The Lord Jesus calls us, by our Baptism, to share His glory and live in the perfect happiness of the saints, and this is the blessed state of life called beatitude. "God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve Him, and so to come to paradise. Beatitude makes us 'partakers of the divine nature' and of eternal life. With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1721)
This happiness is possible only through the salvation granted to us freely by God's grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Salvation is "God's free gift to us of the forgiveness of our sins and restoration of friendship with God, which can be done by God alone." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 169)
This unmerited gift of grace is poured out upon us at our Baptism when Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, unites us to Himself, makes us part of His family – the Church – and marks us forever with the sign of His Cross. After Baptism, Jesus continues to touch us and heal us with His grace through the Sacred Scriptures and the Sacraments of the New Covenant.