Scriptural Theological Aspects of Religious Life

Our sources are the documents of Vatican II and contemporary exegesis and theology.  Theological reflection has moved beyond the documents, but it must be rooted in them, and especially in the world-vision that made Vatican II necessary in the first place, a world-view that was spelled out in The Church in the Modern World. It would take us too far afield to develop in detail the anthropology that is the background for Vatican II and post-Vatican II thinking.  The burgeoning knowledgeexplosion in every sector of human learning, both ecclesiastical and secular, from biblical criticism to cybernetics, has given contemporary man new perspectives on himself, on society, and on the Christian reality itself.  We mention only one aspect that has particular relevance for this paper, the fact of Christian secularity. Christian secularity in this context means that we take the world seriously, as intrinsically valuable, that we recognize human values as inextricably tied in with the divine life of grace, that we refuse to live in a two-story universe, in which religious live in the supernatural upstairs and venture downstairs, into the world of nature and the secular city, the world of human beings and society, only because they need this lower story to exist or because they must bring their other-worldly message into this foreign territory. Our whole lives are identified with Christ through Baptism.  Whatever is human is part of the Christian fact, so that, as Pope Paul VI wrote in The Development of Peoples, a man’s self-fulfillment and his contributions to the progress of humanity are as much his obligation as the salvation of his soul (nn. 14—21).  Christians are called to transform