Universal Call To Holiness

The prompt is:Msgr. Luigi Giussani states: "[T.S. Eliot] asked himself "Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?" . . . Both, both, because first and foremost it is mankind who failed the Church, because if I need something, I chase after it if it goes away. No one chased after it . . . The Church began to fail mankind, as I see it . . . because she forgot who Christ was, she did not rely on..., she was ashamed of Christ, of saying who Christ is."(Interview, 2004).What does it mean to say, "if I need something, I chase after it if it goes away"? How does this relate to the "Universal Call to Holiness"? What do you think this quote implies for the everyday Catholic? What do you think it means to "say who Christ is" without shame?
      The Universal Call to Holiness has priciples that are important in order to understand this spiritual journey. One principle is the intimate union with God. God is powerful and his powers can not be attained by any human being. Us human beings are the dependents of God. His grace was gift to us from the beginning. We can only recieve God's loving grace from God. Therefore, he is unattainable. God makes everything possible for us. We cannot complete our universal call to holiness without him. God's grace is essential to spiritual journey of the Universal Call To Holiness. Luke 18:27 says, "What is impossible for human beings is possible for God." We have to understand who God is. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is Fear of the Lord. The gift of Fear of the Lord does not actually mean be scared of him. It means to understand that he is way more powerful than we are. Because of this we should follow him and obey him. We desire, want, and try to achieve things, but without God's grace we would not even know what is possible. Even though God is unseen, he lives in all of us. We have to see him in others.
     Another principle is to know that our effort is neccassary. Yes, we desire to make a difference in things, but must know that those desires comes from God's grace. We desire to change things in this world for beter and for worse. We have to realize that God gave us the ability to chose. We must realize that God works through us, but we have to correspond. Our effort is very neccessary for the Universal Call to Holiness.
     Another principle is that we have to change in order to have a deep union with God. We all were born with original sin. This started from Adam and Eve disobeying God and moving toward Satin and sin. Since we all are born with sin, we must be healed through the church and transform in the process of the Universal Call to Holiness. We must know that this path is not going to be perfect. There will be struggles on this path but how we overcome those struggles will bring us closer to God.
     The last principle is that all of the struggles that we go through are worth it. We have to realize that it is not only us, that is going through struggles. We have to come together as a community and love each other, becasue we were all made the same. We are all going through struggles. We are all going through a variety of struggles, but we must love each other to get through it. This is how God works. He works in each of us and he wants us to love each other. On our journey of the Universal Call To Holiness, we need not to quit. Quiting will get us nowhere. Instead we must love each other to get through it.
The prompt says, "If we need something we must chase after it if it goes away". This prompt simply relates to the last principle. All of the struggles we go through are certainly worth it. We have to chase after God, because God appears to be invisible. But actually he is not, he lives in all of us.