The Purpose of Life

Over the past year at the Pillar household, we have been contemplating the middle child's college career.  Taking tests, keeping up impeccable grades and recording all the service projects and community service work she has been doing.  But the biggest question I have been asking her is, "What do you want to do with your life?"  What is her vocation?  Actually when you get right down to it, what is ANYBODY's vocation, purpose in life?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has your answer!

To know, love, and serve God with all our hearts, mind and souls.  Now that doesn't sound too hard does it?   Well over the past several months, since November exactly, I have been keeping up with reading the catechism in a year.  This has been an eye-opener at times, to be sure. Filled with pages of great teachings and explanations, lots of  things that I have known, but forgotten refreshes me everyday.  The section on the Ten Commandments is just one more very telling place.

The first commandment:  "You shall Love the Lord Your God with all your Heart, with all Your Soul, and with all your Mind"

 

This embraces the three theological virtues: faith, love, and hope.  Through communication with God, we express our conviction in the belief "of a constant, unchangeable Being, always the same, faithful and just, without any evil."  CCC 2086

Faith:  "Our duty toward God is to believe in Him and to bear witness to Him."(CCC 2087)  Anything short of that causes a deviation of morals.  The first commandment calls us to protect and nourish our faith with prudence and vigilance and to reject anything opposed to it.  Such as:

• -voluntary doubt, refusing to believe what is disclosed,
• -Involuntary doubt, hesitation, anxiety in overcoming doubt, which can lead to spiritual blindness if not overcome. 
• -Incredulity, neglecting the revealed truth,
• -apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith, and finally;
• -schism which is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff and those of the Church.

 

 Hope: the first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely:

• Despair:  ceasing to have hope in the future and his personal salvation. Contrary to God's goodness.
• Presumption:  man's dependence on his own capacity OR dependence on God's mercy and justice without obtaining His forgiveness, without conversion and glory without merit.

 

Charity: the first commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all creatures for him and because of him.  Sins against God's charity are:

• - Indifference: which neglects or refuses to reflect on  divine charity.
• - Ingratitude: fails or refuses to acknowledge divine charity and return him love
• -Luke warmness: hesitation or negligence in responding to divine love or a refusal to give oneself over to the prompting of charity.
• -Acedia or spiritual sloth: the complete refusal of joy that comes from God and to be obstinate to His divine goodness.
• Hatred of God,  wow, this one is a doozy, comes from pride. Totally denial to the point that anger becomes hatred cursing and blaming God for inflicting punishment and sin.

CCC2095 tells us "The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity (love) inform and give life to the moral virtues.  Thus charity leads us to render to God what we as creatures owe him in all justice.  The virtue of religion disposes us to have this attitude."

How can we do this?  Through daily Adoration, prayer, and sacrifice.

Furthermore, CCC2104 tells us, "All men (and women) are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church, and to embrace it and hold on to it as they come to know it."