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
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
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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