On holiness
Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect , Jesus Christ said to his disciples.
These words show us in God the motive and model of our holiness. If we know how to understand them, they tell us more things than the wisest and most enlightened philosophers have ever said. But we will never understand them except through divine light, and practice will develop our meaning even better than speculation.
Be holy , says the Lord, because I am holy . What is holiness in God? It is the love of order. God loves order essentially; he cannot approve anything, excuse anything, suffer anything unpunished that is contrary to it. He can allow disorder in his creature, suffer it for a time, forgive it, if she disavows it and repairs it; but he reproaches him, he pursues him and he punishes him wherever he sees him, when the time of his justice has come, and that of mercy has passed. Why that ? Because he is holy. He cannot fail to prescribe the love of order to the intelligent and free creature, nor leave him without reward, if he observes it. He will exercise her for a time, he will afflict her, he will put her to various tests, he will even appear to abandon her, to better assure himself of her virtue; but, if she does not deviate from the order, and if she constantly perseveres in it, he will make her happy because he is holy.
This essential holiness of God is without doubt the first and greatest motive of ours. We are obliged to love order, because God loves it; we only have reason and freedom for this: reason, to know order; freedom, to submit to it.
As rational creatures, we are made in the image of God. God knows himself, God loves himself as the source of holiness, as holiness itself. We who are his images must know him, love him, obey him, and imitate him in this respect. It is not enough for us to be his images by our spiritual nature, endowed with intelligence and freedom, we must also be so by our will, by our choice; I must want to be holy, I must work with all my power to become one, I must reject with horror everything that is contrary to holiness, because God is holy, and I have the advantage of being created his resemblance.
How dare I approach God if I am not holy, or at least if I do not aspire to be? I am made to have an intimate relationship with him: a relationship of gratitude, I received everything from him; commerce of prayer, I have a continual need of him; commerce of hope, I expect everything from him; commerce of love, he is my sovereign good, and I can only find happiness in him. But what will become of this business if I renounce holiness? It will be absolutely broken. I will move away from God as I move away from holiness; God, for his part, will also move away from me. I will not be able to bear the sight of him; he will throw me far from his; he will hate me, reproach me, condemn me; I will be eternally banished from his presence.
That's not all: God has brought me closer to him by his grace even more than I am close to him by nature; he raised me to a supernatural state, he destined me to see him face to face, and to enjoy his own happiness for eternity. Does he not have incomparably more right to say to me: Be holy, because I am holy ? Can I claim the eternal enjoyment of the infinitely holy God, can I be intimately united to him, can I share his beatitude, if I am not holy, and of a holiness which suffers absolutely no stain? What should I continually occupy myself with here below, if not to purify myself more and more, to destroy in myself everything that is opposed to holiness, to acquire all the virtues which can make me acceptable to God? And, if I cannot achieve this perfect purity by my efforts, what can I do better than to deliver myself to God, so that he himself may sanctify me, and make me such as he wants me to be, to appear worthily in his presence? What ! I must see, I must eternally possess the one who is holy by essence, the one whose holiness causes the admiration, the joy, the happiness of the blessed Spirits; I am destined to say one day like them forever: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Almighty God ; and I would not work to become a saint, and I would not use all the moments of my life for this? Why am I on earth? What other object is worthy of my attention?
Is there something more pressing in this motive? Yes ; God tells us: Be holy, because I am holy, and that I myself have united myself personally with your nature to sanctify it. The Christian is not simply man, he has become a participant in Jesus Christ in the divine nature; he became by adoption a child of God the Father, and brother of the incarnate Word. Not only his soul, but his very body takes part in this adoption. Its members are the members of Jesus Christ; it is Saint Paul who says it. How much more do his soul and his faculties belong to Jesus Christ. How holy must the Christian, incorporated into the divinity, be in body and soul! O God! if we were imbued with this truth, what would be our ardor for holiness! I am not surprised after this that the Apostles gave the first Christians no title other than that of saints, and that this usage continued for a long time in the Church. Today would it not be a mockery to generally give this title to Christians? And are not most of them, in their conduct, and a large number in principle, enemies of holiness? What a terrible change in the face of Christianity!
But what is the holiness that is offered to Christians as a model? None other than that of God himself: Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect . It is Jesus Christ, it is a God made man to teach us the path of holiness, who speaks these words to us. So what does this mean? Can we be holy as God is holy? No, it is impossible for us to be as holy as he, nor to come anywhere near his infinite perfection. But whatever our holiness, it must be molded on his, which is the only source, the only example of all holiness.
And, because our eyes are too weak to contemplate holiness as it is in God himself, and we are incapable of making a just application of it to our conduct, God became man, he conversed among the men, he instructed them through his speeches, through his examples, throughout the rest of his life, and offered them, in our nature united to his, a model of holiness that they could grasp and imitate. It is therefore no longer a question of saying: Who will ascend to heaven to take there, in the sight of God himself, the true character of holiness? Holiness in person has descended to earth; she showed herself clothed in our flesh; she spoke, she acted like a man; all that remains is to study the spirit of Jesus Christ, to conform to his maxims, to follow in his footsteps. By this means we will become perfect, even as our Heavenly Father is perfect.
But Jesus Christ is not only the model of our holiness, he is also its principle and first efficient cause. We can do nothing except by his grace, and this grace must act on our freedom to the full extent of its power, so that we become saints like him. He continually offers it to us, and he promises to increase it as we make good use of it. But this good use depends even more on him than on us; and, if we understand our interests well, the wisest, the surest course we can take is to hand over to him, to consecrate our freedom to him; to ask him to dispose of it as his property, and to protest to him that we only want to lead ourselves by his guidance and act only under his direction. Blessed are those who devote themselves to him in this way and who never turn back! Their holiness will be the work of Jesus Christ; they will take no other part than that of letting him operate in them according to his good pleasure, of never resisting him, and of dying with all their heart to their own spirit, to their own will, in order to live life of Jesus Christ.
(Extract from the Manual of Interior Souls )
taken from the excellent Catholic blog : le-petit-sacristain.blogspot.com