In his book, Sources of Renewal, Karol Wojtyla understands the Second Vatican Council's overall intention to have been one of enabling the men and women of today to have an increasingly full participation in divine truth; that consciousness of the Redemption be the very hinge and basis of human life.
In his seminal work, Introduction to Christianity, the then Cardinal Ratzinger shows how Revelation impacts on the human mind or the human heart (or both), leading the person to incorporate all the human faculties - heart, mind and will - in responding to God's plan for us in Christ. In other words, that however grace enters the human person, it leads the the person to make the fully human response of faith.
The Christian then, is the person who embraces the Redemption as the fullness of the meaning of human life; that the Redemption becomes, for the Christian person, the essential formative basis for the development of the intellect, the virtues and the whole of the person's life.
In this light we can see that Christian attitude, and its formation, concerns the way in which the Faith is integrated into the person; the way in which the person allows him or herself to be enriched by Christ. Christ radically establishes human life upon Himself and renews it in the Redemption. How then do I allow this tremendous work of grace to take place in me? This is what we call "Christian attitude".
The essential ingredient in Christian attitude is the response that we make to God's self-revelation to us: offering ourselves to God, surrendering to Christ, or as the Council Decree Dei Verbum (no. 5) puts it, by "a free commitment of [our] entire self" to God.
Here we touch upon the most important dimension of Christian attitude and, before moving on, we need to look more fully at this free engagement with the person of Jesus Christ and His liberating impact on our lives.
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