Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [112]
We should realize the purifying and elevating effect that emanates from all high beauty; how, by virtue of its sheer quality, it transmits to us an aspect of the Divine, and how it tends to divert our minds from everything sinful or paltry, if only we yield to its suggestion of ascent, and grow fully aware of its meaning and nobility. No less is it in the nature of a great and deep love in Christ Jesus to liberate us, to loosen the bonds of our attachment to trivial goods, and to guide us towards God. We should perceive the enduring sursum corda that emanates from it, and the way it makes us grow in true simplicity.
In all these marvellous goods we should discern the call of God, nor ever resist the upward drift they tend to communicate to us. We must keep alive in us a general readiness to follow every call of God as contained in these gifts, and cultivate a conscious attention to their logos as an essential aspect of our striving for perfection. In this respect, again, the words remain true: “Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Ps. 94:8).
In moral actions, transformation cannot be our motive
Moral actions and good works, in their turn, equally exercise a transforming effect upon our habitual being. Here, however, our transformation must not be present to our minds even in the sense of a thematic overtone, as is legitimate in the case of our contemplative attitudes. Moral actions as such, including acts of abstaining from sin, great as their indirect significance is for our transformation, must never be performed with this aim in view.
Moral conduct issues from our general basic direction to God; in its concrete singularity, it expresses our response to some definite value or negation of value, or accordingly, to some (positive or negative) commandment of God. In our moral conduct we must concentrate entirely upon this concrete aim prescribed by God, and be guided solely by our interest in honoring the obligation it entails for us. Suppose a man is in danger of death and we hasten to succor him; obviously, in so doing, our interest must be absorbed by the peril that threatens him and we must not by any means act with a view to promoting our inner growth. We must follow the call of God that engages us to avert that evil, without any regard whatsoever to enhancing our own perfection.
Performed as a means of our transformation, our action would be, morally speaking, untruthful and in a sense invalid. For it derives its moral valuableness precisely from the fact of our being interested in the realization of an objective good (or, correlatively, the frustration of an objective evil). Our glance must be kept fixed on the object in question, and through the medium of that object on God, and not be diverted to the sanctification of our person. We owe this response to the object as such; hence, by instrumentalizing it, we deprive it of weight and validity.
Good deeds should be seen as a consequence, not a means
In the context now under discussion, the subject of our transformation cannot be thematic even in the secondary forms we have been describing above. The good works are fruits of our essential nexus with God; they must not be treated as means of its acquisition. It is to them that St, James refers when he says, “Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation” (James 1:27).
Nay, good works in this adequate sense of the term themselves belong essentially to the new man in Christ, so much so that they are included (as consequences) in one’s intention to become a new man. That intention must actualize itself after our daily examination of conscience, in various concrete resolutions expressing our determination