Is the Universal Call to Holiness a New Teaching?

It is not uncommon to find the opinion that the Church has introduced a new understanding of what it means to be holy and who is called to it through Lumen Gentium’s teaching on the universal call to holiness. Oftentimes, this claim of novelty is explained in the following manner: before, the Church had always understood holiness as a calling reserved for the few set apart by God in an extraordinary way as, for example, cloistered nuns or monks; but now the Church has done away with that distinction and extended this calling to all of her members. This paper opposes such an opinion and demonstrates, through historical survey and theological analysis, that Lumen Gentium did not introduce a novel teaching on the call to holiness and that, in fact, quite the contrary is true: what the Council Fathers taught about it is rooted in Scripture and is consistent with an old and authoritative understanding of the nature of holiness and man’s calling to it. 

What does Vatican II teach about the universal call to holiness?

The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium, 1964) has a prominent position as a source for the Council’s thought on the universal call to holiness, having one of its chapters entirely devoted to this topic. Indeed, the first paragraph (§39) of Chapter V explains that “in the Church, everyone whether belonging to the hierarchy, or being cared for by it, is called to holiness, according to the saying of the Apostle: ‘For this is the will of God, your sanctification’.”¹ This calling, therefore, is universal. Holiness is not only expressed through the consecrated life, which requires the profession of the evangelical counsels, but it “is expressed in many ways in individuals, who in their walk of life, tend toward the perfection of charity, thus causing the edification of others[.]”² The practice of the counsels, whether professed in consecrated life or in private, is certainly “an outstanding witness and example” of holiness, but it is not the only form in which it can present itself in the Catholic Church.³ 

In the next paragraph (§40), the Council Fathers, besides showing that Christ Himself taught that all should strive for holiness of life, explain that the universality of the vocation is required by the very nature of the effects of the sacrament of baptism on the human soul. After all, if through baptism all faithful are made saints, “sons of God and sharers in the divine nature,” then “by God’s gift, they must hold on to and complete in their lives this holiness they have received.”⁴ Therefore, holiness is the initial condition of all re-created souls thanks to the graces of regeneration and justification freely granted by God through baptism, and since all members of the Church are supernaturally born as saints, they must live like saints and grow in holiness while they live — this is their calling. All Catholics are called to be holy not only because Christ taught it as a precept to all disciples, but also because they are made holy through baptism, a gift of new life in Christ that needs to be cared for and raised to maturity.

Paragraph 41 focuses on the various manifestations of holiness throughout the ranks of the Church and seems to be based on the following principle: if baptism gives all the faithful the gift of initial holiness and imposes upon all the equal obligation of preserving and growing it, the different vocations of the people of God are to be understood as special paths which each person follows to realize his own growth in the perfection of charity. Thus, after explaining that the ministry of bishops is to be conducted in close imitation of Christ, Lumen Gentium points out that “they ought to fulfill this duty in such a way that it will be the principal means also of their own sanctification.”⁵ The same idea is repeated in a different form in the paragraph that addresses the ministry of priesthood where it states that priests “by their very office of praying and offering sacrifice for their own people and the entire people of God, they should rise to greater holiness.”⁶ The poor, the infirm, and the persecuted are given, through their very hardships, their way to perfection, as they are “united with the suffering of Christ in a special way for the salvation of the world.”⁷ Finally, paragraph 41 ends with yet another reaffirmation of the same principle by teaching that “all Christ’s faithful, whatever be the conditions, duties or circumstances of their lives — and indeed through all these, will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate with the divine will.”⁸

If the previous paragraph concentrated on how each specific state and circumstance are ways to holiness, now paragraph 42 teaches a brief lesson on the means of sanctification that are common to all Catholics:  

. . . each one of the faithful must willingly hear the Word of God and accept His Will, and must complete what God has begun by their own actions with the help of God’s grace. These actions consist in the use of sacraments and in a special way the Eucharist, frequent participation in the sacred action of the Liturgy, application of oneself to prayer, self-abnegation, lively fraternal service and constant exercise of all the virtues.⁹

Finally, Lumen Gentium explains the special place reserved for martyrdom and the religious state of life as paths of holiness. Martyrdom is defined as “an exceptional gift,” given to few, by which a disciple of Christ is “transformed into an image of his Master by freely accepting death for the salvation of the world.”¹⁰ Equally special is the calling to devote one’s life to practicing the evangelical counsels — chastity in celibacy, poverty, and obedience. Taught and exemplified by Christ, advised by the Apostles and the Fathers, and highly honored by the Church, the counsels are a special calling because they are not binding upon all, being requirements “beyond the measure of the commandments.”¹¹ They are the rule of life for those who choose to become fully devoted to the pursuit of perfection of charity — that is, for those who accept the calling to make holiness their main pursuit in life. 

At this point, a few words about the principle that underlies Lumen Gentium’s teaching on the universal call to holiness seem to be in order. Contrary to that opinion mentioned in the introduction, it should be clear that the Council Fathers are not advancing a dissolution of the distinction between precepts and evangelical counsels, or advocating some sort of absolute egalitarianism among the different expressions of the calling to holiness. Rather, they present a balanced position that preserves both the universality of the calling to holiness and the distinctiveness of those vocations through which Catholics are called to a life of full devotion to Christian perfection. On the one hand, the sacrament of Baptism grants a state of initial holiness and imposes upon all Catholics the obligation (or calling) to preserve it and grow it throughout their lives; on the other hand, the fulfillment of this obligation is not the same to all, for the specific callings God reserves to the different members of the Church constitute their own special path to become more perfect in charity—and among those callings is that of the religious state, through which a Catholic chooses to pursue the baptismal calling to holiness by consecrating his person to God. 

The Call to Holiness Before Vatican II: The Teaching of the Fathers of the Church

After outlining Lumen Gentium’s understanding about the universal calling to holiness, we must attempt to survey the Church’s prior teaching on this matter to determine whether the opinion that the teaching of Vatican II is a new approach towards holiness is true or not. 

The first theological place we can visit to find this teaching is Scripture and its interpretation by the Fathers. According to Daniel A. Keating, in his work Deification and Grace, the Fathers of the Church, striving to understand what God accomplished in Christ for the human race, came up with a formula and a new vocabulary to summarize what essentially God made for man and to what destiny He called them. The formula, traditionally known as the admirabile commercium, was perhaps most famously expressed by St. Athanasius: “For he was made man that we might be made God” and “He Himself made us sons of the Father, and deified men by becoming Himself man.”¹² And the new vocabulary, developed by early Christian theologians to articulate the significance of becoming sons of the Father, is that of deification.

What the admirabile commercium (or formula of exchange) expresses is the very purpose of salvation: the Incarnation and the sacrifice on the Cross restored the possibility for men to become sons of God, and the adoption of human beings by the Trinity is no mere juridical or legal business, let alone a mere honorific title. Rather, to be “made God” is a real trans-formation of man: God really took human nature upon Himself and really offered His own nature to man — a gift which some Fathers would later explain through the language of deification.

Even though a concept of deification was already known in the Greco-Roman milieu, scholarship has demonstrated that the Fathers did not borrow theirs from it, but rather they opposed the ideas of deification of their time with a new conceptualization derived from an effort to “describe a biblical account of our filiation in Christ through the Holy Spirit.”¹³ Among all the Scriptural texts related to the idea of divinization of man in and by Christ, one was particularly important for the emergence of the new Christian language of deification: Psalm 82:6. This Psalm was connected to divine adoption by St. Irenaeus in the following manner:

 “And again: God stood in the congregation of the gods, He judges among the gods. He [here] refers to the Father and the Son, and those who have received the adoption; but these are the Church. . . . Isaiah 65:1 But of what gods [does he speak]? [Of those] to whom He says, I have said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High. To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the adoption, by which we cry, Abba Father. Romans 8:15.”¹⁴

Likewise, St. Clement of Alexandria makes this same connection and, going further, identifies Baptism as the sacrament by which man is adopted as a son, made perfect, and deified by God, in Christ through grace:

The same also takes place in our case, whose exemplar Christ became. Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. I, says He, have said that you are gods, and all sons of the Highest.¹⁵

Some Fathers also linked the deification of the soul through Baptism to holiness and sanctification. According to Walter J. Burghardt, Cyril of Alexandria, for example, practically identifies sanctification or holiness and deification, for

Cyril is making the point that, when the Holy Spirit communicates Himself to a creature, he makes the nature of that creature holy. . . . In summary, participation is sanctification, and sanctification produces resemblance: holy men image the holy God.¹⁶

It seems reasonably clear that many of Fathers of the Church, in their effort to interpret Revelation, understood that what God offers to man through His work of salvation is divine adoption or participation in the divine life, a gift won by Christ through his passion and sacrifice and made available by Him through Baptism, by virtue of which sacrament God comes to dwell in man’s soul and makes him holy. Therefore, all the baptized are given this gift at the moment of their rebirth in Christ. Truly, then, holiness is a universal gift, but is it also a calling?

According to Daniel A. Keating, “the consistent position adopted by the Fathers, both East and West, is that God comes to dwell effectively in us especially through baptism and the Eucharist.”¹⁷ In their understanding, therefore, if it was true that the soul was made holy at baptism, it was nonetheless true that holiness did not end with it. Rather, holiness, the participation in the divine life, could be nourished, increased, and strengthened through other sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. Although the concept of calling did not seem to be used by the Fathers, it is clear that they understood that all the members of the Church had a duty to preserve and increase the gift of holiness received through baptism.

Like many of the other Fathers, Augustine also taught that the restoration of the possibility for man to become a son of God was the gift that God offered to mankind through His marvelous exchange:

“For your sakes the one who was the Son of God became the Son of man, in order that you who were the sons of men might be turned into sons and daughters of God. . . . You were sons of men and you have become sons and daughters of God. He has shared with us our ills, and he is going to give us his goods.”¹⁸

According to David Vincent Meconi, S.J, the idea that the divine adoption through the marvelous exchange was also the gift of the deification of man was for the first time expounded by Augustine in a sermon on Psalm 117, where the Bishop of Hippo explains the Lord’s final victory against the wicked “as the greatest of all feats, making a god out of a human.”¹⁹ Indeed, St. Augustine says: “Great might is needed to raise up the lowly, to deify a mere mortal, to make the weak perfect, to grant glory through abasement and victory through suffering. Great might was required to give such help to those in trouble that the true salvation of God lay open before the tormented, while for the tormentors human aid was useless.”²⁰

Also like the other Fathers already considered, St. Augustine understood baptism as the means by which the gift of deification is given to man. Besides cleansing the soul of all sin, the first sacrament also gives “spiritual enlightenment, adoption as children of God, citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem, sanctification, transformation into members of Christ, and possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.”²¹ And all of these changes are mainly the work of the Holy Spirit. What is likewise important is Augustine’s teaching that this sanctification, gained through the sacrament, is just the beginning of the participation of man in the divine nature. According to Meconi, “although baptism initiates a new and graced participation in God, it must be nurtured and renewed daily. For this, Augustine offers us the daily regimen of prayer, of charity, and of the Eucharistic sacrifice.”²²

In fact, to Augustine, charity, which is poured into the soul through the gift of the Spirit, is “the summation of the entire moral life and it is likewise the essence of Christian perfection: perfect charity is perfect justice. . . . However, the perfection of charity is attained only after the soul is strengthened and purified by the practice of the virtues; and even then it is always a relative perfection, since there is no terminus to charity.”²³ That is, the life of those made saints through baptism should be devoted to perfection in charity, a goal which can be only imperfectly attained on earth and whose realization will fully take place in heaven. Renewed by the Holy Spirit, which communicates itself to him, a baptized Catholic becomes a spiritual man who “is a good minister of Christ and imitates him as well as he can, feeds along with the people on the foods of the holy Scriptures and the divine Law.”²⁴

 It seems clear that St. Augustine, like the Fathers of the Church, understands that the new life in Christ of the faithful begins as their deification begins, through holiness and participation in the life of the Trinity, and should continue as a devotion to intensifying the communion with God, to growing in the perfection of charity. This devout life is not a special path taken by some members of the Church, but it is the essence of what the Catholic life is about.

The Universal Vocation of Catholics in St. Thomas Aquinas

Man’s holiness, according to Aquinas, is ultimately a manifestation of God’s love for mankind. It is because God loves man that He created the possibility of man’s participation in His life through grace. It is also because God loves man that He infused His own love into man’s soul so as to make it possible for man to know and love God and his neighbor, that is, for man to be holy like God is holy. That man’s deification is an act of love by God is clear from this interpretation of John 15:9:

But he did love them up to a similar point: he loved them to the extent that they would be gods by their participation in grace — “I say, ‘You are gods’” (Ps 82:6); “He has granted to us precious and very great promises, that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) . . . .²⁵

That God’s love, or charity, is the principle of the pursuit of holiness, is evident from the opening chapters of his treatise on the perfection of the spiritual life where he says that “the spiritual life consists, principally, in charity” and that “he that is perfect in charity is said to be perfect in the spiritual life absolutely.”²⁶ Therefore, the spiritual life, which is nothing else than the pursuit of holiness, is founded upon charity, and the order of charity is nothing but the two great commandments that contain the whole law of God: the love of God and the love of the neighbor (Mt 22:37). That is to say, the two most basic foundations of the Christian life, the summary of the Law and the Prophets, are also the principles of perfection. That holiness is the universal vocation for Catholics seems a logical conclusion deriving from these truths since this calling is already contained in the two great commandments. 

To Aquinas, the life of holiness begins with the life of grace, when a person is made a son of God, i.e., when his participation in the very life of the Trinity begins:

So he says, he gave them the power to become the sons of God (Jn 1:12). To understand this, we should remark that men become sons of God by being made like God. Hence men are sons of God according to a threefold likeness to God. First, by the infusion of grace; hence, anyone having sanctifying grace is made a son of God.²⁷

The initial holiness, received through grace, can be continued and increased through the exercise of virtuous actions: “Secondly, we are like God by the perfection of our actions, because one who acts justly is a son: ‘Love your enemies . . . so that you may be children of your Father’ (Mt 5:44).”²⁸ And, finally, the terminus of the life of grace, the completion of man’s adoption by God, takes place in heaven, when body and soul will be holy and glorious: “Thirdly, we are made like God by the attainment of glory: the glory of the soul by the light of glory, ‘When he appears we shall be like him’ (1 Jn 3:2); and the glory of the body, ‘He will reform our lowly body’ (Phil 3:21).”²⁹

Clearly, Aquinas sees the life of holiness as a new life that starts with the infusion of grace, continues through life, and will happily end in heaven. Beginning with Baptism, this new life is a gift and calling, being offered to all Catholics alike. It is a life because it is a principle of a new, superior form of living, the divine life, and it is a calling because it is governed by God’s love, the Holy Spirit, which inspires us to love God Himself and our neighbor. Last, but not least, the life of holiness, since it is governed and constituted by charity, is a life of friendship between God and man.³⁰

That grace has the power to pull the human soul toward more grace, more holiness, more participation in the life of the Trinity is made superbly clear in this commentary by St. Thomas on John 4:3-ff:

He who will drink of the living water of grace given by the Savior will no longer desire another, but he will desire this water more abundantly. . . . Moreover, whereas material water descends, the spiritual water of grace rises. It is a living water ever united to its (eminent) source and one that springs up to eternal life, which it makes us merit.

Holiness bestowed by God by means of baptism makes us desire more holiness. To Aquinas, it is the extraordinary gift of being able to participate in the life of God that gives all the baptized a new life, a new love, a new calling, and a new destiny.

The Calling to Holiness in Two Papal Documents: The States of Perfection and Provida Mater Ecclesia

In 1957, Ven. Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical The States of Perfection, where he declares that he will speak “first about the perfection of Christian life in general, then of its realization in those associations that are called “states of perfection” by examining first their relations with their members and later the relations that bind them among themselves and to the Holy See.”³¹ According to Pius XII, there is a distinction between the concept of perfection and that of states of perfection, recognizing that the first “extends greatly beyond” the latter. The “tendency toward perfection” is defined by the Pope as “habitual and permanent tendency that goes beyond all that falls within the realm of obligation and takes man wholly to consecrate him without reserve to the service of God.”³² The ideal of Christian perfection comes from the teachings of Christ, especially the evangelical counsels, and even though it is “fulfilled in a more complete and certain way in the three states of perfection according to the manner described in Canon Law and in the Aforementioned Apostolic Constitutions,” it is in fact a universal calling, for “every Christian is called upon to strive to attain this ideal of perfection with all his strength.”³³ Finally, Pius XII teaches that not only those who formally join a state of perfection, whether through a religious or secular institution, display a tendency to perfection. He also has in mind

“all those men and women from all walks of life who, assuming the most varied professions and functions in the modern world, out of love for God and in order to serve Him in their fellowmen, dedicate their person and all their activities to Him. They pledge themselves to the practice of the evangelical counsels by private and secret vows known only to God and let themselves be guided in matters of obedience and poverty by persons whom the Church has judged fit for this purpose and to whom she has entrusted the task of directing others in the exercise of perfection. None of the constituting elements of Christian perfection and of a real tendency to achieve it are lacking in these men and women. They therefore really take part in it although they are not committed to any juridic or canonical state of perfection.”³⁴

 From this brief analysis of Pope Pius XII’s The States of Perfection, a few conclusions can be derived: i) the ideal of perfection of charity — which is particularly, but not exclusively, found in the evangelical counsels — is a calling placed upon all Christians, ii) this calling can be more certainly fulfilled through the three states of perfection, and iii) the states of perfection are not, however, the only loci where the pursuit of Christian perfection is found: men and women from different social circumstances are found to be completely dedicated to serving God and their fellow men. These conclusions, predating Lumen Gentium by seven years, are consistent with the teaching on the universal calling to holiness found in that Dogmatic Constitution. 

A similar view of the ideal of Christian perfection and its pursuit among the members of the Church is found in Pius XII’s 1947 Apostolic Constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia. After briefly expounding the process by which the Church came to regulate and give canonical status to the states of perfection, Pius XII offers an important reflection about how the pursuit of perfection or holiness may take place in the life of a Catholic. First, the Pope teaches that this pursuit is a universal calling by stating that God “has sent out His invitation, time and time again, to all the faithful, that all should seek and practice perfection, wherever they may be.”³⁵ Then, going even deeper into the mystery of the calling to holiness, the Pope asserts:

“Every man and every woman may, in the hidden world of the human heart (the canon lawyer would call it forum internum), reach out to perfection. This context of high personal endeavor we heartily commend to the prudence and zeal of spiritual directors. Our concern here is with the visible structure, the forum externum, associations which undertake to guide their members along the way that leads to perfection.”³⁶

In other words, the pursuit of Christian perfection may and does take place beyond the boundaries of the religious life, whether it be in secular institutes or in the inner realm of the soul of the faithful. Again, this is essentially the same understanding which will be found in Lumen Gentium in 1964. 

Concluding Remarks

From this brief historical and theological analysis, we have been able to gather sufficient evidence that contradicts the opinion that Lumen Gentium introduced a novel approach toward the calling to holiness. Rather, it has become apparent that Lumen Gentium’s universal calling to holiness is consistent with a centuries-old and traditional understanding of holiness that dates back to the Fathers of the Church. According to this understanding, the salvation of man, God’s gift to mankind, consisted in the restoration of the possibility of participating in the life of God through grace. This restoration was accomplished by the Son and is communicated to all Catholics through the sacrament of Baptism. The first sacrament not only cleanses the soul but infuses into it sanctifying grace, which deifies man, makes him truly partake of the nature of God still on earth. This new divine life engrafted on the soul is the life of holiness, which can make man devote his person to God. Holiness is more fully lived through the practice of the evangelical counsels, but present and active in every soul in the state of grace, on different levels.