Vocation to holiness

You are fellow citizens with the saints (Eph 2,19-22)

Abstract

On 12/19/24, the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium will be celebrating 60 years of its promulgation. This text from the Second Vatican Council was a point of revolution in the understanding of Catholic ecclesiology, especially with regard to holiness. The Church began a new moment in its history when it stopped being understood as a closed and bureaucratic organism, and began to understand itself as the “People of God”, a community of love for the light and example of the Trinity, in which all the baptized are called to be saints. The desire is to make God's invitation to his children resonate to be holy as He is holy. It is highlighted how the call to holiness developed in the Pontifical Magisterium after the Council. Since the Council was a return to biblical sources, the study is presented based on an interface reading of Lumen Gentium with the pericope of Eph 2,19-22, in which Paul proposes a revolution in the understanding and place of new Christians coming of paganism. For him, from Christ onwards, all are fellow citizens of the saints and members of God's family, called to become God's dwelling place in the Spirit, regardless of social group or citizenship. Furthermore, the intention in revisiting the text of Lumen Gentium and the biblical pericope is to collaborate with the Church in understanding the call to holiness by helping the faithful to seek to live holiness of life based on God's order, which says “Be holy because I I am holy” (Lev 19,2; 11,44; 1Pt 1,16; Mt 5,48).