Opus Dei

The resurrected body will be real and material, but not earthly and mortal. The enigma of death can only be understood in the light of Christ’s resurrection and our own resurrection in Him. Eternal life is what gives ultimate and permanent meaning to human life, to ethical commitment, to generous dedication, to self-sacrificing service, to the effort to communicate Christ’s doctrine and love to all souls.

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace. Sanctifying grace is a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul to make it capable of living with God. The seven sacraments correspond to all the stages and important moments of each Christian’s life: the sacraments give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christian's life of faith. They form an ordered whole, in which the Eucharist is at the centre, since it contains the Author of the sacraments.

The good news of salvation requires that the Church be present in the world. The Gospel is a proclamation of the transformation of the world according to God’s plan. The Church’s social doctrine is part of social moral theology, which derives from a Christian conception of the human being and political life. The Church’s social morality teaches the primacy of spiritual and moral goods over material goods.

Jesus is the only Son of God who became man for our salvation. He is perfect God and perfect man. He took on our material and bodily condition, subject to many needs, in order to save us from our sins. Mary is truly the Mother of God because the One she conceived as man, through the work of the Holy Spirit, is the eternal Son of the Father.

Jesus freely accepted the physical and moral sufferings imposed by the injustice of sinners. The Cross of Christ is, above all, the manifestation of the generous love of the Trinity for mankind, a love that saves us. The mystery of the Cross, present in the sacraments, leads us to a new life. Through the resurrection of Jesus, God inaugurated a new life, the life of the world to come, and made it available to mankind.

The loss of the sense of sin has led to the loss of the awareness of the need for salvation, and hence to the forgetfulness of God through indifference. But Christ’s triumph on the Cross is an expression of his mercy towards us, an assurance that “love is stronger than sin.” Mercy is the fundamental law that should guide the heart of every person when looking at a brother or sister encountered on life’s journey.

Every human being is a person from the very fact of being human. The equality of persons must be expressed in respect for each individual and for groups. Discrimination, racism or xenophobia are unjust. Marriage is “conjugality,” it is a bond of “co-possession.” The Church requires that people with homosexual tendencies be welcomed with respect, compassion and refinement.

In the depths of the human spirit we find a longing for happiness that points to the hope of a home, of a definitive homeland. We are earthly, but we long for the eternal, we long for God. A God whom we can know with certainty as the origin and end of the universe and as the supreme good, starting from the world and the human person.

All men and women possess a natural desire to gain full knowledge of God, although we cannot attain this knowledge without God’s help. Through the history of salvation recounted in the Bible, God has revealed himself as a personal being and a Trinity of persons. By this revelation, God seeks to offer us the possibility of living in communion with Him, so that we can share in his gifts and in his own life, and thus attain complete happiness.

God revealed himself little by little to mankind, and his revelation culminated in the incarnation. Christ established the Church, which keeps his memory alive and presents Him as the one who, having lived in this world, has risen and remains among us for ever. She carries out this mission by guarding the word of God contained in the Holy Scriptures, transmitting Tradition and teaching, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, how to live as a Christian in every age through her Magisterium.