Universal Call to Holiness and Apostolate is a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that all people are called to be holy. (See Lumen Gentium, Chapter V.) This Church teaching states that all within the church should live holy lives.
Living a holy life, as defined by the Catholic Church, has little to do with perfection (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, Chapter Two.) Rather, it is a lifelong process of seeking God himself, through the person of Jesus Christ.
The universal call to holiness in the Roman Catholic Church is rooted in baptism, a sacrament which configures a person to Jesus Christ who is God and man, thus uniting a person with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, bringing him in communion with intra-trinitarian life.
John Paul II states in his apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, his master plan 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, the Son of God, who gave his life for God 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.
The universal call to holiness is an important element in the spirituality of Opus Dei, which emphasizes the sanctification of the lay people. It is also fundamental to the Pro-Sanctity Movement.
Famous quotes containing the words universal, call and/or holiness:
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)
“And call ye this to utter what is just,
You that of justice hold the sov’reign throne?
And call ye this to yield, O sons of dust,
To wronged brethren ev’ry man his own?”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm LVIII (Paraphrased by The Countess of Pembroke)
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)