United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

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