Folia Theologica 19. (2008)
Hámori Antal: Human dignity in church Teaching
44 HÁMORI, Antal the earth and having dominion over it (Gen 1:26-28). God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes in order to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their own good and that of their neighbors. Though often unconscious collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings. They then fully become „God's fellow workers" and co-workers for his kingdom (1 Cor 3:9).20 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: „For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." (Phil 2:13)21 Far from diminishing the creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for „without a Creator the creature vanishes" (GS 36). Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's grace.22 4. The sacrament (dignity) of matrimony; the family in God's plan The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love, has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. By its very nature it is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptized to the dignity of a sacrament.23 „The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. ... God himself is the author of marriage."24 The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have un20 CCC 307; cf. Col 1:24; 4:11; 1 Thes 3:2. 21 Cf. 1 Cor 12:6. 22 CCC 308. Cf. Mt 19:26; Jn 15:5; Phil 4:13. 23 CCC 1660; cf. GS 48; Codex Iuris Canonici (CIC), can. 1055 § 1. Cf. CCC 1661. 24 GS 48.
