The Call to Holiness

I am not taking a class this semester, so I have been able to catch up on some personal reading, and because I am still not 100% because of my recent injury, I have decide to “slow down” a little bit, and use this down time as a way to take the psalmist’s advice and “Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 46).


I am currently reading Rediscovering Catholicism, by Matthew Kelly. This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it. You can find out more about him and his book at his website . As I was reading, I came across the following quote

“When the practice and preaching of Christianity are not clearly focused on the ‘universal call to holiness', the activities pursued in the name of Christianity disintegrate into nothing but a collection of social welfare initiatives. As the Church becomes more and more isolated from this call to holiness-whether locally, regionally, nationally, or universally- it very quickly begins to resemble little more than a massive social welfare committee, rather than the great spiritual entity she was established to be for every age.” (pg.71)

This statement was so profound to me on so many levels. Maybe it is because of my experiences with the Spiritual Exercises that made this jump out at me. The past few weeks I have been working with the following concepts, The Two Standards, The Three Classes of Persons and The Three Humilities

In a nutshell,

The Two Standards are the standard of Christ and the standard of Lucifer. Remember that Ignatius was a soldier, and at the time each side had a “standard (flag) - bearer” that rode in the front of the line of troops. For Ignatius, this was “spiritual warfare” and the most important choice for a person was what “standard” they would choose to follow.

The Three Classes of Person  describes the 3 types of “spiritual disposition” most people have-

The first type- the one who says they want a relationship with God, but are not willing to do anything to help cultivate that relationship. They are more attached to the “things” in life

The second type- the one who tries had to have a relationship with God, but does everything but the one thing necessary. They try, but instead of doing what needs to be done, they are content have a “barter relationship” with God.

The third type- the one who says they want a relationship with God and is willing to let go of all their “worldly attachments” so that they may know and most perfectly fulfill the will of God.

The Three Humilities are general descriptions of the spectrum of humility as lived by men and women. In the Ignatian tradition humility is defined as the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the fullness of what it means to be human.

The first humility- this is one end of the spectrum. In practicing this level of humility, I do only that which I see as necessary to achieve salvation.

The second humility- this is the middle of the spectrum, what I call the “balance” that I believe that most of us who call ourselves Christians are looking for, the balance between living my life, but doing so through the lens of following God’s will and not my own.

The third humility- this is the most perfect version of the second humility, and a grace only granted by God. With this grace, the person practicing the 3rd humility is moved to follow Jesus Christ in the most intimate way possible.

So, needless to say, I have been spending a lot of time lately looking at my own “call to holiness” and how I have been doing at answering that call. And I started to think,

“You know, Matthew Kelly really has a point.”

The Church, in an attempt to work for “social justice” has seemed to forget that her primary focus should be on helping people to reach that holiness.

And then hit me,

If we as Church spent more time helping people to reach that state of holiness that we are all called to, and if I, in my words and actions, follow the standard of Christ, strive to become the 3rd type of person and live in at least the 2nd level of humility as an example to others, we would not need the church to work for “social justice” as it would be a natural consequence of living a life of holiness.