Opus Dei

In his 5 October general audience, Pope Francis continued his cycle of catechesis on spiritual discernment, speaking about self-knowledge and "passwords" in the spiritual life.

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 Eucharist makes Jesus Christ present. He invites us to accept the salvation that He offers us, and to receive the gift of His Body and Blood as the food of eternal life. Our Lord announced the Eucharist during his public life and instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper. When the Church celebrates this sacrament, she follows the Eucharistic rite carried out by Christ at the Last Supper.

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.

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.

Marriage is an institution foreseen by God in his wisdom, so as to carry out in humanity his divine plan of love. It is born of the personal and irrevocable consent of the spouses. The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility. This special covenant is ordered to the procreation and education of children, who are the most excellent gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of their parents.

The Holy Mass makes present, in the Church’s daily liturgical life, the one sacrifice of our redemption. The Mass is a true and proper sacrifice because it makes sacramentally present the one, perfect and definitive sacrifice of the Cross. The faithful can and should participate in the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The desire to receive Holy Communion should always be present in Christians: what food produces in the body for the good of physical life, the Eucharist produces in the soul.

The ninth and tenth commandments refer to internal acts corresponding to sins against the sixth and seventh commandments. Internal sins can deform the conscience. The struggle against internal sins is part of the Christian’s endeavour to love with all one’s heart, mind and strength. Purity of heart means having a holy way of feeling.

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 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.