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The Catholic Telegraph
March 17, 2000The gospel reading for the second Sunday of Lent for each year of the cycle of readings is about the transfiguration. It’s as if the Church wants us to be quite clear about Who Christ is and where our association with Him through baptism is going to lead us.
The reading from our Old Testament survey of salvation history is about the sacrifice of Abraham and the deliverance of Isaac.
Our live letter links the other two readings and comments on them both. It speaks of God’s Son Who was revealed by the Father in the transfiguration but who was not spared as Abraham’s son was. It alludes to Jesus’ resurrection, just as Jesus Himself did as He and His disciples were coming down the mountain. Underlying the message of our reading is the obedience of Christ which had been prefigured by the obedience of Abraham.
In these four verses from the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans he sums up everything he has said so far. He has been teaching the Romans about the need for salvation from God to overcome human sinfulness. This salvation is offered to us through faith in Christ which involves our incorporation into Christ’s death and resurrection through baptism. Because of our life in Christ, we are freed from the law of achievement that only served to highlight our sinfulness.
Now comes our passage, a conclusive passage that is a kind of Halleluia Chorus about the significance of salvation in our lives.
We’ve got it made! There is no longer any conceivable obstacle to our final well-being and salvation. If God has given us His very own Son, obedient to the point of death to benefit us all, there can be nothing more we need. Who can possibly contend that we are still guilty of something if God has acquitted us of everything? The Christ who died for us and Who now, gloriously risen, holds the place of honor in heaven is there speaking in our favor. What have we got to worry about?
One of the biggest challenges for twentieth century American Christians is to believe in the enormity and generosity of God’s love for us. We tend to be achievers. We want to get things done and we want to do them ourselves. We are inclined to think that we have to earn our way into God’s love and that if we keep enough rules and pray hard enough and do enough penance and perform enough kind actions for other people, we will be all paid up and God will then owe us salvation and eternal happiness. But that isn’t the way it is.
Our salvation is God’s gift to us. We don’t - we can’t deserve it. We can’t earn it. We can’t force God to give it to us. All we can do is accept it by our willingness to become incorporated into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ through faith and baptism. And this willingness isn’t our doing, either. It, too, is God’s gift. Christ is the achiever of salvation. We can only be recipients. But once we have accepted salvation in Christ, Paul tells us today, everything else is taken care of.
That doesn’t mean that, once we have accepted Christ, anything goes and that there are no behavioral expectations. We are still expected to live in accord with the demands of morality and serve our brothers and sisters in love and stay close to God in prayer. But all these things are consequences of the gift of Christ’s life in us, not its cause. We are called to consistency, to living in accord with the life of Christ that we share. Moreover, the life of Christ in us is not some sort of bus ticket that we can put in our pocket and forget about until we get to the end of the line. It is a relationship, and relationships are capable of development and ever greater depth. We must live up to God’s gifts, but we must also increase our appreciation and assimilation of them.
The abundance of God’s gifts doesn’t guarantee an effortless life, either. Because we participate in Christ’s life, we are also called to participate in His self-giving obedience. We are called to share His cross. Carrying out the implications of Christian life and salvation can be very demanding. It has led some to martyrdom. Even the more pedestrian aspects of Christian consistency can require struggle: praying when we don’t feel like it, being honest when we could easily cheat, exercising patience when we have every reason to blow our stack, forgiving somebody who has done us wrong. The crosses we are called to carry come in various sizes. They are no less crosses for that reason. But the bottom line is that just as the obedience and cross of Christ are irreversibly connected with His resurrection and eternal glory, so our struggles to remain faithful are connected with sharing in His final victory.
The basic orientation and significance of our life is assured through our share in the life of Christ. Everything else is derivative and secondary. God loves us. God is for us. What else matters?
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Conversation Questions
Am I afraid of anything? What? Why?
Why do I strive to follow God’s will in my life?
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