(I)t is by ethical acts that persons become good - or, through unethical actions, evil. Yet it is hard to see how persons could become morally realised - qualified in a new way in their own reality - unless the being of the good became synthesised with themselves in a new mode. Metaphysical realism is needful if human beings are to take nobility as their natural goal. In a morally debilitated age (one only has to think of the often reported absence of a moral dimension from much State education), a Christian philosophy has to put such nobility - the natural analogue of sanctity - before people with all the persuasiveness it can command.
In the economy of the saving revelation centred on Jesus Christ, the triune God God deepens our human interiority by opening it to himself. 'In the communion of grace with the Trinity, man's "living area" is broadened and lifted up to the supernatural level of divine life' (John Paul II). In this, a special place is held in the Catholic understanding by the Mother of God who, thanks to her unique receptivity to the triune God's gracing man in Christ, formed the locus of these changed dimensions. By her faith 'first at the Annunciation and then fully at the foot of the Cross, an interior space was opened up with humanity which the eternal Father can fill "with every spiritual blessing" (Eph 1:3)' (JPII).
- Aidan Nichols, Christendom Awake!
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