Saint Joseph Studios : 2021

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Reformation Day Is Scarier Than Halloween

What is Allhallowtide? The Real Origin of Halloween

Halloween as a Catholic term and annual event is actually part of what some today have colloquially dubbed the autumn "triduum", three back-to-back holy days comprising Allhallowtide (All holies season) in the Western Latin Church. The word "Halloween" dates back to 18th century Scottish, which is a shortening of the older phrase "All Hallows Even" or "the evening of the holies, i.e. - saints''. As Christmas Eve is the prayerful vigil preparing for Christmas (Christ's Mass), Halloween is the vigil looking ahead to the dawn of Hallowmas (Saint's Mass) on November 1st, which honors all the saints in glory, the healthiest organs in the one Body of Christ who offer intercessory prayer for the salvation of souls here on earth.

"The Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance

of the holy ones in light." - Col. 1:12

This high feast day of All Saints (equivalent to the sabbatical and celebratory character of a Sunday) is then followed by the somber All Souls Day on November 2nd, a memorial to commemorate and pray for the souls of all the departed, especially those who have died within the past year. With the Roman rite liturgical year winding down to a close and the coming of a new church year at Advent, the entire month of November is devoted to intercession for the souls in Purgatory, those whose final healing and sanctification in Christ are brought to completion in preparation for their full union in glory with God and his saints. In Latino culture, All Souls is celebrated as the "Day of the Dead '', when altars (ofrendas) are prepared with food, sugared skulls, flowers, and pictures to mourn and celebrate the beloved deceased and offer prayer for their souls.

An Oferanda for the Deceased

These three days of Allhallowtide honoring the saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed trace back to the early Church when they were celebrated at various other times of the year with different frequency (as some Eastern Catholic churches still do), and since at least the early medieval period, the October-November Hallowtide has served as an occasion to remind all of us about the importance of preparing for a holy death and Eternal Life, the end goal of Christ's saving work celebrated earlier at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. In a sense, this tiny "season" is a picture of three levels in the communion of saints, all those who are connected to the Father in and through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Halloween is the Church Militant's festive "Mardi-gras-like" jest at death and hell which have been conquered by Christ. Hallowmas (All Saints) celebrates the permanent victory of the Church Triumphant (those in heaven), and All Souls remembers the Church Suffering, all who are destined for glory but are undergoing temporary remediation to conform fully to Christ's holiness.

Death Does Not Amputate the Body of Christ

Allhallowtide has not been without its share of unfair criticism and mischaracterization throughout the centuries though, and this has led to a kind of cultural amnesia in modern times regarding the season's (specifically Halloween) origin.

Hallowtide Vanished From Protestant Calendars

Believe it or not, the idea that Halloween (liturgically All Hallows' Eve), even some of its modern spooky pop customs, originated in sadistic rituals of ancient Celtic paganism (Druidism) is an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish conspiratorial narrative dating back only to recent times, especially since the Protestant revolt of the 16th century and radical fudamentalist uprisings of the 19th century. When the disgruntled German priest Martin Luther mailed (not nailed as the propaganda would have us believe) his 95 Theses on October 31st, 1517, his specific target was the customs of Hallowtide (prayers and indulgences for souls in Purgatory; the authority of the Church to grant relief from temporal punishment; devotion to the relics of saints, etc.). There were indeed mischaracterizations and abuses of these fully Christian, Magisterially sanctioned, practices and beliefs at the local parish and community levels, but Luther's solution for reform was to throw the baby out with the bath water, arguing that purgatory, indulgences, etc. were unbiblical and therefore not binding on Christians, even if the legitimate successors of the apostles, Catholic bishops, affirmed they were indeed traditional and valid.

Once Luther got hold of the printing press, he and his followers launched an onslaught of polemical and calumnious literature accusing Catholics of idolatry and superstition, conflating pagan devotion with Christian customs in the Church's commemoration of the faithful departed. The more polemical Protestants eventually came to misconstrue petitioning saints for intercessory prayer as necromancy, and mistakenly viewed the honor of holy relics of saints as adoration of the ancestral dead. Hallowtide was eventually dropped, or rather vanished like ghost, from most Protestant calendars who felt it was pagan infiltration and replaced it with "Reformation Day '', a celebration of Luther's protest and unfortunate break with the Catholic Church.

Halloween's Folk Customs Over Time

Even before the 16th century, many early European Hallowtide folk customs, apart from the liturgical celebrations of the Church, focused on the themes of death, judgment, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. The Latin phrase Memento Mori or "remember you have to die" served as a sober reminder in Christian antiquity that earthly life is temporary, and that one should always live in harmony with grace to prepare for eternity with God. This focus doesn't negate the goodness and joys of earthly life which God created, for God's ultimate purpose is to restore back to humanity the divine image and likeness without the blemishes of sin and death, not only in spirit but in body through our sharing in the resurrection of Christ. However, a balanced focus on death does remind us not only to appreciate our lives now but understand that death doesn't have the final word, and that the fight against evil is a lifelong struggle. Still, our hope is in Christ who has already conquered sin and death and united all in his mystical Body, the Church. Death still temporarily severs the immediate physical connection between members, but all those who remain in Christ are never truly amputated from one another; each organ in the body still benefits the other in the circle of prayer.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” - 1 Corinthians 12:21

By the late Middle Ages the Memento Mori spirituality developed in some countries, especially after distressing times of pandemic, into the "Danse Macabre" or "dance of death". Villagers and nobles would take part in festive pageants and court masquerades, dressing up as corpses and skeletons from various classes (kings, nobles, peasants, clergy, etc) to remind everyone that all were equal in the eyes of death; all share the same destiny of the grave. This is probably the true origin of "guising" at Halloween, dressing up to remind one of death and even poke fun at it knowing that Christ has promised us that death is a temporary door to beatitude. Soul-caking, a custom of traveling from house to house asking for small spiced cakes in exchange for prayers for the deceased souls of the household, became a tradition at Hallowtide as well, and is probably the source of the American trick-or-treating tradition.

Three Universals: Life, Death, and Time

These lay festivities served as a "Mardi-gras-esque" prep for the solemn feast of All Saints. Just as Mardi-gras was brought to America by Europeans as a final feast before the beginning of Lenten fasting on Ash Wednesday, Halloween was the party before the holy day of prayer on Hallowmas. In fact, Halloween in its present festive form is really a modern American adaptation of the European Catholic focus on death and the afterlife, arising only since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A quick snapshot at the increased usage frequency of the word "Halloween" in the past century shows this evolution of the holiday into secular culture. Halloween soon became associated with Gothic literature (Shelley, Poe, Irving), Universal monster movies, and autumn harvest festivals. Early in 20th century America, the annual custom of trick-or-treating was abused in some places as an occasion for vandalism and costly pranks gone too far, which led some communities to legally crack down on the custom. But these were usually exceptional cases, not the norm.

Curiously though, just as Halloween was becoming a thing in America thanks to the Irish (who were not custodians of pagan rituals) and the American accomodation of the traditional crafts and games, fundamentalists, who often rejected Christmas and Easter feasts as well, turned their negative attention towards these curious Hallowtide customs.

The "Devil's Holiday" Is Born...According to Propaganda

Even as tensions thankfully cooled over the centuries between mainstream, charitable Protestant Christians and Catholics seeking peaceful dialogue and friendship, anti-Catholic fundamentalists continued to cook up new conspiracy theories to link Catholic practice with pagan customs. This culminated in Alexander Hislop's 1858 book The Two Babylons which continued to make complex, false allegations that Catholic piety and worship traced its roots back not to Christ and the apostles but to various dark practices of the ancient pagan world. In Hislop's shoddy hypothesis, Catholics were syncretists: people who merged and polluted pure Christian creed and practice with other non-Christian religious systems in such a way as to distort or alter the gospel's original content, negating Catholicism as an authentic form of Christianity.

In the late 20th century, on the heels of the satanic panic of the 1970s and 80s, anti-Catholic Jack Chick cherry picked Hislop's more absurd allegations and recycled them in comic-book style tracts which made their way into trick-or-treaters' bags on Halloween night. Many of these tracts targeted Halloween as a "devil's holiday" with sinister origins in alleged human sacrifices of Druidic occultism and their festival of Samhain, a supposed time when ancients feared that spirits and evil entities could cross over the veil to haunt the living. The leftovers of this Celtic pagan occultism (Jack o' Lanterns, masquerading, soul-caking or trick or treating) were apparently kept alive by Irish Catholic immigrants in America, who were never fully purged of their darker Druid history. They were stigmatized as custodians of a tainted gospel which good Puritans in America had to keep guard against lest they be exposed to the horrors of invading papists and their pagan infiltration...or so the anti-Catholic propaganda machine and yellow journalism of the early modern era would have had us believe.

It's the same kind of silly, ahistorical fiction that has been spread for centuries by puritanical sects about the origin of other Catholic holy days such as Christmas (falsely connecting it to the Roman Saturnalia and Mirthras cults) and Easter (a supposed reinvention of ancient near Eastern devotion to Ishtar). In the minds of anti-Catholic (or rather anti-orthodox) fundamentalists, putting up a Christmas tree or decorating an Easter egg is just as sinfully pagan as carving a Jack 'o Lantern (none of which are pagan, but that doesn't stop experts on social media today from launching such attacks). Such earthy customs are pagan because Catholics, in their minds, aren't really Christians.

New Agers Crash the Party

Ironically, New Agers and Neo-Pagans came to claim that Halloween, as they understand it, is indeed a pagan festival older than the Christian Hallowtide, but this is also revisionist history, not facts. New forms of pagan devotion and esoteric systems only trace back to the 19th century, and do not truly resemble ancient systems and practices of pagan religions. New pagans simply co-opted the anti-Catholic myth spread by fundamentalists to bolster their claims of possessing a continuity to older and apparently superior forms of ancient cults which have had an impact on the world through infiltration into Chrisitianity. Another thing to keep in mind is that many myths exist about ancient pagan practices as well. Although many ancient non-Christian religions in the world indeed practiced ceremonies considered demonic even back then (the slaughter of innocent martyrs as sacrifices to false gods did occur at points in history in Roman, near-Eastern, Aztec cultures, etc.), the Celtic festival of Samhein was not the gruesome holiday revisionists claimed it to be; rather it was really a harvest festival on the cusp of winter and nothing more.

Specifically, the Druidic religion on the Emerald Isle fizzled out around the time of Jesus with varieties of other pagans remaining. The Christianization of these vestigial pagan tribes by St. Patrick and other missionaries from the 5th century onward was indeed thoroughly successful (thus the "snakes" were driven out), so much so that Ireland became a beacon of missionary work for the continent of Europe, with monks traveling large distances to establish monasteries, which served as ancient schools, libraries, scriptoriums, and hospitals. It was these monks who also privatized the sacrament of Confession, allowing penitents to come anonymously to reconciliation and carry out their penances in secret rather than in public as had been done before in antiquity.

Irish Missionaries Were Fully Christianized

The Church never absorbed and syncretized any evil pagan ceremonies with Catholic liturgy anywhere, but this does not mean the absorption and rededication of innocuous non-Christian customs is always bad. Christ came to baptize the world, not annihilate it, and that is what the Church does through healthy inculturation -- testing all things and retaining what is good. It is a genetic fallacy to assume that anything with a pagan origin carries over the error once associated with it. For example, the names of the days of the week and months are still pagan -- the Nordic and Roman names for various false gods and goddesses (e.g.- Thor's Day = Thursday; Sol's Day = Sunday). Even certain personal names have such origins. St. Martin of Tours and heretic Martin Luther both have first names which mean "dedicated to Mars" -- the god of war. None of this means that such days or people are under the dominion of pagan rule, for intention, knowledge, and action are what influence the state of societies and souls, not syllables in words. Yet, there are still groups who would contend otherwise, such as fundamentalists who accuse Catholics of moving the Sabbath to Sunday to worship the Sun, not the Son. The same goes with Halloween. Even if some innocuous customs were proven to trace back to ancient times where true religion had not taken root yet, how does such origin pollute its different usage in a human culture today? Many pagans invented and wore wedding rings. Does that fact pollute the usage of rings in Christian matrimony? Is the portrayal of Christ as a Phoenix arising to new life from its ashes a confusing conflation of the true God with pagan beasts? Of course not.

Christ as Phoenix

Bottom Line

Halloween in secular culture today certainly has little to do on the surface with Heaven, Hell, and Puragtory - although the universal human experience of death is very much tied to its observance, in a light hearted way. It's a common human desire to generate fictional tales of suspense, mystery, and horror, focusing on themes of life, death, alienation, loss, and danger (whether natural or supernatural) regardless of the time of year. The fact that autumn, even before Allhallowtide became more universal in the Church, reminded people in various cultlures of reality of death (winter is on the way) inspiring them to tell tales or create images of ghosts and mythic monsters is no surprise. This isn't to say that Halloween today is without abuses. Parents who are concerned with the safety of children in public, the effect of scary images and movies on impressionable youth, or dangerous occult elements lurking in the background thanks to neo-pagan imitation should exercise discretion and make choices to protect their families as needed. But rest assured, celebrating Halloween in a reasonable spooky manner with some make believe and games thrown in actually does more justice to the Catholic roots of the holiday which has been slandered over time by those who would prefer all things Hallowtide to default to Reformation Day, the unforunate Halloween in 1517 when reactionaries truncated the Deposit of Faith and forced Christians to undergo unfortunate splits and divisions affecting the family of God even today (Note: non-Catholic Christians are our separated brothers and sisters and not culpable for the formal schisms hundreds of years ago. Even Trent anathmatized any Catholics who denied the validty of Baptism administered properly to those already outside the immediate bonds of the visible Church. See CCC 817-819).

Watching Scooby Doo or It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, decorating a pumpkin, dressing up kids as superheroes or princesses, reading Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", listening to old timey ghost stories from radio or watching a classic well-crafted horror film, and bobbing for apples (whatever else) is no more pagan or evil than the licit religious practices of asking the saints in glory to pray for us or to pray for the final healing of those in Purgatory, regardless of what anti-Catholic, ahistorical conspiracies and propaganda have spread over the decades to wreak moral panic and suspicion. We just need to remember that Halloween exists because of Hallowmas. In the end, we should care when Catholic holy days (that many other Christians share with us) are slandered, above all because it is sacriligous to do so, and we want others to know and enjoy the truth, not remain in error. But attacks on feast days of the Church such as Hallowmas, Christmas, and Easter are also attacks on the doctrines of the Faith, for the celebration of these mysteries in festivity preserves, teaches, and even makes present the realities we confess in our creed. As Pope Pius XI stated:
"For people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year - in fact, forever. The church's teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man's nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God's teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life." #21 QUAS PRIMAS So stay safe and have a holy and happy Allhallowtide! (and reasonably spooky and fun Halloween). "I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen." - the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.)

Note: We can no longer recommend all of Taylor Marshall's writings (who is cited in the video) because he has falsely accused the Vatican of pagan infiltration in his recent publications on current events.

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Did Enoch & Elijah Die, and What Does This Mean for Mary's Assumption?

Elijah (2 Kings 2:11; Maccabees 2:58) and Enoch (Genesis 5:24; Sirach 44:16, 49:14; Hebrews 11:5) are recorded as having been taken by God, seemingly without tasting death. There has been debate as to where and how Elijah and Enoch were taken at the end of their lives though and what awaits them at the end of time. Some say the Scriptures may be using hyperbole to signify the holiness of both, although several Old and New Testament passages seem to indicate an actual miraculous "rapture" took place for both. Others argue that they were taken without dying to an abode outside of time and space to be close to God but were not transformed into resurrected form to enter the beatific vision. Indeed, only Jesus and Mary have resurrected bodies in heaven which cannot die again since the catechism citing church documents uses the wording "singular privelege" for Mary's assumption, a participation in her Son's glory (CCC 966). But others perhaps experienced a different kind of "heaven" where they were kept by a special grace from dying (Sheol, second heaven, etc.), yet they still have a natural body and experience an exalted state of happiness. St. Thomas Aquinas states: "Elijah was taken up into the atmospheric heaven, but not in to the empyrean heaven, which is the abode of the saints: and likewise Enoch was translated into the earthly paradise, where he is believed to live with Elias until the coming of Antichrist.” - Summa Theologia, "Question 49. The Effects of Christ's Passion". Does this mean they will eventually die at a later time before the Second Coming before receiving a final resurrected body? We can only speculate, and no one is certain. Does their fates though point to the idea that Mary did not die prior to her assumption?

Pius XII in the same document MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS which declares Mary's assumption a dogma states in paragraph 20, "this feast shows, not only that the dead body of the Blessed Virgin Mary remained incorrupt, but that she gained a triumph out of death, her heavenly glorification after the example of her only begotten Son, Jesus Christ-truths that the liturgical books had frequently touched upon concisely and briefly." Here he is confirming that the ancient liturgies of East and West clearly referred to her death and entrance into heaven in resurrected form. In fact the Eastern Catholic churches, from where the belief in Mary's assumption first came and spread, refer to her entrance into heaven as the "dormition" (sleep, like dormitory) or "translation" (change from earthly state to a blessed one) indicating that her death is a certain fact of her life. The earliest reference to Mary's assumption, the Transitus Mariae, goes back to the second and third centuries and speaks of her death and that Christ and his angels translated her body into heaven where it was then joined to her spirit.

But the actual paragraph where Pius XII uses the words "declare" and "define" which indicate that the specific papal statement carries an irreformable, permanent judgement and the full weight of infallibilty is paragraph 44: "by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." The simple fact that Mary has 1) a resurrected body and that 2) she is in heaven, is what a Catholic cannot deny. The document as a whole makes references to different levels of authority: the opinions of theologians, the common shared views of Fathers and Saints which may differ on detail but all point to the same core belief, and the binding statements of the Magisterium. Thus we have to read the documents with attention to language and other factors (Canon law 749 n. 3 : “No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident.”). Paragraph 44 is very clearly the part which invokes the extraordinary magisterium.

JPII affirmed that Pius XII did not intend to exclude her death from Catholic teaching in this paragraph since Pius quotes liturgical prayers and several Western and Eastern saints who speak of her death; Pius just didn't think it necessary to settle the question at the time and left it open for theologians who wished to explore other possibilities. John Paul II though steered the Church back to the common tradition which goes back not 400 years (the theory that Mary didn't die) but 2,000 years (the belief she did die), a tradition which contains the story that Mary did die and then Christ took her body back to be reunited with her spirit to enjoy a glorious state of resurrection.

One can argue that Enoch and Elijah will never die and thus this shows that God could make an exception for anyone especially for his Mother. So a Catholic thus far is free to hold this opinion. However, the speculation is actually the youngest and a minority view in the Church vs the ancient and majority view that she did die. It's a detail Catholics shouldn't quibble about but the dormition of Mary is the favored story contrary to popular belief.

But finally, the fact that Elijah and Enoch were "taken up" somehow and somewhere instead of going to the grave right away does provide a good apologetic support for Mary's assumption. Those non-Catholics who resist the idea of Mary's assumption usually 1) misunderstand what the dogma asserts or 2) reject it because it is not explicit in Scripture which for most Protestant Christians is the only source of revelation. Thus, when speaking with another Christian who is strictly "Bible only", the Catholic must show that not every detail regarding faith and morals is explicit in Scripture; it may be implicit in the Bible or supported in principle, and explicit in Tradition. But if the person is willing to concede that not all facts about Christ and the Church are confined to writing, then a Catholic must be sure to explain what the assumption of Mary actually is and what it is not. As long as we emphasize that the gift Mary received early is what all faithful Christians will someday receive (resurrection and the crown of glory), then there should be no objection on the part of the non-Catholic Christian. He may not accept that it is a binding part of revelation, but he cannot deny that the assumption refers to anything different than the resurrection of the dead which all Christians must and do believe.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Faith as Faithfulness, Not Just Belief

The formula, salvation by "faith alone" is not the ordinary way the gospel has been preached in history but it is not without precedent. Some of the early Fathers used the phrase at least once in their writings including Origen, St. Hilary, St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Bernard. Even St. Thomas Aquinas used this wording a couple times: "Therefore the hope of justification is not found in them (the moral and ceremonial requirements of the law), but in faith alone." - Commentary on 1 Timothy, Ch. 1, Lect. 3.

So why the controversy during the Protestant Revolution & Catholic Reformation? It had to do with how groups defined and used terms. The majority of time in Scripture and Tradition, "faith" meant "intellectual belief" in God and all He has revealed. "Hope" means assurance and "trust" in God's promises and "Charity" is unselfish love of God above all things and loving neighbor as self. These are supernatural gifts we cannot merit at the BEGINNING of our walk with God (our inability to reach heaven requires Christ as Savior) and any active use of them AFTER initial justification (first gifted in water Baptism, or obtaining God's righteousness through desire) is a response and cooperation with the work of God who reaches out to us first and helps us remain holy at every stage of our life (to aid us in obeying the Commandments). But intellectual belief is not sufficient or effective enough for CONTINUED growth in Christ's righteousness and deepening of our relationship with God, what Scripture and Tradition call continual justification or "sanctification". "Even the demons believe and shudder" but remain outside of the Light because of their narrow "faith" and twisted wills (James 2:14-26).

Faith in the broad sense for a Christian means "faithfulness", a response to God with the whole mind, heart, strength, and being, which is the way Catholics and most Protestants can properly understand together what "faith" means after Baptismal regeneration (a combo of belief, trust, and love). Christ is always faithful and helps us to be like Him, and we must freely and continually accept his gifts of grace. Faith in the narrow sense (belief) is not enough to save but is the seed of this relationship with God.

But Luther drew suspicion because he added "alone" to "faith" in his translation of Romans (Paul's letter in which the apostle also speaks of the obedience of faith or belief coupled with hope and the works of love) and deleted James from the New Testament. Luther at first spoke vaguely about the definition of faith, the nature of free-will, and the distinction between Original Sin and Concupiscence (although he acknowledged in his later writings the necessity of freely chosen works which flow from grace in a process of justification. He stated that just as heat and light are distinct but not separate from flame so too faith and works cannot be completely separated). The Catholic Church guarded against a narrow definition of saving faith but could accept a broader definition of faith. Unfortunately, politics and polemics, primarliy instigated by greedy princes supporting Luther, often clouded dialogue in 16th century Europe.

Later Protestants and Evangelicals debated within their own circles the meaning of "faith", but few used "faith" simply as a synonym for "belief", but rather as a general word for the whole of Christian discipleship. "Faith alone" may be risky to use without explanation, but it is not heretical if understood as inclusive of other supernatural virtues that connect us to God. But "faith alone" is to be rejected if it is used to deny obeying the Commandments or deny partaking of the sacraments in order to stress a completely passive role for the believer. In the original manuscripts, St. Paul stated we are justified by the gift of "faith" without the qualifier "alone" because authentic faith entails more than belief; it leads to love.

But likewise, Catholics must be careful with slogans like saved by "faith and works" without explanation as this can cause one to understand that good works place us in an INITIAL state of grace, an understanding condemned by the first canon of the Council of Trent and earlier by the Council of Ephesus against Pelagius. Works do contribute, secondarily, AFTER the beginning of justification, NOT BEFORE, and only in the sense that they are aided and preserved by the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us become more like Christ and grow closer to God in the process of ongoing justification. Each good human work made holy by Christ doesn't earn one a place in heaven but further unites one with the Triune God and Communion of Saints. It is faith formed by love, a relationship akin to a marriage which has an event (wedding), ongoing process (lifetime relationship), that leads to eventual fruit (union in heaven). This is how all humanity is set apart as God's people, not by a wall of ceremonial precepts, but by faith which includes hope and love, graces given and nurtured by the miraculous actions of Christ called sacraments (See Acts 15:9-11). Therefore, a Christian's good works can be pure and not partially sinful (mixed with less noble intentions) but pleasing in God's eyes because they are done with, in, and through Christ who is the first and primary cause of our salvation and all its aspects (forgiveness, redemption, justification, sanctification, deification).

Ultimately, the Christian understanding of salvation rests upon the reality of participation in divine Sonship. Because God became man and reversed our downward spiral into doom because of his love and obedience, he makes possible again mankind's ascent back to God to share, by grace, in the glory of what Christ is by nature: the offspring of God. We are remade in Christ's image to reflect the glory of God who is Love eternal.

The Vatican's Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (signed by the Lutheran Federation, Methodists, & Reformed communities) affirmed substantial agreement on these points with the Catholic Church:

"If we translate from one language to another, then Protestant talk about justification through faith corresponds to Catholic talk about justification through grace; and on the other hand, Protestant doctrine understands substantially under the one word 'faith' what Catholic doctrine (following 1 Cor. 13:13) sums up in the triad of 'faith, hope, and love'" (LV:E 52).