Life, Goodness, and Power

Our unwillingness to release our desires into the hands of God demonstrates our doubt in the goodness of the One who is life, goodness, and power.  Our clinging to finite ideas and things is what limits our growth, gives us pain, and steals our freedom and security. It’s not that ideas and things of this world are bad, it’s that we’ve misplaced them.  Thinking they are the source of life, goodness, and power which is reserved for God alone.

We often believe the power to happiness is found in more money, more things, more status, more relationships. What we really do is project power onto these things and relationships and then become unhappy because we do not possess them more fully. Yet, we have the power of happiness within when we can remain in this present moment and accept this moment as a gift from the One who is life, goodness, and power.

Pastoral Letter on Justification

This entry is a response I made to my beloved sister, a presbyterian, when she asked me a question regarding whether we are saved by works or by faith:

Dear Sis and your Bible Study Group,

I love that we can share our faith lives together. I believe our mutual love for Jesus, the Scriptures, and bringing about his Kingdom in our lives bonds us together in ways that human relations alone cannot do. Jesus’ blood is stronger than familial blood alone.

Disclaimer:

First, let me start out by saying that justification, and salvation, is a huge topic – as you know all so well. The topic is one in which we cannot easily just state that we are saved by works or by faith alone. Also, it is connected to our Christological theology (how we view the identity and work of Christ). So, depending upon where we jump into the conversation might cause others to disagree. I believe where and how we jump into conversation about justification is where a lot of misunderstandings between Christians occur on the topic.

The root of our justification is not ourselves but Jesus the Christ

Let me start by saying something obvious yet often overlooked. In the same way that we take the air we breathe for granted, we take for granted the principle that Christ, alone, saves us. It is God’s grace through Christ’s work on the cross that saves us.

Often, we believe that we are working out our salvation through good works or through right-minded faith; but really neither save us. For if they did, we wouldn’t need a messiah. So, justification really isn’t about us so much as it is about what Jesus has done for humanity.

We are saved by faith and works; the faith and works of Jesus – not us. “The resurrection…fulfills all the divine promises made for us. Furthermore, the risen Christ, the conqueror of sin and death, is the principle of our justification and our resurrection. [His resurrection] procures for us now the grace of filial adoption which is a real share in the life of the only begotten Son. At the end of time he will raise up our bodies.”[1] To be adopted as a child of God is through God’s grace alone.

So, it is God’s grace that saves us. Grace is the “free and undeserved gift that God gives us to respond to our vocation to become his adopted children. As sanctifying grace, God shares his divine life and friendship with us in a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that enables the soul to live with God, to act by his love. As actual grace, God gives us the help to conform our lives to his will. Sacramental grace and special graces (states of life) are gifts of the Holy Spirit to help us live out our Christian vocation.”[2]

Faith and Works, NOT Faith or Works

Note that faith and works are born from grace, “….to respond to our vocation…”, because they are both acts that make up our response.

Faith is “both a gift of God (grace again) and a human act by which the believer gives personal adherence to God who invites his response, and freely assents to the whole truth that God has revealed. It is this revelation of God which the Church proposes for our belief, and which we profess in the Creed, celebrate in the sacraments, live by right conduct that fulfills the two fold commandment of charity (as specified in the ten commandments), and respond to in or prayer of faith. [Faith is both a virtue given by God and an obligation that flows from God’s commands.]”[3]

Hence, we can see from this definition that faith and works are really synonymous in the Roman Catholic Church. Faith (our belief and the works we do based on that belief) is our positive response to God’s grace.

Communion with God and with his Church

Our positive response to God demonstrates our friendship with God. As believers in Christ, our vocation is to deepen our communion with God; that is, deepen our relationship – our positive response – to God.

Ballroom dancing between a father and his poorly skilled daughter is a good illustration of communion with God. The father beckons the daughter to dance with him (Our Calling). We respond by joining his embrace (faith – action based his revelation.) However, with each step we are called to remain in his embrace and allow him to lead us. If he steps back and we don’t follow or he steps right and we step in the opposite direction, we have less of a degree of communion. We can even walk away from the dance; thus breaking communion completely no matter how often God calls us to the dance.

Our salvation, like learning ballroom dancing, is being worked out by God and our response to his lead (divine revelation). This takes time, experience, and a lot of humility.

In one sense, our salvation was complete upon the cross (once and for all) but in another sense, God is working out our salvation throughout our existence. In one sense, we are saved and in the other sense, we are being saved. It is NOT we are saved OR we are being saved, it is both.

Because being saved really means deepening our communion with God. It is a relationship that is dynamic because we are dynamic. If we are real with ourselves, we know that there are moments which we do not fully – positively – respond to God.

Marriage is the most common institute to illustrate this dynamic of a loving response. We get married on a particular day, but what really matters is not whether we WERE married but whether we ARE deepening our communion with each other day after day.

AND, part of that communion with God is to be in communion with his people. For if we do not love the person we see, how can we say we love God whom we cannot see? (1st John)

A great Christian mystery is that we are one body with Christ – not losing our identity but in full communion with God when we are in the state of heaven. Thus, like Christ, who saves us on the cross; we, both the living and deceased of the Church, partake in helping others in their salvation also. Hence, the concepts about Mary and the Saints aiding us in our journey of faith. Anyone who doesn’t believe this needs to ask the question, “how was my beliefs passed down to me?” Saint Paul, Saint Matthew, and other writers of the NT and gospels help all Christians by the works of their writing. But the writing would be dead if it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit illuminating our minds and hearts. This is true about Mary also, if Mary hadn’t willfully received God’s son in her womb or raise him in love; than, we would not know the messiah as we do today. So, we are indebted to other faithful members of the Bride of Christ. (Look at your and my relationship. Where would I be today had you not read the Scriptures to me and challenge me to live a faithful life?)

Right Thinking (Beliefs) and Faith are not necessarily the same

Allow me to make a tangent point for a minute: It is not how much we understand that determines our faith. Rather faith is merely our response to God’s grace.

Sometimes, we can get stuck with the idea that someone doesn’t have faith because they don’t have the same theological understanding as we do. From the “view at pew-level”, this is where divisions can take place between denominations. In other words, because we cannot or do not agree about a theological viewpoint must mean that you (the outsider) must not be “saved.” Making our theological understanding necessary for our justification is a mistake because it means that our understanding is more powerful than God’s grace. This is a form of Gnosticism that the Church rejected in the first millennium.

Yet, each Christian is called to “come to terms” with the wider community’s belief of God and what the Church believes to be divinely revealed from God.

Therefore, faith sometimes becomes synonymous with regula fidea which is the wider community’s understanding of our relationship to God. We hear it in questions like, “What is the Christian faith?” and our answer would be the Creed, “We believe….”.

Just Work is not Enough

In the fourth century, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem mentioned that a man went into the river Jordan to be baptized and while the water was pour over him on the outside; he did not respond to God from his heart and because of that the baptism had no affect.

Annulments of Marriage basically indicate the same viewpoint of Saint Cyril. If one goes to the sacrament and their response is not a genuine free-will response to God then the grace that is found in the sacrament doesn’t occur; therefore, the sacrament didn’t take hold despite any good that transpired afterwards. God will not violate our will.

Also, we are told that we place ourselves in a damnable position if we take Holy Communion with the wrong intention.

Conclusion:

So, it’s not necessarily just what we believe nor is it simply religious acts but our positive free-will response to God’s grace that brings us into deeper communion with him.

We are justified by Christ and him alone. Yet our communion rests in our response to him. Heaven is when we are completely and fully in communion with God. Hell is when we are completely and fully out of communion with God. Purgatory is when we are on the journey; yielding to God in some circumstances and clinging to anything other than Jesus to be our ultimate end and our ultimate happiness.

The vocation of all humanity is to grow in communion with the Holy One who created us. God is our beginning – he created us. God is our end – we will go back to him. The question that lies before each of us is whether or not we are friends of God during our journey back to him.


[1] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Compendium: Catechism of the Catholic Church, (USCCB Publishing, 2006), Question 131. – Henceforth USCCB.
[2] Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Cathechism of the Catholic Church, (Vatican, 1997), page 881 – Henceforth, CCC
[3] CCC, page 879

Inviting God to Renew Our Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent, "A" Cycle
The Lord's Promise, Ez. 37:12-14
Indwelling of Christ's Spirit, Rom. 8:8-11
Raising of Lazarus, John 11:1-45

Reflection

There is an underlying theme throughout each of our readings today: God’s Spirit creates, sustains, and reanimates life within us, both in body and spirit. Apart from God there is no life. Jesus the Christ faithfully witnessed to this in his raising Lazarus from the dead.

It is so simple a principle and yet so very powerful: in God, we have life; without God, we are dead.

I believe a reflective person will note that there is always some part of our existence that is dead or dying. Often, we can sense death in our family relationships, in our vocational life, and sometimes in the life of our communities. I think one of the most powerful experiences of death, outside of physical death, is in the dying of a love relationship – when we wake up one morning and realize we are no longer in love with that person of significance.

And yet, we are told, in God, we have life.

How shall we respond to such a simple message? Take a moment and reflect: do you invite God into your daily life? Into that part of your life which you believe is dying or is dead. At home, at work, at school, at play, at church?

Mary and Martha invited Jesus, invited God, to that which was dying in their life, Lazarus. They had been around Jesus long enough to know he had the power to heal their brother.

So, why do we not invite God into that which is dying in our existence?

Do we lack trust in God’s goodness? As faithful Christians, probably not, but we might misunderstand God’s plan for us. I imagine that the disciples might have been confused by or misinterpret Jesus’ delay of his trip for two days.

The Gospel tells us, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when [Jesus] heard that [Lazarus] was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.” The word, “so”, changes the whole meaning of our Lord’s delay. He delayed because he loved them.

In all of the miracle stories found in the Gospel of John, Jesus never responds to the person’s request immediately, not even to his mother’s request at the wedding feast. What must come first is not JUST compassion, love for our neighbor, but the glory of God. All of Jesus’ actions in the Gospel of John are to the glory of God – to witness God’s power – and through that witness of God’s power, brings new life into creation, into our souls, and into our bodies. God’s glory first and then our need, which is still vitally important to God, comes second.

Here, in the story of Lazarus, the greatest act of love is not just reanimating Lazarus from the dead because of his family’s mourning or even Jesus’ personal grief, but the greatest act of love was to show that God has the very power to do so and invites us to believe and trust in Him.

Sometimes, what gets in the way of us inviting God into our lives, is that we become too attached to what we believe is good for our lives.

The disciples are a witness to this principle. Jesus says, “let us go back to Judea” where Lazarus is buried and the disciples replied, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Here, the disciples, with all good intentions, try to dissuade Jesus from going to the place where God’s glory is to be manifested.

Not all adversity in our life is evil. Sometimes, God calls us to face adversities greater than we believe we can handle, even physical death, because through them God witnesses his power and love to those around us. The Christian martyrs of the Church witness God’s love even in their death. Often times, we fail to aid God in his glory when we break away from a work relationship, a family relationship, or a church relationship because there is too much adversity…too many problems… found in statements like “I don’t get paid enough to deal with that” or “you’re not worth my effort anymore” and, like the disciples, we justify it with, “Oh’, they’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it.”

Saint Paul points to a similar principle that prevents us from inviting God into our lives, that is, sometimes, we just fail to remember to invite God into our lives because we can become too busy satisfying our animalistic desires instead of responding to God’s divine presence placed in our souls through the Word and Sacraments of God.

I believe we all seek greater life, believer and unbeliever alike. But not every path leads to new life. When we search for greater life ONLY through creation – dainty foods, fancy drinks, changing social life, more money, new property, new experiences – we discover that more and more is required to satisfy us. Yet a human life filled with the Spirit of God has fullness of life regardless of the circumstances they find in themselves.

Are we seeking life in that which cannot create or sustain life within us? Have we forgotten that God is the author and giver of life?

I believe, often times, we suffer because we place limitations on God. Martha and Mary wept. Although they believed Jesus could heal their brother when he was alive, although they believed their brother would rise during the resurrection on the last day, they did not expect that God would raise their brother up on the day Jesus arrived in Judea. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, by now there will be a stench.” Jesus had to remind her and all that were surrounding them, “I am the resurrection and the life…” and “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God.”

The end of the story, Jesus prays to the Father. In that prayer, he states, “I know that you always hear me; but because of this crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” Jesus, as part of the Trinity, as light from light, God from God, could have raised Lazarus from the dead without prayer. Yet, here he models for us our need to invite God into our lives in order that God might restore new life within us.

In conclusion, do you invite God into your daily life? As the offering gifts are being brought forward today, what part of your life that is dying or is dead will you bring to God? For if God, through his divine presence, can make living body and living blood from inanimate bread and wine; how much more can God bring new life into our very souls, our very bodies, and our very lives.