Moral Obligation, Merit, Honor, Reward, Gratitude

[MysticMissMisty]

Salvete, omnes!

(First, forgive me if this thread is misplaced and, if so, please feel free to move.)

If, under God’s Divine Law, we are obligated to do good (i.e., to not do evil, i.e., to not sin), then how does any merit of ours fit in?

Even in earthly affairs, insofar as man relates to man, why does one man honor another for his good works if the latter is apparently only fulfilling his duty to his fellow man and also to God? Why, indeed, do Catholics honor the Saints for their good works if, again, they are only fulfilling their obligation to God and man to do good/not sin?

Indeed, isn’t there even a saying of Jesus in the Gospels where He states that, when we are spoken well of for our good works on the Day of Judgment, we should respond to God’s praise by saying merely that we “did our duty”? So, again, if this is the case, what merit is there at all on our part or on the part of any other Christian, past, present or future?

Even in terms of worldly honor, why do we give it if the one to whom we are giving it is only acting, technically, out of obligation to man and God? Why do we receive such honors if we are only acting out of obligation?

Even without a knowledge of God, those outside of the Christian Faith seem readily to give and receive honors. They seem willingly to feel respect/appreciation and even awe toward those who do good, knowing full well that such good is always the “right” thing to do; for, they show this by their appreciation for such. Why, then, if such is the “right” thing to do (implying moral obligation), do those both of and not of the Faith impute merit, give honor, etc.?

Why, indeed, does God reward us (and even honor us?) for our good works if we are only doing what we are obligated to do?

Furthermore, what part does gratitude play in all this, both to God and to man for good works. Why do we express gratitude to God if He is only doing what is his nature to do? Why to we express gratitude to other men if they are, at its root, doing only what God requires them to do (to do good, not to sin)? If God feels any gratitude for what we do, why should He, if we are only doing what we are obligated to do?

I am not trying to be contentious, but I am rather genuinely confused on this whole subject and everything related to it. Please do help me to clear this all up in terms of Catholic theology.

Also, of there are any good commentaries, ancient or modern, on this subject or, indeed, anything in Sacred Scripture, I would be most appreciative ifyou would either cite such here or provide me with links to such.

Any good modern websites that may make sense of this for me?

Gratias vobis maximas!

 

[spiderweb]

I think the simplest and most basic answer is that even though we are only “doing our duty”, we still have the freedom to not do our duty. Most often doing our duty is more difficult than just doing what we want. That’s why there is honor, reward, etc. when we put forth effort and diligence, when we could have always chosen not to do so.

 

[Trident_H]

I don’t know what’s wrong with praising someone for doing their duty. I mean isn’t it a good idea to thank someone who made a nice meal or thank the clerk who hands you your grocery bags? I think it’s just a way of showing we appreciate the duties that people have and we like it when people do them properly.

And I mean you can now thank me for this post if you want. It won’t hurt my chances to get to heaven.

Peace.

-Trident

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Hi Misty,

This might be a helpful start, especially in giving you some terminology that might prove useful in your search:

In applying these notions of merit to man’s relation to God it is especially necessary to keep in mind the fundamental truth that the virtue of justice cannot be brought forward as the basis of a real title for a Divine reward either in the natural or in the supernatural order. The simple reason is that God, being self-existent, absolutely independent, and sovereign, can be in no respect bound in justice with regard to his creatures. Properly speaking, man possesses nothing of his own; all that he has and all that he does is a gift of God, and, since God is infinitely self-sufficient, there is no advantage or benefit which man can by his services confer upon Him. Hence on the part of God there can only be question of a gratuitous promise of reward for certain good works. For such works He owes the promised reward, not in justice or equity, but solely because He has freely bound himself, i.e., because of His own attributes of veracity and fidelity. It is on this ground alone that we can speak of Divine justice at all, and apply the principle: Do ut des (cf. St. Augustine, Serm. clviii, c. ii, in P.L., XXXVIII, 863).

Taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia article Merit.

In Christ,
VC

 

[MysticMissMisty]

I think the simplest and most basic answer is that even though we are only “doing our duty”, we still have the freedom to not do our duty. Most often doing our duty is more difficult than just doing what we want. That’s why there is honor, reward, etc. when we put forth effort and diligence, when we could have always chosen not to do so.

So, then, on your analysis, reward/honor/etc. is given because of the difficulty of the act.

Makse sense, but…

Some honor (whether mental or material) is given to people who are said to “go above and beyond”, for instance, in regard to one whom society at large considers extraordinarily generous, let’s say. I’m thinking of, say, a person who devotes his life to girls’ education in African countries. Certainly in some of these cases, the person who does this has both the means and the time and it is, to be honest, no real sacrifice of either to do this. The person is rather doing this because the plight of the girls (in this example) touched his heart. Still, in this case, I might argue that what he does is not going “above and beyond” what he is required to do, but fulfills, to some extent, what God does morally require him to do (i.e., to do good and not to do evil either through commission or omission). Should we still consider such a man who is really not sacrificing a lot to do what he does but is doing it because the issue concerns him as honorable/worthy of great praise/most meritorious?

Furthermore, should not the “effort” involved in a particular act actually be a moot point insofar as the obligation to perform the act is concerned? Regardless of effort, are we not still obliged to do the act because it is good? If “effort” should be a moot point in doing good works, should we not honor all good works equally?

If we honor a work for its “effort”, are we not implicitly saying that “not doing good” or even “doing evil” is normative? We are, then, essentially honoring a person not for doing the good per se but rather for not doing evil (i.e., omitting to do that same good)?

 

[MysticMissMisty]

I don’t know what’s wrong with praising someone for doing their duty. I mean isn’t it a good idea to thank someone who made a nice meal or thank the clerk who hands you your grocery bags? I think it’s just a way of showing we appreciate the duties that people have and we like it when people do them properly.

And I mean you can now thank me for this post if you want. It won’t hurt my chances to get to heaven.

Peace.

-Trident

Eheh.

But, yeah. Hmm. I think you may have actually hit on something here.

The giving of the honor is not necessarily directed toward the goodness ofthe work itself, at least not as directly as I was assuming, but it is rather directed toward an appreciation of the person for the effort involved in doing the good work. We are essentially saying, “I know it is difficult and so I want to say that I appreciate your putting in the effort to do it. Even though you were obligated to do it, I know it was hard to do, but you did it anyway, and I appreciate that. Therefore, this is to be commended by both me and by society at large.”

However, ins ome cases, I think, when we give honors, we are indeed saying, “You are to be commended for what you did because most people wouldn’t’ve have done it.” This is, again, as I said in my previous post, making a lesser act or the omission of the act normative and expected, which seems problematic to me.

As for the everyday “thank yous” we give out, say, to clerks, etc., I have often wondered about these as well. For, if you really want to get down to it, there is nothing at all superiorly meritorious about these acts. We do not place the laurels on someone who gives us back change at the cash register after all. Perhaps we are doing this in the spirit of thanking the person generally for the job they do and expressing appreciation for their doing that job? Or, perhaps we are thanking them for being willing to “lower themselves” and serve us, if you will, though, again, this hearkens back to the issues I’ve raised in my previous post about thanking someone for doing what they are according to moral law obligated to do, regardless of effort.

 

[GLam8833]

MysticMissMisty, WE get something out
of our doing the RIGHT thing, we grow
spiritually as a plant grows or as a growing
body grows. The Bible uses the imagery
of a Body, of which Christ is the head and
we the members, if we are doing what the
Head wants us to do, we are only doing what
is PROPER to a normal functioning body!
However, we have the FREEDOM to
choose whether to do the will of the Head!
More than that, God is willing to work in
COOPERATION with us to do His kingdom
work!
“[Those] who believe in me will do what
I am doing, greater things will [they] do…
I will do WHATEVER you ask in my name.”
John 14:12f, so, the Church of God is different
than a normal body in that the members
themselves can decide WHAT they want
the Head to tell(wills) them to do!!!

 

[porthos11]

Merit is a complex thing.

First of all, we need to establish that God owes no one nothing. None, nada, zilch.

So that said, we go to the two kinds of merit. De condigno and de congruo.

Merit de condigno is merit in justice, and in strict justice, only one Person was and is capable of meriting this: Jesus Christ himself through his works of charity, and especially through his action on the Cross. He alone was capable of meriting a reward in strict justice, i.e. God had to reward him because of his actions.

However, meritum de condigno is also of another kind: condign, where men in the state of grace merit due to their good works. Not so much because of their own value (man’s good works by themselves have no value; they do not merit eternal reward), but insofar as they are done by people in the state of grace, they are therefore pleasing to God since they are done out of love for God and in union with Christ. There is no reason for God to reward any good works done in the state of grace, if not for the fact that he himself has freely bound himself to reward such good works. So in a manner of speaking, God is “obligated” to reward good works done in the state of grace with merit de condigno, because he himself, in the light of Christ’s action, has decreed it to be so.

Conversely, it is impossible for good works to merit anything, or rather, merit de condigno anything done outside of the state of grace.

There is also merit de congruo, which is given simply out of the goodness of God’s heart, whether or not the person deserves it. “Strictly speaking,” it is not given out of justice but due to a state of friendship with man, so this assumes the man is in a state of grace. But it can also be understood broadly, such that even a sinner in mortal sin can merit de congruo. Of course it cannot be salutary merit, i.e. he cannot merit the grace of reconciliation with God, but he can merit for himself, solely out of God’s goodness, actual graces that can move him to respond to God’s prodding towards reconciliation (in other words, he can merit actual grace towards reconciliation de congruo “broadly speaking”).

The gist of all this is that God is exceedingly generous that he would go so far as to lay out an order of grace and merit for his people, even though he never had to.

 

[Trident_H]

Eheh.

But, yeah. Hmm. I think you may have actually hit on something here.

The giving of the honor is not necessarily directed toward the goodness ofthe work itself, at least not as directly as I was assuming, but it is rather directed toward an appreciation of the person for the effort involved in doing the good work. We are essentially saying, “I know it is difficult and so I want to say that I appreciate your putting in the effort to do it. Even though you were obligated to do it, I know it was hard to do, but you did it anyway, and I appreciate that. Therefore, this is to be commended by both me and by society at large.”

However, ins ome cases, I think, when we give honors, we are indeed saying, “You are to be commended for what you did because most people wouldn’t’ve have done it.” This is, again, as I said in my previous post, making a lesser act or the omission of the act normative and expected, which seems problematic to me.

As for the everyday “thank yous” we give out, say, to clerks, etc., I have often wondered about these as well. For, if you really want to get down to it, there is nothing at all superiorly meritorious about these acts. We do not place the laurels on someone who gives us back change at the cash register after all. Perhaps we are doing this in the spirit of thanking the person generally for the job they do and expressing appreciation for their doing that job? Or, perhaps we are thanking them for being willing to “lower themselves” and serve us, if you will, though, again, this hearkens back to the issues I’ve raised in my previous post about thanking someone for doing what they are according to moral law obligated to do, regardless of effort.

This sounds very true.

I mean maybe sometimes we also have a goal to be thankful just to cheer the person on in their job. It is kind of a little gift we can give to make their day feel more meaningful. Sometimes we can give this gift and it brings joy so that the world feels a bit happier. I don’t know. I guess it’s also maybe like we sometimes imagine what it must be like to be that person and sometimes we are thankful that we don’t have to do that job so our thanking them is a way of expressing that we are glad they are there to do it. Glad because otherwise we’d have to do it instead. So in thanking them we are also thanking God for giving us that person to do that thing for us. I don’t know if this is what you were asking though. It’s just what came into my mind when thinking about your answer to my answer.

But I mean I want to thank you for asking this question. And for answering me. And for reading this post. I mean you didn’t have to do any of those things because they weren’t your job, but if they were I would still be happy to thank you for it. Because I know it all takes effort. It all takes time. And I know what it’s like to spend effort and time. So in a way thanking you acknowledges that we are all sort of in this together. We are all playing on the same team in a way. Or something.

Peace.

-Trident

 

[fhansen]

In this life there are obstacles to doing the right thing; its not always easy. The flesh is weak-it opposes just getting up in the morning. We constantly struggle here; we must make moral decisions, little and big ones, everyday. There are conflicts of interest between ourselves and others, temptations to sin, the daily hardships of life that we must overcome. We live in a world where both good and evil are literally known-and dealt with as a matter of course.

**409 This dramatic situation of "the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one"makes man’s life a battle:

The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.**(CCC)

This world, this situation we find ourselves in, has the capacity to test and stretch and refine us, to justify us. God is in the business of creating little gods; we’re to be transformed into His image. Our justice is based on and flows from His, and, as such, is limitless, which is why the council of Trent teaches that we can continue to grow in justice, even after the initial justification in the waters of baptism. This justice/holiness/righteousness is also defined by the term “love”, the very nature of God.

 

[fisherman_carl]

I don’t know what’s wrong with praising someone for doing their duty. I mean isn’t it a good idea to thank someone who made a nice meal or thank the clerk who hands you your grocery bags? I think it’s just a way of showing we appreciate the duties that people have and we like it when people do them properly.

Exactly. What a depressing world it would be in if I could not appreciate goodness, beauty or art.

Should we do good just because it is our duty? Does one paint a painting because they are fulfilling their duty or because they appreciate art? Doing good is more than a duty or a responsibility. It is in fact a blessed thing to do.

When you see the starving faces on tv and you feel empathy towards them and it motivates you to donate money to help them do you do this because you are fulfilling a duty or an obligation? Or are you doing it because you have compassion for them?

Being good is not just a duty but it is who we are. You give to the starving because you are compassionate. If you weren’t you would not have cared about their plight. When you see someone look after the dying like Mother Theresa did you appreciate their work because you can recognize that what they do is something beautiful. Just like you recognize a beautiful painting.