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336 • Part III. Christian Morality: The Faith Lived
• Divine wisdom leads us through various types of law (divine law,
natural law, civil law, ecclesiastical [Church] law) designed to guide
us to the very goals that will answer our deepest human aspirations.
• Revealed law is seen in the Old Testament when God communicated
the Ten Commandments to Moses. The Commandments, along with
the teaching of the Prophets and other revealed law, prepared the
world for the Gospel.
• Christ’s teachings release the hidden meaning of the Old Law and
reveal its Divine Truth and human truth. The Gospel is a law of love
because of the love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
• “Justification is the most excellent work of God’s love made mani-
fest in Christ Jesus and granted by the Holy Spirit” (CCC, no. 1994).
Justification is both the Spirit’s work in bringing us forgiveness of
sins and our acceptance or reception of the holiness of God, which
we call sanctification through participation in divine life.
• “Sanctifying grace is a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural dis-
position that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God,
to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to
live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual
graces, which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning
of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification” (CCC,
no. 2000).
• “Sanctifying grace is the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to
us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and
to sanctify it” (CCC, no. 2023).
• Christ’s Passion merited justification for us. We receive justification
in Baptism and become friends of God. We are thus conformed to
the righteousness of God who justifies us.
• God called Israel to be holy. “You shall be holy, because I am holy”
(Lv 11:45). St. Peter extended this invitation from God to Christians.
“As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of
your conduct, for it is written, ‘Be holy because I [am] holy’” (1 Pt
1:15-16).
• Jesus said to the Apostles, “Whoever listens to you listens to me”
(Lk 10:16). In the Church, when we deal with matters of faith and