Do you want to obtain a life of beatitude?  That is, a life of true blessedness?  A life of true happiness?  Of course you do!  The more important question is, “How do I obtain it?” 

The answer is simple.  We obtain it through the divine help of Christ.  And how does He help us?  He helps us: 1) through the law; and 2) through grace.

The “moral law” is also to be understood as the “divine law.”  The divine law is everything that comes from the mind and heart of God as right and good.  It is the moral order that God has established to guide us into a life of fulfillment.  By analogy, we understand that there are laws of nature.  Gravity, for example, cannot be ignored.  We may be able to pretend it doesn’t exist, but that does not mean it does not exist.  So it is with the moral (divine) law of God.  This spiritual law is real and unchanging.  Denying it does not make it disappear.

This law should be first understood as something that is rational.  It makes sense.  This is the case because God made us with an innate ability to comprehend right from wrong.  We may not be able to discern every moral law from God through our human reason alone, but we will be able to understand the most basic laws of morality through our reason and common sense.  That’s because the moral law is written upon our conscience. 

With that said, it’s important to understand that even those laws of the highest order (such as “love your enemies”) do make sense to us when we let God reveal them to us in the ways He chooses.  The bottom line is that the moral law makes sense!

When speaking of the moral law (divine law), we define four manifestations of it: natural law, revealed law, ecclesiastical laws and civil laws.  We’ll look at each one so as to understand how God has chosen to guide us toward beatitude.

To be continued