Question: (Peter John)
I am a layperson doing a course in Catholic theology. Could you please help me to understand the role of the Trinitarian God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), on the one hand, and the role of the human person, on the other hand, in the mission of salvation?

Answer:
Thank you for your complex question! Catholic Spirituality has a threefold dimension:
(i) The Goal addressed to us is that one is called to build the Kingdom of God as Children of the Father.
(ii) The Way to be followed involves Christian Discipleship in the Imitation of Jesus Christ in the Church.
(iii) The Means involves a life which is open to the Workings of the Indwelling Spirit.
Coming now to specifics:

– The ‘Abba’ Dimension of Catholic Spirituality
In the first place, Spirituality involves a way of looking at God as Abba. The scholar Joachim Jeremias in his well-known study: The Central Message of the New Testament, observes that in the entire Old Testament, God is called “Father” barely sixteen times. In contrast to this, God is called “Father” in the New Testament about a hundred and seventy times! And what is more! He is called ‘Abba’ – reminiscent of the babbling sound uttered by a little child who is just learning to speak! Now, what does this imply? In the first place, it involves an experience of Intimacy and Communion with God – insightfully articulated in Mt 11:27: “No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” Furthermore, it presupposes a Total Trust (an attitude of self-surrender), beautifully expressed in: Mk 14:36: “Abba my Father let this chalice pass from me. Not my will but thine be done.”

Secondly, it calls for a new way of understanding the precept: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” People generally take this commandment to merely signify that one should do to others what we would wish to be done to ourselves. But, this precept calls for something more fundamental. It asks us to “view” the other person as we view ourselves. How do we view ourselves? We know ourselves “from within.” We know our attitudes, our struggles, our crises etc.; as a consequence, we are able to understand ourselves adequately. Unfortunately, more often than not, this is not the case when our neighbours are concerned. We view them from the outside. We see their actions; but do not understand them. This Christian commandment of love therefore chalks out a programme of radical involvement in the lives of others and commitment to them. As the character Fr Zozima in the well-known novel of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov puts it: “To be a Christian is to be responsible to everyone for everyone in everything.”

Finally, it calls for a new way of looking at the world. Admittedly, the world does confront us with problems and challenges; nevertheless the world is not “evil.” It is to be remembered that the Bible in Genesis 1:1-31, calls creation “good” no less than seven times.

The Universal Paradigm of Catholic Spirituality: Jesus Christ
Christian Spirituality, further, involves accepting the Centrality of Jesus Christ in our lives. But, how is one to respond to this challenge? There tends to be a considerable amount of extrinsicism. In other words, we know that Christ is important. But, often, we do not manage to fit Him into our lives?

In this regard, there is the profound understanding of Jesus Christ given us by the theological genius: Karl Rahner. He refers to Jesus Christ as: “God’s Answer to the Human Quest and Question.” In Jesus Christ, we find the answers to the deepest problems which trouble every human being. Jesus Christ is not only “the Son of God to whom we pray,” but also “the authentic human being whom every one of us is called to imitate.”

The Pneumatological Dimension: Growth in the Life of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is truly God; He unites us to Christ; He brings about our divine sonship; He is the principle of everlasting life in the Resurrection, the source of all Christian life. He is simply God working the mystery of salvation in the intimate sphere of the human being. The Holy Spirit dwells in us. Christian life consists in being open to the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. The paradigm that I have in mind here is Christian life as understood in the Pauline writings.

Coming now to details:
(i) The Issue – The Tension between the Indicative and the Imperative
In the exhortatory sections of the Letters of St Paul, one is faced with the issue of what has been called: the Tension between the Indicative and the Imperative. On the one hand, Faith and Baptism unite one to the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. One who thus belongs to Christ is no more of the “flesh” – the Indicative. But, and here lies the problem, Paul’s exhortations – the Imperative – seem to imply that, that the “flesh” is still drawing the baptized Christian. These types of seemingly contradictory texts abound in Paul and they cannot be lightly dismissed.

It is in the context of Salvation History that one needs to situate the ethical doctrine of Paul if one wants to grasp its dynamism and originality.

Moral life for Paul has been sometimes termed an Unfolding of Gratitude, in the light of Ephesians 4:1: “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Christian Life involves conformity with Jesus Christ and participation in His mysteries. Those called to partake of the great Christian Mystery must lead a life worthy of their calling. This participation begins with Faith and Baptism which unite one to the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This new relationship is not merely ethical, that is to say, a rule of conduct, but ontological. The radical discontinuity between the new mode of existence and the old is graphically expressed by Paul when he says: “You who are dead…God has made you alive.” The baptized Christian has become a New Creature and it is really Christ who lives in him.

Sanctification in the mind of Paul is not an undertaking to produce sanctity. The Imperative does not apply in spite of the Indicative; but rather the promise of salvation springs from it. Ethics is not a “Guide to Blessedness,” but an “Instruction for Saints.”

Hence, the initial entry into this New Life must not be considered simply as a God-given state to which the Christian, in consideration of this dignity should bring his own efforts to bear. This would imply that human effort is something which is added to God. The Indicative-Imperative contrast, instead, should be understood in a deeper sense, whereby God continues consecrating the Christian through the space which separates him from final union with Christ. The Imperative certainly follows from the Indicative, but in such a way that it is God Himself who creates also the willing and accomplishing.

This God does by means of the Holy Spirit. In virtue of their conversion, the baptized faithful are endowed with an internal principle, the Spirit of Christ, so that, to be in Christ necessarily implies being under the influence of the dynamic and transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit enables one to know the will of God and apply it in one’s own daily life. Hence, the baptized has in himself the law of grace inscribed in his heart which directs his spontaneity and fervour.

If this is the case, what are the Imperatives? They betray the recognition that, in the present age, the Holy Spirit has not yet been given in its fullness. The new freedom of the Christian can degenerate into a base of operations for the “flesh”; since, even after conversion, there remains a tension between the “flesh” and he Holy Spirit. Moral activity consists in allowing oneself to be moved by the Spirit.

(ii) Description of Christian Life
Paul’s notion of liberty is a religious notion. The issue is not the formal structure of free will, but the concrete factors of sin and the flesh and human freedom from these. Freedom from these powers is best described in the context of the “once” and the “now” – the act of liberation. Christian liberty is not just another virtue, but the Christian life itself as effected by the Holy Spirit.

It is not a question of attempting to explain the ultimately impenetrable le mystery of the cooperation between God and the free human being. What Paul says is that the baptized people is not longer under the slavery of the flesh, but under the power of the Spirit; and as such must fasten his gaze on the horizons of the Spirit and not disregard His promptings. The Spirit of God at work in us does not lead us to an ethics of personality in which the moral ego rests in itself and finds happiness therein, but to active participation in the community.

The highest expression of Christian liberty is love. Love is not a moral principle to be applied in each individual case; but it is the gift of salvation to be realized on each occasion. The virtues attributed to the New Man are all other-oriented. The gifts of the Spirit are only for the profit of all and the growth of the body of Christ is accomplished in love.

Hence, the Imperatives are directly related to Paul’s understanding of conversion as a transition from an ego-centric to an other-directed mode of being. Their function w was to enable the Christian to interpret his conversion in terms of practical living.

In Paul, Christ is envisaged as filling the entire universe from the highest to the lowest reaches that “He might fully impart all graces”. Christ the Head and Source of this life, accomplishes this filling up both in His Body (the Church) and through it. The purpose of Christ’s filling all the universe with His gifts is to perfect the Christians in order that they may be able to accomplish the great work of service to be rendered in the Church, so that they may build up the Total Body of Christ. Therefore each Christian’s activity is a vital part of a whole process that is progressing towards a goal which will assuredly one day be reached. It does matter what the individual members and the total Church community do. For they are the ministers used by Christ to attain His pleroma – or in other words -the fullness of all creatures who thereby will have attained the end for which God has created them. Through this body of Christified persons, Christ reaches the rest of humankind and the material universe.

This fundamental paradigm of Christian Spirituality is concretely expressed in its different Trinitarian articulations:
(1) Building the Kingdom of God as Children of the Father (From the Father).
(2) Christian Discipleship as the Imitation of Christ(Through the Son).
(3) Moral life as Docility to the Holy Spirit (In the Spirit).

Dominic Veliath SDB