Every baptised person is called to holiness

The Catholic Church teaches that holiness is not reserved for a spiritual elite. The Second Vatican Council declared in Lumen Gentium (Ch. 5) that all the faithful, whatever their condition of life, are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity. This means that the contemplative life — deep, transforming union with God — is not an optional extra for monks and nuns but the normal trajectory of every baptised soul. Dan Burke emphasises that this call is not merely theoretical. There is no standing still in the spiritual life: you are either moving toward God or drifting away. The call to holiness is a call to action, beginning with the daily practice of mental prayer. The great doctors of the Church — Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales — all teach this universal call. It was not invented at Vatican II; the Council simply affirmed what the tradition always held.

Catechism sources (PD) teaches:

After death we cannot merit, so our reward in Heaven will be just what we have secured up till the moment of our death; hence holiness is acquired in the Church.

(Source: baltimore_catechism.txt)

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches:

He goes to Jesus and entreats Him to come down; i.e. to exercise the condescension of His pity, and pardon his sins, before it is too late.

(Source: catena_aurea_john.txt)

Doctrinal Foundation

T4.G.008 (De fide (defined dogma)): God sincerely wills the salvation of all human beings. There is a universal salvific will in God which extends sufficient grace to all, including sinners and unbelievers.

• Scripture: Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
• Aquinas: God wills all men to be saved by His antecedent will, which is not simply the will, but the will in a certain respect.
• Fathers: God wills all men to be saved; but not so as to take away their free will.

T4.G.021 (De fide (defined dogma)): Faith is the theological virtue by which the intellect, moved by grace and under the command of the will, firmly assents to all that God has revealed — not because of the intrinsic evidence of the truths but on the authority of God Himself who reveals and who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

• Scripture: Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.
• Aquinas: The formal object of faith is the First Truth, as manifested in Holy Writ and the teaching of the Church.

T4.G.029 (sententia_certa): Actual grace is given even to sinners and to those who do not yet believe, in order to move them toward faith and conversion. No one is absolutely excluded from the possibility of receiving grace and attaining salvation.

• Scripture: Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

• Aquinas: God invites all to salvation, not only the just but also sinners. For He came not to call the just, but sinners.

• Fathers: God does not forsake those who have been once justified by His grace, unless He be first forsaken by them.

From the Sources

St. Thomas Aquinas (catena_aurea_john.txt):

He goes to Jesus and entreats Him to come down; i.e. to exercise the condescension of His pity, and pardon his sins, before it is too late. Our Lord answers; Go your way, i.e. advance in holiness, and then your son will live; but if you stop short in your course, you will destroy the power of understanding and doing right. 1. After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

St. Thomas Aquinas (catena_aurea_john.txt):

The Law called those who were mere men, gods; and if any man could bear the name religiously, and without arrogance, surely that man could, who was sanctified by the Father, in a sense in which none else is sanctified to the Sonship; as the blessed Paul said, Declared to be the Son, of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness. For or all this reply refers to Himself as man; the Son of God being also the Son of man. AUG. Or sanctified, i.e. in begetting, gave Him holiness, begat.

St. Teresa of Avila (book_of_foundations.txt):

We have now to explain how this came to pass. In August 1569, His Holiness S. Pius V made two Dominican friars visitors apostolic for four years of the Spanish Carmelites—Fray Pedro Fernandez visitor of Castille, and Fray Francisco de Vargas visitor of Andalucia.

St. Teresa of Avila (book_of_foundations.txt):

Meanwhile complaints had been carried to the general, and the re- form was spoken of as a great evil.

Additional Sources

St. John of the Cross (ascent_of_mount_carmel.txt):

The ruins of Hulne are in good preservation, while Aylesford is almost intact. Part of the building is of a more recent date, but a considerable portion of the original convent is still extant. Here, too, every hermit had a small house of his own, though they were all under the same roof. The doors opened on a quadrangle, the chapel occupied in . all probability the same place where in A.D. 1355 the present dwelling-house was erected.

St. John of the Cross (ascent_of_mount_carmel.txt):

From this time the Carmelites were numbered among the Mendicants—having previously been forbidden the acquisition of landed property—and entered upon the active life. Not that they renounced Contemplation altogether, for every form of religious life tends that way, but it no longer occupied the most pro- minent place in their lives.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MINISTERS HAVE VIOLATED THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.

I AM not now concerned to show how your ministers have degraded the holiness and majesty of the Spouse of Jesus Christ. They cry out loud and clear that she has remained eight hundred years adulterous and anti- christian, from S. Gregory to Wicliffe — whom Beza

St. Ignatius of Loyola (autobiography_oconor_1900.txt):

Ignatius was in the garden, I began to give him an account of my soul, and, among other things, I spoke to him of how I was tempted by vain glory. The spiritual advice he gave me was this: "Refer everything that you do to God; strive to offer Him all the good you find in yourself, acknowledging that this comes from God, and thank Him for it."

St. Ignatius of Loyola (autobiography_oconor_1900.txt):

The next day when I asked him when he wished to begin, he answered that I should remind him every day until he had an opportunity for it. As he could not find time, partly on account of his many occupations, he told me to remind him of it every Sunday.

Catechism sources (PD) (baltimore_catechism.txt):

After death we cannot merit, so our reward in Heaven will be just what we have secured up till the moment of our death; hence holiness is acquired in the Church Militant. How does the Church canonize a saint? Let us suppose some good man dies, and all his neighbors talk about his holy fife, how much he did for the poor, how he prayed, fasted, and mortified himself.

Catechism sources (PD) (baltimore_catechism.txt):

Heaven and might never enjoy what they lost; just as envious people do not wish others to have what they cannot have.

themselves.

44 Q. What befell Adam and Eve on account of their sin? A. Adam and Eve on account of their sin lost innocence and holiness, and were doomed to sickness and death.

They were innocent and holy because they were the friends of God and in a state of grace, but by their sin they lost His grace and friendship. "Doomed" means sentenced or condemned.