What I just did was to give you an example: as I have done, so you must do. (Jn 13:15)
But only God, who created man to His own image and ransomed him from sin, provides a fully adequate answer to [mans basic] questions. . . revealed in Christ His Son who became man. Whoever follows after Christ, the perfect man, becomes himself more of a man. (GS 41)
OPENING
674. For Christians, moral living is simply following Christ. Yet when morality is mentioned, the first thing we often think about is laws, commandments, a series of donts, and dire punishments if we fail. But Christian Faith is more than a set of truths to be believed; it is the way of Christ which leads to life (cf. CCC 1696). It is the Gospel of Christ believed and lived which will decide our destiny as Christians. Fullness of life here on earth means that, in all the innumerable actions, events and problems of daily life, we walk with Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6).
675. Christian moral life, then, is about the Gospel. It is about growing in love and holiness. It is the process of becoming authentically human (cf. RH 14). The Christian moral person is one who experiences the liberating and transforming presence of Christ, through the grace of his Spirit (cf. 2 Cor 3:17; Jn 8:32). From this experience, Christians commit themselves, in their moral attitudes, decisions, and acts, to the ongoing process of liberating and transforming men and women into disciples of Christ. For Christ is he from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and toward whom our journey leads us (LG 3). Thus the world may be filled with the spirit of Christ and may more effectively attain its destiny in justice, in love and in peace (LG 36). This is developed in the PCP II in terms of social transformation (cf. PCP II 256-74, 435-38).
676. But we soon find that this following of Christ is not easy __ life is full of challenges. From the very dawn of history human beings, enticed by the evil one, abused their freedom. They set themselves against God and sought to find fulfillment apart from God. . . . Their senseless minds were darkened and they served the creature rather than the Creator (GS 13; cf. CCC 1707).
677. Left to ourselves, we have no power to fulfill Christs command: Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48). Yet God strengthens us by letting us share the life of Christ Jesus, through the Holy Spirit received in Baptism (cf. Rom 6:4). This Spirit, in uniting us to Christ, our risen Savior, as members of his Body, the Church, liberates and empowers us with new life to respond in our daily words and deeds to Gods love (cf. CCC 1742). Thus, as disciples of Christ, mutually supporting one another through the grace of the Holy Spirit, we come to exercise responsible freedom according to Gods loving design, as grasped by our gradually formed Christian conscience.
678. This chapter proposes the constitutive elements of personal Christian moral living: the moral agent, human persons; our basic dignity in freedom and in personal moral responsibility; governed by our conscience, the inner guide for moral growth in virtue, through the example of Christ, the grace of the Spirit, and the Fathers loving mercy (cf. CCC 1700-9).
CONTEXT
679. We, Catholic Filipinos, constituting more than 82% of our population, are rightly proud of our Christian faith. We are especially fond of religious processions, novenas and numerous devotions to Christ our Savior, to Mary and the other Saints. Our churches are crowded on Sundays and special fiestas. Moreover, recent religious movements in our country such as the Cursillo, the Charismatic renewal, the Focolare, and the like, have clearly shown a widespread yearning for closer union with Christ. A great number of Filipinos are seeking ways to draw closer to Christ their Lord.
680. Yet this yearning for spiritual intimacy with Jesus often does not seem to touch the daily words and actions of some devotees. Their piety frequently fails to produce acts of loving service, forgiveness and sacrifice. How can many pious Church-members continue to act as abusive landlords, usurers, oppressive employers, or unreliable employees? Why do many graduates of our best Catholic schools turn out to be corrupt government officials, unfaithful husbands and wives, or cheating businessmen? There seems to be a serious gap between external ritual expression of Christian Faith, and authentic discipleship: following Christ in action.
681. Genuine Christian piety, of course, inspires true Christian witness and service. But in the Philippines today, the challenge of authentic Christian witness demands two things: a) interiorly, that Filipino Catholics break through external ritualism and social conformism to interiorize their devotional prayer and sacramental worship deeply into their very selves (kalooban); b) exteriorly, to commit themselves to Jesus Christ and to all he stands for, in daily practice of the faith according to Catholic moral principles and the guidance of the teaching Church.
EXPOSITION
I. Moral Agent: The Human Person
682. Christian moral life is simply the call to become loving persons, in the fullness of life-with-others-in-community before God, in imitation of Jesus Christ. The key to moral life, then, is the human person, considered in the light of both reason and faith. All human rights, personal and social, all moral duties and responsibilities, all virtues and moral character __ all depend directly on the answers we give to the questions: who am I as a person in community? as a disciple of Jesus Christ, in his Church? In the words of PCP II: How to live as Filipino Christians in our situation of lights and shadows? (PCP II 35)
683. This sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man (DH 1). The inviolable dignity of every human person. . . is the most precious possession of an individual, [whose] value comes not from what a person has as much as from what a person is (CL 37). Hence the pivotal point of our total presentation will be the human person, whole and entire, body and soul, heart and conscience, mind and will (GS 3). But just who or what IS the human person according to reason and Christian Faith?
684. Persons in Christ. For Christians, the answer can only be grounded on Jesus Christ himself. In Christ and through Christ, we have acquired full awareness of our dignity, of the heights to which we are raised, of the surpassing worth of our own humanity, and of the meaning of our existence (RH 11). For by his incarnation, the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every person (GS 22).
