Episode 4. Living Up To Your Dignity

Episode 4. Living Up To Your Dignity

Show Notes

“Freedom is not getting to do what you want, but being able to do as you ought.”
- St. John Paul II

You are good…and you don’t get to do whatever you want. God made you good, plain and simple, and nothing that you do can diminish or steal your inherent goodness as a child of God. But that doesn’t mean that all of our desires and actions are good. We’ve all experienced the anxiety, pain, and breakdown of relationships that happen when our actions don’t live up to our dignity. Yet, in the midst of those real consequences, we’re reminded of God’s love for us, our call to repentance, and a return to virtue.

We don’t do good actions because they make us good or to earn God’s love. 
We do good actions because when our outward actions match our internal dignity, we find integration and we can live in the joy and peace for which we were created from the beginning.

Show Notes

  • “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom. Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.”

    • Pope St. Leo the Great, Christmas homily from mid-5th century

  • “For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

    • Galatians 5:13-14

  • Thomas Aquinas’ definition of the good: “Goodness and being are really the same…” & “The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable.” (Summa Theologiae, question 5, article 1)

  • We don’t do good things and avoid evil because it will make us good.
    We do good things and avoid evil because it is in line with our inherent goodness; we find peace and freedom in virtue because it expresses the truth of who we really are.

  • Poco a Poco, the podcast of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, discusses a rejuvenated approach to Confession:

Challenge By Choice

Go to Confession!

  • Receive Jesus’s Divine Mercy with the intention of better living out your dignity from now on

  • Examine not only your conscience, but also examine the eternal mercy of the God who forgives you

  • For our friends who are not Catholic, seek the merciful love of Jesus in whatever way your own church or personal prayer allows