Monday, April 16, 2018

SALVATION IN THE NAME OF JESUS ALONE

Homily for April 22nd, 2018: Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B. 
Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18.

AIM:  To help the hearers accept Christ=s atoning love through faith, and to share this love with others.
 
Are the different religions simply alternative routes to the same goal? Many people say they are. The Catholic Church respects and honors the elements of truth in all religions, while holding fast to Peter=s statement in our first reading: AThere is no salvation in anyone else [than in Jesus Christ], nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.@
How are we saved? The New Testament gives us two answers to that question. It says that we are saved only by deeds of active love. But it also says that we are saved only by faith. Those two statements seem to contradict each other. In reality they are like two sides of a single coin. Let me explain.
That we are saved only by love is Jesus= clear teaching in his parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt. 25:31-46). There Jesus tells us that on Judgment Day only question will be asked: How much, or how little, have you done for people in need?  Jesus said the same when asked, AWhich commandment of the law is the greatest?@  AYou shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.@ Jesus replied. AThis is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it, >You shall love your neighbor as yourself=@ (Mt. 22:37-39). And in the Sermon on he Mount Jesus says that even pious words and prayers will not save us, if we lack love. ANone of those who cry out, >Lord, Lord,= will enter the kingdom of God but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven@ (Mt. 7:21). And the apostle Paul says the same when he writes: ALove is the fulfillment of the law@ (Rom. 13:10).
Yet the New Testament also tells us that no one really loves enough to be saved. AWhen you have done all you have been commanded to do,@ Jesus says [and which of us has?], Asay, >We are useless servants. We have done no more than our duty=@ (Lk. 17:10). And Paul says the same: AAll have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God@ (Rom. 3:23; cf. also 11:32).
Even our best efforts to love God and others are never totally unselfish. We look for some return: gratitude, recognition, some reward B if not in this world, then at least in the next. Totally disinterested love does not exist this side of heaven.      
The good news of the gospel is that God himself has made good what is lacking in our imperfect attempts to love him and others. He has sent his Son, Jesus, to love for us; to do, on our behalf, what we could never do ourselves. Jesus, moreover, has accepted the sentence of condemnation which we deserve, because of our lack of love. Jesus, though sinless, accepted crucifixion in our place. AFor our sakes,@ Paul says, AGod made him who did not know sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God@ (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus confirms this in today=s gospel, when he says that he is the good shepherd, who freely lays down his life for his foolish, wandering sheep.
If God has already done all this for us, what is our role? It is to accept what God offers us through faith in his Son. The technical term for what God offers is Ajustification@, which means Abeing made right with God.@ The Catechism says: AJustification is ... the acceptance of God=s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ@ (No. 1991). 
The same Scriptures which tell us, as we have seen, that we cannot be saved without love also tell us that we cannot be saved without faith. The seeming contradiction between those two statements disappears when we realize that both love and faith are ways in which we break through the closed circle of our self-centredness. Love directs us to the service of God and others, to the point of self-forgetfulness. Faith admits that even our best efforts to serve are tainted by egotism. Hence faith reaches out in trust to Him who, on our behalf, has made up for our imperfect love; and has borne for us the punishment for failing to love as we should.  

This is the basis for Peter=s assertion in our first reading that Athere is no salvation through anyone else@ than Jesus Christ. If there is salvation for anyone, it is only because of Jesus, the good shepherd, whose care for the sheep is totally selfless; who loves us, his foolish sheep, enough to lay down his life for us. Jesus died as he had lived: for others. Jesus is Athe man for others.@ We are called to be like him; to be ourselves people for others; to spend our own lives in service of our sisters and brothers, as Jesus spent his life for us.

Our call B and our privilege B is like that given to Simon of Cyrene, the man who helped Jesus carry his cross to Calvary. Like Simon, we are privileged to carry the same cross through history. The faithfulness with which we do this affects the quality of life in our generation, and so the fate of millions who may never accept Christ or his teaching.  

We who have become Catholic Christians in baptism are called to supply in our generation a measure of the selfless love we see in Jesus Christ. We are called to trusting faith in Him who alone was capable of perfect love B the love without which human life disintegrates into a ghastly confusion of selfish rivalries and bloody wars. No one has said it better than St. John, who tells us in our second reading:

ASee what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God=s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.@

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