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    Published: 2023-02-04
    Vol. 52 No. 2 (2021)

    The concept of spiritual responsibility in the dynamics of growth in love

    Stanisław Gibziński
    Warszawskie Studia Pastoralne
    Section: Artykuły
    https://doi.org/10.21697/wsp.2021.2.02

    Abstract

    Responsibility in spirituality is the discovery of God and oneself in truth, it concerns stability in God and bearing witness to God and man, and is a sign of mature opposition to heterogeneous anthropology that leads to a conflict in the understanding of the process of uniting with God. It is also an obje- ction to relativism which leads to a false image of a human being and thus prevents proper self-recognition. God offers man a creative collaboration that causes spiritual growth. The dynamics of diachronic union with the Holy Trinity entails different reactions of human intellect and will caused and influenced by infused virtues of faith, hope and charity. The meeting with the Word of God – Jesus Christ, who is revealed both as a person and as a law that constitutes human freedom, is echoed in the conscience as an experience of inner identity of living in response to another. The innerly projected experience of responsibility arises from and is incorporated in human rational nature according to the teaching of Aquinas. It is likewise measured by consequences of human acts. In the process of growing in faith, the fact and the experience of responsibility changes its dynamic and broadens its field. The primacy of Christ within the context of the moral theology of virtues uncovers the reality of charitology within aretology and establishes the law of freedom in Christ. The spiritual aspect of responsibility is not then directly related to the law as in the case of moral responsibility, which means to the normative and life-giving reality of the truth of the good. It is expressed by the generosity of multiple acts of the will in the virtues infused and acquired, theological and moral, in proportion to the progress in union with God. They are centralised in acts of cult, integrating morality, spirituality, dogmatic theology and liturgy. Organically the same law also highlights the role of grace in the moral space, which organises the moral life in the human person, thereby uniting, strengthening and ennobling it. To sum up, taking responsibility has as its cause the encounter with Christ and is an actualisation and a feature of living in union with him. It results from a supernatural life based on grace, thanks to which the virtues of faith, hope and love correlate with the cardinal virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit and enable man to live according to the Eight Beatitudes. Responsibility is a component of the vocational structure of man and the acceptance of responsibility is organically related to the process of human spiritual development, it is a counterpoint to naturalism, minimalism and lukewarmness in the life of the Church, an expression of the desire for holiness (cf. Mt 11.12) and is a form of expiatory response to the developing „civilization of death”.

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    Gibziński, S. (2023). The concept of spiritual responsibility in the dynamics of growth in love. Warszawskie Studia Pastoralne, 52(2), 27–67. https://doi.org/10.21697/wsp.2021.2.02

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