My dear parishioners,
Peace! In other bulletins (4 December, 2016-11 June, 2017) we have considered the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on “conscience.” We then turned to Saint John Paul II’s encyclical letter Veritatis splendor (6 August, 1993) which addresses fundamental moral issues, including “conscience” more than one hundred times. These reflections were begun earlier (6 April, 2018-30 May, 2018). Here we now consider a passage from Veritatis splendor, 64.
Saint John Paul II (+2005) when considering the “seeking what is true and good” reminds us that “a continuous conversion to what is true and to what is good” is part of the call of the Lord Jesus “to form our conscience” in Matthew 6:22-23 (“if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light…”).
The Holy Father here invokes the transcendentals: one, good, true, even if omitting “the beautiful.” The transcendentals (one, good, true, beautiful) have been recognized as metaphysical terms flowing from and leading back to the first Being whom believers call God, the necessary Being (e.g. Aristotle Metaphysics 1003a32, 1052b16). God is one. God is good. God is true. God is beautiful. What God has made is likewise good, true and beautiful. There is a certain unity or oneness in creation. Sin or the disregarding of the Natural Law disfigures, is contrary to good morals, and divides. Once we are more attuned to the transcendentals we are on the right path toward a well-formed conscience and God.
The Holy Father recognizes the need for continuous conversion. Our lives are not “one and done” in the moral sphere. Someone who would say “I have been baptized, that is all I need” or “I have been to confession once, I don’t ever need to go again…” or “I have chosen Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior” and yet lives disorderly misses the point. The Lord’s call to conversion is not one and done, He calls us to “do penance” (Matthew 3:2; 4:17), to “repent and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). The Lord’s call to conversion, holiness, and perfection, does not negate that only God is perfect (cf. Matthew 5:48; 19:17; Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19; Romans 3:23). His grace, especially administered in the sacraments, perfects us little by little (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:9).
The importance of the formation of conscience is highlighted here by the Holy Father. Just as conversion is not “one and done” so too the formation of conscience. While sins against the truth, lies, calumny, detraction, slander are all denounced in Sacred Scripture, doing so on Facebook or Twitter could not be denounced until 2004 and 2006 respectively (cf. Colossians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 6:8; James 4:11; Jeremiah 6:28; 9:4; Ezekiel 22:9; Proverbs 11:13). We form our conscience well before the Cross upon which the Lord Jesus died for our sins, before the Commandments of God and the Beatitudes as well as the corporal and spiritual works of mercy all found in Sacred Scripture.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr