Path to HappinessMorality

October 2009Church of the Resurrection

Overview

• Prayer

• Age specific learning

• Parents-children come together

• Prayer around baptismal font

Question

• When you hear the word morality what thoughts or words come to mind?

Resources

• Bible

• Catechism of the Catholic Church

• Fr. Michael Himes, St. Anthony Messenger Press

• Fr. Bob Horihan

• Echoes of Faith Plus-Catholic

Morality (DVD)

Moral life

• The moral life is a call to fullness of life in Christ

• The goal of the moral life is happiness through union with God

• Everyday life is the subject of moral theology

Definition

• Definition of Christian Morality 1 John 4:10-11, 19

• Starts with God’s initiative (creation)

• Our part is a response to God

• We love God (2nd)

• Response to a gift

Desire for Happiness

• Nothing wrong with wanting to be happy

• CCC 1718- desire for happiness is of divine origin

• God has placed it in the human heart

Desire for God

• CCC- 27 – The desire for God is written in the human heart, because we are created by God for God; and God never ceases to draw us to himself. Only in God will we find the truth and happiness we never stop searching for.

• Do you desire God in this way?

Desire for God

• The dignity of humanity rests above all on the fact we are called to communion with God. The invitation to converse with God is addressed to us as soon as we come into being. For if we exist it is because God created us through love, and through love continues to hold us in existence. We cannot live truthfully unless we acknow-ledge God’s love and entrust ourselves to the creator. Vatican II, p.918, para.19

Dignity of the Human Person

• CCC -308- For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Far from diminishing the creatures dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God’s power, wisdom, and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for “without a Creator the creature vanishes.” Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God’s grace.

Image of God

• Only in recognizing the value and worth of oneself and of all other human beings can one genuinely love God.

• JP II said, Christianity is an attitude of “deep amazement’ at the human persons worth and dignity (M. Himes)

Image of God

• The Pope captures something absolutely central to our faith. To sum it up in a single phrase, we can do no better than the words of St. Irenaeus, who wrote “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” This claim of Ireneaus is rooted in the incarnation. God emptied Himself and became like us in all things except sin. If we are to be like God we must be fully human, because God has chosen to become like us.

Catechesis

• CCC 1697 – Catechesis has to reveal in all clarity and joy the demands of the way of Christ. Catechesis involves many parts: catechesis of the Holy Spirit, of grace, of sin and forgiveness, of the human virtues, virtues of faith, hope and love, of the commandment of charity and the one we will focus on tonight - the catechesis of the beatitudes

Beatitudes

• The Beatitudes are paths to human happiness, tasted in this life and fulfilled in the next

• Jesus tells us that these guideposts lead to fullness of life

• Jesus describes a life of self giving love as the path to true happiness

Beatitudes

• CCC 1716- The Beatitudes are at the heart of Jesus’ preaching. They take up the promises made to the chosen people since Abraham. The Beatitudes fulfill the promises by ordering them no longer merely to possession of territory, but to the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt. 5:1-12) The Beatitudes respond to the desire for happiness that God has placed in the human heart

Beatitudes

• Why are the poor in spirit, they who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, clean of heart and peacemakers blessed?

Beatitudes

• CCC 1717- The Beatitudes express the vocation of the faithful associated with the glory of his Passion and Resurrection; they shed light on the actions and attitudes characteristic of the Christian life; they are the paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulations; they proclaim the blessings and rewards already secured for Christ’s disciples, they have begun in the lives of Mary and saints.

Beatitudes

• CCC 1719- The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God calls us to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual personally, but also to the Church as a whole, the new people made up of those who have accepted the promise and live in the faith.

Christian Beatitude

• CCC 1720 – The NT uses several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls us:

• the coming of the Kingdom of God• the vision of God: ”Blessed are the

pure of heart, for they shall see God”.

• entering into the joy of the Lord• entering into God’s rest

Kingdom of Heaven

• Page 885 CCC

Beatitude

• What is it?

• Happiness or blessedness, especially the eternal happiness of heaven, which is described as the vision of God, or entering into God’s rest by those whom He makes “partakers of the divine nature.”

Christian Beatitude

• CCC 1721 – God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him, and so come to paradise. Beatitudes makes us “partakers of the divine nature” and of eternal life. With beatitude, humanity enters into the glory of Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life.

Christian Beatitude

• CCC 1722 – Such Beatitude surpasses our understanding. It comes from an entirely free gift of God: whence it is called supernatural, as is the grace that disposes us to enter into divine joy.

Moral Choices

• CCC 1723 – The beatitude we are promised confronts us with decisive moral choices. It invites us to purify our hearts of bad instincts and to seek the love of God above all else. It teaches us that true happiness is not found in riches or well-being, in human fame or power, or in any human achievement, however beneficial it may be, but in God alone, the source of every good and of all love

Desire for Happiness

• CCC 1718 – The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has places it in the human heart in order to draw us to the One who alone can fulfill it.

• St. Thomas Aquinas – “God alone satisfies”

Summary

• The moral life is a call to fullness of life in Christ

• The goal of the moral life is happiness through union with God

• Everyday life is the subject of moral theology

William Mattison, PhD, Asst. Prof. in Moral Theology, Catholic University of America.

• Next Parish Night–Nov. 8,9 and 11

–Free to Choose

–What was I thinking?

–Free will & Conscience

• Going Deeper–October 21, 6:30 PM

–MS/HS: On the Path

–Adults: What is Morality?