; -a catechesis of sin and forgiveness, for unless man acknowledges that he is a sinner he cannot know the truth about himself, which is a condition for acting justly; and without the offer of forgiveness he would not be able to bear this truth; -a catechesis of the human virtues which causes one to grasp the beauty and attraction of right disposition towards goodness; -a catechesis of the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity, generously inspired by the example of the saints; -a catechesis of the twofold commandment set forth in the Decalogue; -an ecclesial catechesis, for it is through the manifold exchanges of ‘spiritual goods’ in the ‘communion of saints’ that Christian life can grow, develop, and be communicated.”

• Dr. Healy talked about her own experience of being baptized in the Holy Spirit

• Having that come alive is part of that catechesis of the Holy Spirit and the catechesis of grace

• When we are talking about how we live, we sometimes forget that we can only live this way by God’s grace

• It is by GRACE that we are SAVED

• If you ever hear a non-Catholic Christian say, “Do you really believe that it is by grace that you are saved?”

• The answer is 100% YES

• BY GRACE, WE ARE SAVED THROUGH FAITH, WORKING ITSELF OUT IN LOVE

• “It is by grace that our works can bear fruit for eternal life.”

• Jesus said, “I am the vine. You are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing.”

• The beatitudes are the way of Christ

• It is the only way that leads to Heaven

• Do you know the truth about yourself?

• THe humble person is willing to be honest and tell the truth about themselves

• The proud person will never tell the truth about themselves

• The proud person is constantly on the defensive, unwilling to look at their strengths, and definitely unwilling to look at their flaws, unwilling to look at their sins

• BUT…

• If you are going to be a saint, if you even want to know the truth about yourself, we have to acknowledge that we are sinners

• We have to acknowledge that God loves us

• We have to acknowledge that God gives us mercy

• Every time a person goes to Confession, the first miracle is that they are convicted by their sins

• At the same time, the other conviction is of God’s mercy, that God loves them

• HOPE

• We need these dual convictions

• Without the first, we would PRESUME upon God’s grace

• We would PRESUME that we are going to Heaven

• We would be guilty of the SIN OF PRESUMPTION

• Without the second conviction that God is merciful, we would be OVERWHELMED

• We need the catechesis of sin AND forgiveness

• Every time we talk about sin, we are also going to talk about God’s grace

• Human virtues are strengths that we can develop by God’s grace and by discipline that help us to live this right way

• Justice

• Prudence

• Temperance

• Fortitude

• The Christian virtues are faith, hope, and love

• All these catechesis are given to us so that God can do something incredible in us and through us

• DO NOT BE AFRAID!!

• YOU BELONG TO GOD!!

• GOD LONGS FOR YOU!!

• God longs to use all that is in you as if it were His own, for the service and glory of the Father

• BE NOT AFRAID!!

• Whatever God asks of us, we will say YES

• Why?

• Philippians 1:21 says, “For me, to live is Christ. I died. I have been crucified. Therefore, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” 

• THIS IS GOING TO BE EXCITING!!

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT to see you tomorrow!!