“God is absolute moral goodness or holiness.”

If you are trying to be good person, and I imagine you are if you are a regular reader this blog, you need to know what you are striving to become. You rarely make progress towards a goal if you don't know what the goal is. What does your goal look like?

This dogma is a statement of what a Catholics goal looks like. We are striving to become like God, to mold ourselves to Him so that we too can “be perfect as [our] heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). God is the target towards which we aim.

Now, often times I've struggled because I don't know what God looks like. His moral perfection is beyond me. He can justly judge and give vengeance, because He knows all, but I cannot. How do I determine what I should mold myself to, and what is beyond me?

Luckily for me, God has given me Himself as an example. By coming as a man, I can see what this man should do. I can learn what to be justly enraged by (John 2:13-17), what to be saddened by (John 11:35), and so forth. By coming Himself to show us how to live He was able to show us what absolute moral holiness looks like in terms of one of us. All the Law and the Prophets could only point to what moral goodness looks like, Jesus enacted it (Matthew 5:17).

How then should we act? We should act like Jesus and lay down our lives. This may not be modern martyrdom or a crucifixion, but it is a call to sacrifice your life in the service of others. There are two ways to lose your life (Matthew 16:24-25), in death and in giving of all your time.

Therefore if we don't pray unceasingly (1 Thessalonians 5:17), if we don't give up all we have to follow Jesus (Mark 10:21), then we are not yet fully configured to Christ, and we will still have room for moral improvement.

Further reading: Stand firm in trying to be like Christ, don't give up! (Sirach 2)