Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 8 December 2024

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Last week we celebrated the Rite of Entrance at the 11am Mass, literally formally welcoming all those who are in our OCIA (formerly RCIA) program, who are discerning being received into full communion with the Catholic Church through the sacraments of initiation. At this point, those who are to be baptized are no longer inquirers, but catechumens who enter into a time of more intense formation by the Word of God, prayer, and communal life of the Church.

Those who are already baptized are already “in the family,” so to speak, because we claim “one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is in all and above all...” These are called candidates for full communion. People who are already baptized should never be called converts when they enter the Church: they are already followers of Jesus Christ and, in him, we are brothers and sisters.

On Monday night I led the OCIA group in our weekly meeting. These last several weeks have been (or, at least, have seemed) frenetic and I have been anxious because there is more to do in a day than a day will hold. So I overlooked the fact that I was teaching -- I had just taught also the week before -- and when I remembered on Monday afternoon that I was to teach that night I quickly went to see what the topic was and if I had notes from teaching it before. I had not, and topic was salvation. Wow. A big subject.

I discovered something that was startling. What is salvation, exactly? Is it heaven? Simple but foundational questions.

It is something that only God does, we can’t buy it or earn it. It is freely given. No matter how saintly our lives might be, God doesn’t have to reward us for it. At the end of the day, we have to admit that we are but servants, and have only done what we were supposed to do, anyway. Salvation is not an entitlement.

Or is it something that God does? Isn’t salvation a restoration of a relationship that existed in our created original innocence? It is our sins that cause the rupture in the relationship, a rejection of God’s will, division where there once was unity. So, surely, salvation must be being forgiven, something only God can do. But, as I say to people who come to confession and may be troubled by unremembered sins, Jesus already knows every sin we commit. We really don’t need to tell him. But the one thing we must do ourselves is to say “I’m sorry.” That is the one thing that Jesus can’t say on our behalf to himself! I am sorry.

Salvation, then, is the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of the original friendship with God which can be done only by God, the unity that is God’s original plan for us. Baptism is the way by which we are no longer defined by original sin, forgiven-ness.

God could do this work any way he wants. So his choice of delivering his only-begotten Son into the hands of sin, becoming sin itself on the cross was the process of salvation. We call it redemption. This, for that. His obedience, for our disobedience. His innocence for our guilt. “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” 2 Cor 5:21. The path home is becoming him.

I’m sure sometime you have been asked by someone, “Are you saved?” The Catholic answer is, “I surely hope so. But I know for certain I am redeemed.” The gift of baptism transforms us into a rebirth that we spend the rest of our life embracing and growing into. The rest is up to me, by uniting my will with God’s will in love.

Remember: unity is not something that God does; it is who God is. We never stop being his, he never stops loving us perfectly. We are the ones who introduce distance away from him and from each other. Unity is oneness, it is salvation. Heaven isn’t a place, it is being in the being of God. When the priest adds the wine and water in the chalice every Mass, he prays a prayer in secret: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Salvation is that chalice, a synergy of wills of God and us, united, and offered to the Father, then returned to us as food. We are now what we receive. We are filled with gratitude: that is our thanks, our eucharist.

 

The Lord be with you.