Saint Paul amplifies what the biblical tradition had to say about the heart, placing it in relation to the term “conscience”, which he takes from the culture of his time. In the conscience we gather the fruit of encounter and communion with Christ: a salvific transformation and acceptance of a new freedom. The Christian tradition insists on the conscience as the privileged place for special intimacy with God and encounter with him, where his voice is heard: “Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths” (Gaudium et Spes, 16). This conscience is not about immediate and superficial sentiment, nor about “self-consciousness”: it testifies to a transcendent presence, which each person discovers in his own interiority, but which he does not control.
TheoFonsAt the sources of the faith