Why did you come here today? Why do Christians come together? To pray together, receive the Eucharist together and share the Good News of Salvation. But what exactly does salvation mean?
I remember seeing an old priest I knew when he was dying. He was curled up in the foetal position and he kept saying, ‘I’m never going to get to heaven…’ To me it was sad to see this man, a holy man, in such fear before he died. And it also said to me that he was not fully grasping the core message of our faith. He was basically saying that he was not good enough to get to heaven and he was right! None of us are and none of us could be good enough to get to heaven by our own strength. But the point of the message of Christ is that it is by his grace that we are given eternal life.
Since all have sinned...
Here is something that many Christians don’t get and this is really at the heart of our faith. Most of us believe that if we work hard enough at being good and doing the right things, we will be pleasing to God and we will become holy and so God will allow us to go to heaven. Right? Wrong! That is not the teaching of Christianity at all! The truth is that we cannot become holy enough by our own strength. We will always be sinners, we will always fall short, but it is God who makes us holy, if we are open to it.
No matter how hard we try, we will never be ‘good enough’ to go to heaven by our own strength. It is simply impossible because of the way we continually sin. So what are we to do? Think of it this way: it is as if we can get 80% of the way to coming close to God. But no matter how hard we try we will never be able to make up that other 20%. So what do we do? We don’t have to do anything because God makes up the difference for us. That’s what the death and resurrection of Christ means. Jesus makes up for us what we cannot do for ourselves. What do we have to do? We just have to accept that on faith. Listen to this quotation from St. Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome.
Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith (Rom 3:23-25).
God made all people prisoners of disobedience, so that He might show mercy to them all (Rom 11:32).
This may seem a bit simple, but this is where so many people struggle so much and get so disheartened by their own sins and weaknesses, addictions, inadequacies. We think that because we keep on struggling we will never be good enough. That is correct! We will never be good enough by our own strength, but that doesn’t matter, because Jesus has made up the difference and made us ‘good enough’ by his death and resurrection. All we have to do is accept that and how do we accept it? By faith.
All of us struggle. I always find St. Paul’s own testimony of his weakness so encouraging. Remember, this is Paul to whom Jesus appeared several times and through whom many miracles were worked and so many people were converted and yet listen to what he says:
I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate. ...the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want—that is what I do. (Cf. Rom 7:14-24)
Here he is again:
Wherefore, so that I should not get above myself, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to batter me and prevent me from getting above myself. About this, I have three times pleaded with the Lord that it might leave me; but he has answered me, ‘My grace is enough for you; for power is at full stretch in weakness... What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is infected by death? Thank God through Jesus the Messiah (2 Cor 12:7, 24).
Paul struggled with sin and his own weaknesses, so did Peter, so did Mother Theresa and everyone else in history, but the key to it is to realize that God makes us ‘good enough’ through the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is what salvation is.
Does that mean we can do anything we want?
And so, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only when I was with you but even more now that I am absent, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12).
We do our best to live holy lives, to follow the path that Jesus sets out for us, because this is the path that helps us to find the greatest fulfilment. It is not an easy path, but it is the most important one because it leads to God. God knows that the only way we will reach full happiness is in him. God points us in the right direction and calls us to follow this path, but it is up to us whether we do or not. Our struggles help us to grow in virtue, to become the best version of ourselves that we can be and we are called to this. The more we grow the more we resemble God and that is what God wants for us.
You will notice that people who are very holy are usually very much at home in their own skin. Is this because they have it all together and no longer sin? No. It is because they have come to realize that they must rely totally on God for everything and that everything is done for them in Jesus. This allows them to be at peace and they know that. It is Jesus who makes all things possible. He makes eternal life with God possible and they know that. So they rely totally on God and they submit everything to God’s mercy. The closer we get to God, the more it grieves us to offend him, not out of fear of punishment, but because we are hurting someone we love. Padre Pio has this beautiful saying: ‘My past O Lord to thy mercy; my present O Lord to thy love; my future O Lord to they providence.’
In the early Church the main thing that the Apostles preached was very simple. It was known as the Kerygma, which means to cry or announce: ‘Christ died for our sins so that we would be acceptable to God and that Jesus Christ is Lord’. We are created out of love and we are created for love; to be in the love of God for all eternity. All the writings in the Bible (the Scriptures) point to this.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.
This is why the Apostles and so many others went crazy with this message and were happy to sacrifice the rest of their lives to pass it on. This is why the martyrs died for what they believed in, because there is nothing greater than this message and this is why we are here; to share and pass on this extraordinary message, which tells us that we were created with a definite purpose and that eternal happiness awaits us if we accept it. This is what our whole life is about.
What about all those who are not Christian or never come to hear of Christ? Can they go to heaven too? Of course they can, if they live the right way. No matter what religion they are part of, when they die all people will know at that moment, who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us by dying for us and then they must choose. Primarily they choose for or against God by the way they live their life.
For Christians, we understand that we must be baptized, accepting Jesus as Lord, but that doesn’t mean it is the only way for those who are not Christians.
So is there any advantage to being a Christian? Yes there is. It is an enormous privilege, because it means that we already know what God has done for all humanity through Jesus and we have the gift of that knowledge to help us all through our life. This is why Jesus told the apostles to go and preach this message to everyone, because everyone should know about this. This is what makes sense of our life and gives us more hope than anything else.
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9-11).
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