The Universal Call to Holiness
By John C. Cavadini
Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame
Director, Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame
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What is the fundamental vocation of the Christian? What is that to which all Christians are "called?" Perhaps there is no more characteristic and familiar teaching of the Second Vatican Council than its proclamation of the "universal call to holiness," namely, that the fundamental vocation of all Christians, no matter what their particular vocation or state in life, is holiness. This is true equally for bishops, priests, religious, laymen and women, married or single Christians. "Therefore, all in the church, whether they belong to the hierarchy or are cared for by it, are called to holiness, according to the apostle's saying, For this is the will of God, your sanctification" (Lumen Gentium 5.39, citing 1 Thess. 4.3, cf. Eph. 1.4). Again, "it is therefore quite clear that all Christians in whatever state or walk in life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity … The forms and tasks of life are many, but there is one holiness" (LG 5.40, 41; cf., "Therefore all the faithful are invited and obliged to achieve holiness and the perfection of their own state of life" (LG 42). Even more emphatically, "… [A]ll the faithful, whatever their condition or state are called by the Lord - each in his or her own way - to that perfect holiness by which the Father himself is perfect" (LG 11 alluding to Mt. 5.4-8).

The language of a "call" or "vocation" to holiness is interesting and I want to think with you about what it might mean. For, in a way, to talk about a "call" to holiness is to talk about a call to something the Church already has. The Church is the "holy" people of God (LG 12) just by being the Church, and members of the Church are called "saints," "holy persons," simply as members of the Church (see CCC 823). In fact, as Lumen Gentium puts it, "The Church … is held, as a matter of faith, to be unfailingly holy." It goes on to say, "This is because Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit is hailed as 'alone holy,' loved the Church as his Bride, giving himself up for it so as to sanctify it (see Eph. 5.25-26); he joined it to himself as his body and endowed it with the gift of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God" (LG 39). As the "Body of Christ," the Church is simply, unfailingly and inviolably holy. Whether or not this is apparent to the naked eye, it is an article of faith, one that we repeat every time we say the Creed: "I believe in … one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church." As new members of the Church, those who are baptized are said simply to "receive" holiness, in virtue of their baptism itself. Again in the words of Lumen Gentium, "The followers of Christ, called by God not for what they had done but by his design and grace, and justified in the Lord Jesus, have been made sons and daughters of God by the Baptism of faith and partakers of the divine nature, and so are truly sanctified. They must therefore hold on to and perfect in their lives that holiness which they have received from God" (LG 40).

This passage talks about a sanctification, in virtue of a participation in the divine nature, which is simply given by Baptism. So we are left with our puzzle, namely, how can we be "called" to something that we already have without the least bit of effort on our part, simply in virtue of our Baptism? We can put this puzzle in another way by asking what "holiness" is, what it means to say that the Church, or we as members of the Church, are "holy." We already have a clue in the passage just cited, namely, that it refers to, or stems from, our "participation in the divine nature," granted at Baptism. But what does this mean? It does not mean that we become, strictly speaking, divine, that is, actually having a divine nature. Holiness is, strictly speaking, a property of the divine and of nothing else, as we know from the First Commandment. As such, it would have to be something "given," and not earned. It is fundamentally given in Jesus Christ, who is the divine Word of God Incarnate, whose human nature, body and soul, is united to his divine nature not by a kind of metaphysical confusion of substances, as thought the man Jesus, as a man, were mixed into the divine nature, but by a "personal" ("hypostatic") union. The two natures are united in the one person of the Word of God. The human being Jesus is holy because of his personal union, from the moment of conception, with the Word of God. Because of this personal union, Jesus participates in the divine nature in a way that is unique - it is properly "his," even though, qua human being, he is not of a divine nature. We, in turn, participate in the divine nature by being joined to Christ as members of his Body. It is as though we have become one person with Christ, members of the Body of so glorious a Head, and so we participate, through our membership in Christ's Body, that is, the Church, in the divine nature which remains properly and uniquely "his." Because it is properly and uniquely his, participation in the divine nature, can be ours by our "incorporation" into Christ. In the sense that we are members of his same one Body, we can be said to "become" Christ, such that the "whole Christ" (totus Christus) is made up of both Head and Body. This union with Christ, when perfected, is holiness (see LG 50: "When we look on the lives of those women and men who have faithfully followed Christ we are inspired anew to seek the city which is to come [see Heb. 13.14 and 11.10], while at the same time we are taught about the safest path by which, through a changing world and in keeping with each one's state of life and condition, we will be able to arrive at perfect union with Christ, which is holiness").

But there it is again - right in that passage - our puzzle, reappearing. If by Baptism we are made members of Christ, members of his Body which is "unfailingly and inviolably holy," how is there anything to perfect? Isn't that holiness, which we are given as members of such a holy Body, perfect in itself? Isn't it the holiness of Christ himself? And, to make matters seemingly worse, if we look at the theology of baptism, we will have to answer YES. Baptism "incorporates" us into Christ, and "configures" us to Christ (CCC 1272). Baptism gives us "a new life" by which we become "adoptive sons and daughters of the Father, members of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit. By this very fact the person baptized is incorporated into the Church, the Body of Christ, and made a sharer in the priesthood of Christ" (CCC 1279). Baptism "signifies and actually brings about death to sin and entry into the life of the Most Holy Trinity through configuration to the Paschal mystery of Christ" (CCC 1239), that is, to the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. Our sacramental theology says that Baptism not only signifies, but actually brings about configuration to the Paschal mystery, conformation to his image (cf. LG 40). And yet, if we have this configuration and formation at Baptism, why do we read, "All the members [of Christ's Body] must be formed in his likeness, until Christ is formed in them (see Gal. 4.19). For this reason we, who have been made like to him, who have died with him and risen with him [i.e. in Baptism] are taken up into the mysteries of his life, until we reign together with him." Why do we read that we still need to "grow into him who is our head" (LG 7)? If, "through Baptism we are formed in the likeness of Christ" (LG 7), why do we keep talking about "having to be formed in his likeness" as though this had not happened, and as though it is something yet to be attained and in some way by our own striving? Does Baptism conform us to Christ or doesn't it? Or is Baptism imperfect, so that it is strong enough only to provide a partial and imperfect conformation that we have to complete ourselves? Or is it really just a "sign" after all?

We can get another clue to this puzzle from the biblical imagery often used to depict Baptism, or, to use the technical term, the "typology" of Baptism. Christian theology has traditionally considered such biblical events as the crossing of the Red Sea a "type" or "prefiguration" of Baptism, and this is how the Catechism talks about it. To quote: "But above all, the crossing of the Red Sea, literally the liberation of Israel from the slavery of Egypt, announces the liberation wrought by Baptism," and the Catechism quotes the Roman missal in support of this claim (CCC 1221). Baptism, the CCC says, is also prefigured in the crossing of the Jordan river to receive the inheritance promised by God to Abraham (CCC 1222). These typologies have sometimes been used in Christian theology to say something negative about Israel and the Jews, but that is not their proper use and that their essential meaning is to help us understand the nature and character of the sacraments, and, in this case, Baptism in particular, something which cannot be fully stated in any other way, apart from these typologies. For, what is the Red Sea? Of course it is a body of water between Egypt and the Arabian peninsula, and you can find it on the map. But the Red Sea is also an element in a narrative, the narrative of the Exodus or the delivery of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The Red Sea is like a narrative virus. It carries the DNA of the whole story of which it is a part and, as it were, causes the story to reproduce itself in our lives or at least in our theology.

The story is easy to recall. The people of Israel are delivered by God from oppression by the Egyptians and the crucial moment of that delivery is the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, which permits the Israelites to pass through dry-shod, but leaves the pursuing slaveholders dead on the seashore. The image of the Egyptians dead on the seashore, though in some ways an unpleasant one, is an indication of the total liberation that God has given the Israelites. This is emphatically put in the text: "Moses said to the people, 'Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still'" (Ex. 14.13-14). The image of the Egyptians lying dead on the seashore (Ex. 14.30) is an image of this deliverance of the LORD as complete and as utterly the work of the LORD. However, we all know the next part of the story. Just after crossing the Red Sea, and numerous times thereafter, the Israelites are found "murmuring" or "grumbling" in the desert, wishing they could, in effect, undo the liberating work of the LORD and go back to Egypt. In fact, the very first event reported after the departure from the shores of the Red Sea is the murmuring of the Israelites about the bitter waters of Marah, and only a few biblical verses later, in the wilderness of Sin, we find them grumbling again, wistfully remembering the good old days of slavery when they "sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread" (Ex. 16.3). Even after God provides them with bread from heaven, they still grumble because they find it monotonous to eat it, day after day. Delivered and sustained by the direct hand of God, they get tired of it and want to go back to Egypt, they want to undo the work that God has done and is doing.

So, we have to ask, are they free? We have to answer, YES, absolutely. The Egyptians will never be seen again and God's work is utterly effective. And yet, we could equally well answer, NO, they aren't free at all. They are so unfree that even with witnessing miracles deluxe from start to finish, with being fed by food directly provided by God, and after they receive the presence of God dwelling of with them in the tabernacle, they still prefer slavery. On the one hand, completely formed as the people of God by God's promises and mighty acts of deliverance, on the other hand they have to grow into the freedom that will make them God's people truly. We have a story in which they have to "become what they are." In one way it seems illogical to say you have to "become what you [already] are," but the narrative presents that logic without blinking at all, and it does not seem inconsistent to the reader. We have here what you could call a "narrative logic," in which it makes perfect sense to say, the people of Israel were perfectly delivered and liberated by God, given their freedom and made 100% free, and yet they had to grow into that freedom 100%.

By talking about Baptism with the aid of a typology, one is introducing this narrative logic into sacramental theology. To say that the delivery through the water of the Red Sea is a "type" or "prefiguration" of Baptism, is to introduce the whole narrative logic of the story into the theology. The sacraments are defined by a narrative logic; and are moments within a narrative following in some ways the contours of the Exodus narrative. The Red Sea, as a narrative virus with the genes of narrative formation within it, stretches the theology of the sacrament into one of "become what you are." Does Baptism perfectly and effectively not only symbolize but actually, in the symbolizing, make us a member of the Body of Christ by configuring us to the Paschal Mystery? Yes, and fully, 100%. Do we still find that we have to spend our lives becoming configured to the Paschal Mystery, so that in our own persons we present its liberating effects and witness to the world? Yes, and fully, 100%. We have to "become what we are." We aren't supposed to use the stories in the Bible about the murmuring of the Jews to single out the Jews as an especially murmuring people. The whole point of typology is that these stories tell us something about our own hardness of heart. We too have been given might gifts of deliverance directly by God, in the Incarnation, the Passion, death and Resurrection of Christ, and in the sacrament which incorporates us into those liberating events. We too are fed directly by God, in our case, in the Eucharist, daily, and yet we often treat this divine food and God's care for us with indifference and contempt - we'd prefer to be back "in Egypt," another narrative quantity for the self defined or experienced as unfree.

This, I think, to return to our main theme, illustrates the genius of using the word "vocation" or "call" to talk about the Christian life. We are configured in baptism to the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, such that we no longer belong to ourselves but to Christ (CCC 1269) who died and rose for us. We have been sanctified, made holy, as members of Christ, marked with an indelible "character" which creates our new life, our new identity. But it is that identity itself which is our "call." The holiness we receive in our baptism is at the same time a "call" or "vocation" to holiness, to, in effect, become what we are. It seems to me that the theology of the universal call to holiness in Lumen Gentium and related documents uses the idea of "call" or "vocation" to hold in one word the narrative logic introduced into sacramental theology by the biblical typologies. Just like the people in the narrative, we have been liberated by God, but just like the people of God in the narrative, we have to grow into that freedom throughout the course of our Christian life. This applies not only to the individual members of the church, but to the Church itself, whose holiness, while genuine and perfect in the sense that it belongs to Christ the Head, is still present only as a continual transformation by and into that holiness which it already is. Scandals in the church do not, on the one hand, annul its holiness, but they do, on the other, disfigure it and show just how far short we fall in "becoming what we are." The holiness of the church is real, though imperfect (LG 48). The language of the "call" to holiness offers a way of encoding a narrative logic into the identity of the church itself, at once the immaculate bride of Christ and a school for sinners where the amount of work left to be done in "becoming what we are" often seems not only daunting but impossible.

How can we sum this up in a way that puts it into somewhat practical terms? We can do so by asking, once again, what holiness is, essentially. We have already seen it is union with Christ, and that our holiness grows as we grow more and more into the likeness of Christ, as the Paschal mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus comes ever more fully to define our very selves. But what is the Paschal mystery? It is nothing but the revelation and triumph of the Love of God. If, in the Incarnation, God enters solidarity with our lot to the point of accepting fully even the seeming end of the narrative in death, what we discover in Christ is that he lives the narrative of human life so perfectly and so lovingly, that it changes the ending, a new end is revealed, provided by the love of God. The Resurrection at once vindicates and reveals the love which motivated the passion and death of Christ. It reveals it because we see in the passion not simply powerlessness, but voluntary powerlessness, in solidarity with us. It vindicates it because the Resurrection is not the triumphant return of Christ to zap all of the people who killed him or fled from him, but the triumphant return of Love itself to invite us to be formed according to itself and to provide us with the conviction that it is this Love which now reigns in the world, even if in a hidden way for the time being.

The Resurrection reveals fully the triple vocation of Christ. He is Messiah, or "king," because it is his Love which is now in charge of the cosmos, you might say. Despite appearances of the reign of evil, it is Love which has triumphed and which will triumph in the end. Christ is also Priest. The proper role of a priest is to offer sacrifice, and the Resurrection reveals the sacrificial love that was behind the passion of Christ and gave it its salvific value. And Christ is also Prophet, whose preaching proclaimed the Good News and whose Resurrection revealed its truth.

If, in Baptism, we are "marked by the sign of faith" and configured to the Paschal Mystery, it means we are configured to the Love of Christ revealed and vindicated in the Paschal Mystery. We are, in a way, formed by God's love, configured to the charity of Christ which is the perfection and form of holiness (LG __), and so to the threefold vocation which defines Jesus's vocation or mission. We are all priestly, as Christ is, because as Christians we are configured to his sacrifice at baptism, and all of the works of love we do in our lives, no matter what our state or particular calling in life, configure us ever more fully to the sacrifice of Christ, so that little by little people can see in our works of love the same pattern visible in the Incarnation and Passion: a throwing in one's lot fully with those we know and meet, a solidarity or "being with" that will always require sacrifice as we learn to live in peace and respect with others, even our enemies. These acts of love are also prophetic. If, for example, we take on the sacrifices that working for justice will inevitably entail in this life, our sacrificial solidarity is also a prophetic proclamation of the love of Christ that underwrites justice as something always valuable. If, on a more personal level, we undertake the sacrifices that living chastely will require, we bear prophetic witness to the love of Christ which refused to instrumentalize any person as an object of gratification but used all bodily gestures as expressions of solidarity and love. In all of these prophetic priestly acts, or priestly prophetic acts, we are participating in the royal vocation of Christ, that is, in the reign of Love. Ever more perfectly conformed to Love, we reign in the way that Love reigns, in service. We are bearing witness to our faith that despite appearances, which make it seem that loving actions do not matter in this world, are snuffed out by the immensity of the time space continuum, will be in the end sucked with all information into one black hole or another - despite appearances and in the face of them, Love matters and in fact is the only thing that ultimately matters, for "God IS Love."

"Accordingly, all Christians, in the conditions, duties and circumstances of their lives and through all these, will grow constantly in holiness if they receive all things with faith from the hand of the heavenly Father and cooperate with the divine will, making manifest in their ordinary work the love with which God has loved the world" (LG 41), This applies to all Christians, and the universal call to holiness is a universal call to "grow" into the Love with which our identities were stamped at baptism.

And here, in a way, we find the transition between Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the church, and the document known as Gaudium et Spes, the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world. What use is the church in making sense of the "joys and hopes, the grief and anguish" of the people of our time, many of whom do not believe in God at all? "Enlightened by divine revelation," the Council says, "the church can offer a solution to [humanity's doubts and difficulties] by which the true state of humanity may be described, its weakness explained in such a way that at the same time its dignity and vocation may be perceived in their true light" (GS 12). Again, "Faith casts a new light on everything and makes known the full ideal which God has set for humanity, thus guiding the mind towards solutions that are fully human" (GS 11). By responding to the universal call to holiness, growing in to the priestly, prophetic and royal vocation of Christ, Christians in the world bear witness to the dignity of the human person, "humanity's noble destiny" (GS 3) as much more than "merely bodily creatures and as more than mere particles of nature or nameless units in human society" (GS 14).

Insofar as one is growing into the love of Christ that has become one's calling or vocation, one acts prophetically by proclaiming the dignity of the human person in acts of solidarity that require a sacrifice of time, money, or even in some cases one's life. Such solidarity is part of the priestly vocation of the Christian insofar as these sacrifices are conformed to the sacrifice of Christ, and participate in the configuration of the life of the Christian to the Paschal mystery. Without confusing this witness with political rule, such sacrificial, prophetic witness is a participation in the royal reign of Christ, namely, in the relativization of all political claims to the claims of human dignity revealed in the love of God towards all human beings in the paschal mystery. The Christian who is responding to the foundational vocation for holiness, to the triple conformation to christ's priestly, prophetic and royal mission, is a living answer to the questions of humanity referenced by Gaudium et Spes, a "living sacrifice of praise," a locus of testimony to human dignity that cannot be gainsaid or obscured, and an invitation to the belief in God that alone fully adequately underwrites claims to human dignity, to being more than "mere particles of nature or nameless units in human society." Saints, in this scheme, are not merely the property of the church, not merely of internal value, but present a challenge and an inspiration, a light as John Paul II used to say, to the imagination of everyone in society. Saints expand the cultural imagination so that it sees new possibilities of providing for human dignity and promoting it which it had not seen before. There is nothing more moving, and hence more vision expanding, than solidarity undertaken in love at the expense of derision, seeming hopelessness, and even death.

And, what is true of the individual members of the Body of Christ is also true of the Church as a whole, itself. Insofar as it is knit together from these living acts of sacrificial prophetic service, insofar as the life of the whole Body animates each member to bear one another's burdens, the church becomes a kind of sacrament of the unity of the human race and of the communion of humanity with God. It does this as a flock, big or little, a kind of seed of unity in the world which, if it bears fruit, does so not by dividing humanity but by mediating to it the unity which God intended from the beginning. The Church in the modern world, fulfilling its foundational call to holiness, would be seen first as an invitation to unity and AS SUCH an invitation to communion with God. The Church can act as a sacrament of unity in a world which is not, as a whole, Christian, and which may never be. And yet it will do this only if it does not compromise its fundamental belief in the Incarnation, passion, death and resurrection of Christ, and of the transforming call to holiness that its very identity as the Body of Christ represents. Let Christians, and the Church, "become what they are," and the rest will, in God's providence, take care of itself. Thank-You.

John Cavadini is Chair of the Dept. of theology and Director of the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. He has published in the fields of patristic theology, theology of marriage, theology of preaching and of the Word of God, and teaches courses in these areas plus in the areas of catechesis, spirituality and miracles. He and his wife Nancy live in the South Bend area with their seven children.