Opus Dei

Our prayer involves every aspect of our life. The Catechism distinguishes between vocal prayer, meditation and contemplative prayer. All three have a fundamental feature in common: the recollection of the heart. Prayer is not optional for the spiritual life, but rather a vital necessity.

Sexuality reaches the deepest core of the human person. True education in chastity is not satisfied with simply informing about the biological aspects, but helps people to reflect on the personal and moral values that come into play in our affective relationships with others. Sins against the sixth commandment are often a substitute for the lack of true love for which the heart yearns.

The Christian life is our life as children of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. The action of the Holy Spirit in the Christian’s soul, besides giving sanctifying grace and the theological virtues, communicates inspirations and actual graces, and has a specific manifestation that the Church calls the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Decalogue contains a set of serious duties, but it is also and above all an instruction, a teaching on how to live.

The fourth commandment is a connecting point between the previous three and the six subsequent one: family relationships reveal the mysterious interpenetration between divine and human love that is at the origin of each person. Parents have the responsibility to create a home, a family space where love, forgiveness, respect, fidelity and selfless service can be lived.

Christian life strives to order the goods of this world to God and to fraternal charity. Both temperance, to moderate their use and possession, and justice, to respect the rights of our neighbour, are important. Solidarity should be added to these two virtues. The eighth commandment forbids the misrepresentation of the truth in one’s relations with one’s neighbour. Christians have the duty to bear witness to the Truth who is Christ and to acknowledge Him before men.

Only voluntary actions are the object of a moral evaluation properly speaking. The education of the complex world of feelings is a fundamental part of Christian formation and life. The path for ordering the passions is the acquisition of moral habits called virtues. The object, the intention and the circumstances are the “sources” or constitutive elements of the morality of human acts.

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 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 Church is a structured society where some have the mission to guide others. The assistance of the Holy Spirit to the whole Church so that it may not err in believing is also given to the magisterium so that it may faithfully and authentically teach the Word of God. The Church has always called only baptised men to the order of the priesthood; she has felt bound by the will of Christ, who chose only men as Apostles.

The Church is inseparably both human and divine. It lives and acts in the world, but its goal and strength are not here on earth but in heaven. The Church seeks only the salvation of mankind, but she is also concerned with temporal affairs. Each Christian faithful participates in the mission of the Church according to his or her condition and vocation, and the gifts received.