Preface to “The Christian Call for Personal Sanctification”

Jesus calls us to follow Him and to be perfect, even as His heavenly Father is perfect. Through Baptism we die to sin and rise to a new kind of life, one made possible by our union with Jesus, true God and true Man.

This call to sanctity, to holiness, to perfection, is addressed to all Christians, men and women, young and old, lay and religious, to bishops, priests and the ordinary faithful. This glorious truth is at the heart of the New Testament. This truth, moreover, has been emphasized again and again by the Magisterium of the Church over the centuries.

Earlier volumes in this series, especially Volume III, on “The Church” and Volume IV, on “Marriage, Family and Sexuality,” have included wonderful magisterial documents proclaiming this truth, in particular key documents of Vatican Council II and the apostolic exhortation of Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World) and Christifideles Laici (The Role of the Lay Faithful in the Church). This volume includes other important magisterial teachings on this topic from the time of Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century to the present.

The matter may be put this way: through Baptism, we die to sin and rise to a new life in Christ. We are “regenerated” and made to be truly children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. We are literally made members of the divine family, sharing through the grace of God His very own nature, just as Jesus truly shared our nature.

Because of our Baptism, we are called to follow Jesus and to share in His redemptive work, to make up in our lives what is lacking in His suffering for the sake of His body, the Church (Col. 1:24). Just as the will of Jesus was to do what was pleasing to His Father, so too should this be our will, for with Jesus we too can call His Father our Father. We are invited to union with Jesus, His Father, and the Spirit. This indeed is our glorious vocation. We thus must walk worthily in the vocation to which we have been called. This means that we are to be holy, to be perfect, to be persons who not only avoid mortal sin, but do our utmost to root out deliberate venial sin and imperfections so that we too can be, in truth, ambassadors of God to the world in which we live.

The Second Vatican Council has insisted strongly upon the universal vocation to holiness, especially in chapter V of the Dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium, which concludes with a completely demanding affirmation: “All the faithful are called and required to strive toward sanctity and perfection proper to their state in life.” (n. 42) Council teaching categorically rejects that vision of the life of the Christian in which holiness seems a goal reserved to the very few who are called to reach it through rather extraordinary ways.

The Council responds to this distorted and simplistic vision: “...it is therefore evident that all the faithful of whatever state and condition are called to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of charity.” (n. 40) This doctrine of the call of all to sanctity in the fulfillment of daily responsibilities to God and neighbor was qualified by Paul VI as “the characteristic mark of the conciliar magisterium of Vatican II and as its ultimate finality.” (Motu Proprio, “Sanctitas Clarior” of March 19, 1969)

In speaking of this holiness and the task entrusted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, John Paul II has written: “In these years canonizations and beatifications have multiplied. They manifest the liveliness of the local Churches which are much more numerous today than in the early centuries and the first millennium. The greatest homage that all the Churches will render to Christ on the threshold of the third millennium will be the demonstration of the all-powerful presence of the Redeemer through the fruits of Faith, Hope and Charity in men and women of all languages and races, who have followed Christ in the various forms of the Christian vocation.” (apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adventiente of November 10, 1994, n. 37)

These truths are developed in the documents whose Précis are given in this volume. Those who read it will see that they are challenged, as Pope John Paul II has said so eloquently, to develop a civilization of love, to resist the “culture of death” and to sow the seeds of the “culture of life” in the world in which they live. God Himself honors them by asking them to be His co-workers in redeeming the world. This is the call to perfection.

We are grateful to Catholics Committed to Support the Pope for these invaluable volumes of Catholic teaching. I join His Eminence Cardinal James A. Hickey in encouraging clergy, religious and seminarians to read the volumes often and study them carefully.

Archbishop Alberto Bovone
Pro-Prefect
Congregation for the Causes of Saints