Catechism of the Catholic Church

881

Glossary

glorification, and his Church’s beginnings under the Spirit’s guidance (124, 514). GOSPEL, LAW OF THE: The New Law, prepared for by the Old Law in the time of the Old Covenant, is the perfection here on earth of the divine law, natural and revealed. It is the work of Christ, expressed particularly in the Sermon on the Mount, and of the Holy Spirit, by whose grace it becomes for us the interior law of charity (1965). GRACE: The free and undeserved gift that God gives us to respond to our vocation to become his adopted children. As sanctifying grace, God shares his divine life and friendship with us in a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that enables the soul to live with God, to act by his love. As actual grace, God gives us the help to conform our lives to his will. Sacramental grace and special graces (charisms, the grace of one’s state of life) are gifts of the Holy Spirit to help us live out our Christian vocation (1996, 2000; cf. 654). GUARDIAN ANGELS: Angels assigned to protect and intercede for each person (336). See Angel. HAIL MARY: The prayer known in Latin as the Ave Maria. The first part of the prayer praises God for the gifts he gave to Mary as Mother of the Redeemer; the second part seeks her maternal intercession for the members of the Body of Christ, the Church, of which she is the Mother (2676). -H

HAPPINESS: Joy and beatitude over receiving the fulfillment of our vocation as creatures: a sharing in the divine nature and the vision of God. God put us into the world to know, love, and serve him, and so come to the happiness of paradise (1720). HEAVEN: Eternal life with God; communion of life and love with the Trinity and all the blessed. Heaven is the state of supreme and definitive happiness, the goal of the deepest longings of humanity (1023). HELL: The state of definitive self exclusion from communion with God and the blessed, reserved for those who refuse by their own free choice to believe and be converted from sin, even to the end of their lives (1033). HERESY: The obstinate denial after Baptism of a truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith (2089; cf. 465). HERMIT: One who lives the eremitical life. Through silence and solitude, in prayer and penance, the hermit or anchorite vows, although not necessarily publicly, to follow the evangelical counsels out of love for God and desire for the salvation of the world (920). HIERARCHY: The Apostles and their successors, the college of bishops, to whom Christ gave the authority to teach, sanctify, and rule the Church in his name (873). HIERARCHY OF TRUTHS: The order (hierarchy) of the truths in Catholic doctrine, insofar as they vary in their relation to the central mystery and foundation of