Here you will find the texts from the
Catechism of the Catholic Church cited or mentioned in the book Paths
of Love, as well as other texts from the Catechism relevant to vocation.
-
Commandments and Counsels
- The New Law is called a law of love
because it makes us
act out of the love infused by the Holy Spirit, rather than out of
fear;
a law of grace, because it confers the strength
of grace to act, by
means of faith and the sacraments; a law of freedom,
because it sets us
free from the ritual and juridical observances of the Old Law, inclines
us to act spontaneously through the prompting of charity and, finally,
makes
us pass from the condition of a servant who "does not know what his
master is doing" to that of a friend of Christ - "For all that I have
heard from my Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15) - or even
to the status
of son and heir. (n. 1972)
- Besides its precepts, the New Law also includes the
evangelical counsels. The traditional distinction between God’s
precepts and the evangelical counsels is drawn in relation to charity,
the perfection of Christian life. The precepts are intended to remove
whatever is incompatible with charity. The aim of the counsels is to
remove whatever might hinder the development of charity, even if it is
not contrary to it. (n. 1973)
- The evangelical counsels manifest the living fullness of
charity, which is never content with not giving more. They attest its
vitality and call forth our spiritual readiness. The perfection of the
New Law consists essentially in the precepts of love of God and
neighbor. The counsels point out the more direct ways, the readier
means, and should be practiced according to the vocation of
each person:
God does not want each person to observe all
the counsels, but only those that are appropriate to the diversity of
persons, times, occasions, and abilities, as charity requires; for it
is charity, as queen of all virtues, all commandments, all counsels,
and in short, of all laws and all Christian actions, that gives to all
of them their rank, order, time, and value. (St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God
VIII, 6.) (n. 1974)
-
God speaks through the voice of conscience
- Moral conscience, present in the heart of the person,
enjoins him at the appropriate time to do good and to avoid evil. It
also judges concrete choices, approving those that are good and
denouncing those that are evil. It testifies to the authority of
truth in reference to the supreme Good, to which the human person
experiences an attraction, and whose commandments it welcomes. When a
prudent man listens to his
conscience, he can hear God speaking. (n. 1777)
- Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human
person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going
to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed.
In all that he says or does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what
he
knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience
that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:
-
Conscience is the law of our mind; yet
[Christians] would not grant that
it is nothing more; I mean that it was not a dictate, nor conveyed the
notion of responsibility, of duty, of a threat and a promise.
. . . [Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both
in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and
rules us by his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of
Christ. (John Henry Cardinal Newman, "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,"
V, in Certain Difficulties felt
by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching II (London: Longmans
Green, 1885), 248). (n. 1778)
It is necessary for every person to be sufficiently
present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his
conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary
as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or
introspection:
Return to your conscience, question it.
. . . Turn
inward, brethren, and in everything you do, you will see God as your
witness. (St. Augustine, On 1 John 8, 9) (n. 1779)
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