Universal call to holiness

The universal call to holiness is a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that all people are called to be holy, and is based on Matthew 5:48: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). In the first book of the Bible, the call to holiness is expressed in the Lord's words to Abraham: "Walk before me, and be blameless" (Genesis 17:1).

Chapter V of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium discusses the Universal Call to Holiness:

Pope Benedict XVI spoke on the Universal Call to Holiness during his General Audience of Wednesday, 13 April 2011, saying:

The universal call to holiness is rooted in baptism, and the Paschal Mystery, which configures a person to Jesus Christ who is truly God and truly man, thus uniting a person with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, bringing him in communion with intra-trinitarian life.

Ben Sira taught about lay people that "without these cannot a city be inhabited," and "they will maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in the work of their craft."

Since 1928, St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, also preached the universal call to holiness especially for lay people living an everyday life and doing ordinary work: "There is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each of you to discover it."

John Paul II states in his apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, his apostolic letter for the new millennium, a "program for all times", that holiness is not only a state but a task, whereby Christians should strive for a full Christian life, imitating Christ, God the Son, who gave his life for God the Father and for his neighbor. This entails a "training in the art of prayer". According to the Pope, all pastoral initiatives have to be set in relation to holiness, as this has to be the topmost priority of the Church. The universal call to holiness is explained as more fundamental than the vocational discernment to particular ways of life such as priesthood, marriage, or virginity.

At the core of the spirituality of a Catholic is this call to perfection.

• Apostolates
• Lay apostolate
• Christian perfection
• Evangelical counsels
• Christian prayer
• Vocational discernment in the Catholic Church
• Familiaris consortio
• Amoris laetitia