Are You Saved?
These are everyday sermons, usually not the same sermons Deacon Michael delivered on Sundays. He takes the liberty of personally addressing the people who came to the 6:30 communion service, whom he loved so much, and who loved him.
Deacon Michael was a history major. His home was filled with many history books. This is one of the sermons where his love of history shows in his analysis.
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Have you ever been asked, "Brother, are you saved?" And I have to admit when someone first asked the question, before I was better versed in being Catholic, I go, "I don't know, I have to ask my wife." She said, "No, no. The answer is, ' I am working on it.'" And that is a very profound thing that is part of Catholicism, and I am going to refer to it: Aspiration.
We see in the Gospel reading today that we see the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah in the person of Christ. He is the Christ. He is the Son of God. These prophecies that we have in the Old Testament relate to Jesus Christ, and he is fulfilling them. These prophecies are, like the one we have in Isaiah today, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor" and the list of the various things that are going to occur that will show the Christ.
But there is a profound difference that comes, in the aspirational difference that we see talked about in St. John, is that, one, we are not saved. "Once saved, always saved" is not a Catholic doctrine. The Catholic doctrine is that we live a life of holiness and that we aspire to go to heaven. But more than that, we see in John that he says, "Beloved, we love God because he first loved us; but if anyone says that he loves God but hates his brother, he is a liar.”
And that is something that Jesus teaches - not the pejorative that he is a liar - but the nature of the teachings of Christ are aspirational in themselves in that, one: we are aspiring to prepare ourselves for heaven. But, two: we are aspiring to fulfill what Jesus has commanded us to do. He does not come in and say, "Get baptized, you are saved." He doesn't come in and simply say, "It's done." He says: live your life loving your neighbor. That in itself is an aspirational thing because if we are to love our neighbor, and, like we see in the Gospel reading, if we are dealing with the blind and sick, the captives, whatever, and we are loving them, we are aspiring to change the world so that the injustice, or the suffering of that that person, those people, goes away.
It is a different perspective on the world that when you look at people, and you look at them with love, you aspire that things get better. You aspire just as someone, someone dies, our aspiration is to join our prayers to the others so that person can enjoy heaven. When someone gets ill, we aspire that they get well. If we are dealing with injustice in our world, in our country, we aspire that things change. To bring to the earth, not only salvation on an individual level, but to change the world. We, by loving our neighbor, live in an aspirational aspect where we see and feel and understand an obligation to aspire to a world in which the teachings of Christ are the currency of the world. It is how it works.
This is one reason, for example, when first they'd go, "Okay, we need to start building hospitals to take care of the sick,” the names of the hospitals were always saint’s names. Because that is an aspirational aspect of our faith to take care of the poor, the sick, the needy. Looking at teaching in the United States, the education system. We talked about Elizabeth Seton. She taught that, in the educational system, the parochial education system, that the belief that is education in the field of religion meets an aspiration of bringing people closer to God.
So when we look at what Jesus is saying, and it is a thing that I will say time and time again, is that Christianity is not a passive thing. Catholicism is not a passive thing. Read what Pope Francis talks about. He is not ever saying, "Well, just sit about and don't do anything." He is saying, "Go out and do something and change the world." Because not only do we aspire for our own salvation on an individual basis, we aspire for the salvation of the entire world and we aspire so that the entire world can be treated as if they are loved as a neighbor. Love as we love ourselves, and bring to them what Jesus talks about: the recovery of the blind, the release of captives.
All of these things that we see are aspirations to change the world that are not only aspirations to change the world but aspirations that, when you look at the history of Christianity, have profoundly changed the world and determined what we are today in the twenty-first century and that is an integral part of our faith, to aspire in our love for others, for their good.
January 10, 2019