Are you saved?

Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Our Lord gives us a frightening parable of judgment in answer to the question: “Sir, will there be only a few saved?” You may think that this question is ludicrous, that it’s making a mountain out of a molehill. You may even volunteer to beat Jesus in giving the answer to this man: “of course not! Don’t you know that everyone’s going to be saved?” Although official Catholic teaching and Protestant understanding of salvation shares many points in common, this is where they defer – at least in popular imagination. Many Catholics believe that everyone is going to heaven while Protestants think that almost everyone, unless you are a true Christian believer, is going to hell.

When Protestants ask Catholics if they have been saved, the question would most likely be met with a stunned look on the part of the Catholic or an admission that he has never thought about this before. This comes as good news to the Protestant as he can now confidently proselytise the Catholic and ensure that the latter is saved by becoming a Bible believing, faith professing Protestant Christian. For many Protestants, one becomes a Christian by merely making a confession of faith in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Baptism comes later but isn’t necessary for our salvation. I guess the reason why most Catholics are not prepared with an answer to that question is that salvation or rather, heaven, is something they often take for granted. Why worry about this moot issue when we can all get to heaven?

Perhaps, this common Catholic misunderstanding of universal salvation can be far more dangerous than the Protestant heretical position of being saved once and for all by grace alone. When you believe that salvation is guaranteed whether you’ve lived a good life or not in conformity to Christ’s teachings and God’s will, it is called the sin of presumption, which is a sin against hope. On presumption, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God’s almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).” (CCC 2092) When people are presumptuous, they are living in denial of the truth. And because they are living in denial, they will not repent of his or her own sin.

I have often tried to explain the Catholic position on salvation to both Catholics and non-Catholics by using this analogy of being shipwrecked in the middle of an ocean. We’re like the survivors of a shipwreck in a storm out in mid-ocean. Just imagine being in this situation. The nearest shoreline is just too far for even the strongest swimmer. You won’t be able to save yourself. The only way that we can get out of this situation is that we are saved. And the good news is that we have been rescued from drowning by the Lord Jesus Himself, our Saviour, and welcomed onboard the ship we call the Church. That ship is now taking us to a safe harbour — our home in heaven with God. For Protestants, being saved is the end of the story and they don’t even believe you need a boat for this. But for Catholics, baptism, being rescued into the ship is just the first step. But we’re not home yet.

You could say, then, that we’ve been “saved” in the sense of being rescued and taken aboard a safe vessel. But we can’t really speak of being “saved” in the full sense until we reach our destination. We must humbly admit that we haven’t yet arrived at final perfection. Meanwhile, we also must recognise the sobering possibility that — God forbid — we could choose someday to jump overboard again. Salvation isn’t guaranteed just because of something we’ve done in the past. We continue to have a free will, which is part of God’s likeness in us. So we still have the ability to turn away from God again. It’s a chilling possibility. But it shouldn’t make us perpetually worried that we’ll be damned despite our best efforts to grow in grace. We can be confident that God desires our salvation, and He’s faithful to help us. And He does so by providing us with the Sacraments. If we’re tempted to forsake Him, He’ll grant us the power to resist that temptation. He will even send a lifeboat to rescue us again through the sacrament of penance. Even so, the choice is still ours.

If we can’t be certain as to the final statistics on the population of heaven and hell, there are some things we can know with certainty because our Lord has revealed this to us, leaving no room for speculation.

Firstly, Hell is real and it is everlasting. We may not hear much about hell these days and we may not even like to, but silence on the subject does not make the reality of Hell go away. Infact the denial of hell leads ultimately to the trivialising of heaven. But a healthy understanding of the pains and horrors of hell, will lead us to an authentic appreciation of the joys of heaven.

Secondly, life is a series of choices. We can either choose to take a) the difficult path that leads to the narrow gate and life, and b) the broad path which leads to the wide gate and destruction. The narrow path is the way of the Cross which our Lord undertook, and we must follow in our respective way. The second reading from Hebrews reminds us that the suffering we endure is not the result of a cruel sadistic God but because “suffering is part of your training; God is treating you as his sons.” It is a popular error of our time to believe that it does not matter which road one takes. Some believe that all roads are like spokes on a wheel, all leading to the same place—Heaven. In fact, we make choices every day that draw us closer to God or lead us farther away from Him. That’s why simply believing in Jesus isn’t enough. Friendship with God, like friendship of any kind, is more than just getting acquainted. It involves making a series of choices to love over the long term, so that a committed relationship grows. Faith is useless then, without good works. God must have our active cooperation, because both our mind and our will — the full likeness of God — must be renewed if we’re to be saved in the end.

Thirdly, there is an urgency to making the right decision. Time is of the essence. No time for procrastination or putting off what must be done today. Our Lord speaks of the time when the householder will arise, shut and lock the door. That corridor of opportunity will not always be opened and if mistaken that it is always open may lead to our destruction.

Finally, we must make our own salvation and the salvation of all those around us, our top priority in this life. As the old Catholic adage reminds us: “the salvation of souls is the supreme law!” Nothing else ranks anywhere close in importance—not health, wealth, career, popularity, possessions or acclaim by others. Know what you must do to be saved and work out that salvation in fear and trembling.

Today, let us not be guilty of the sin of presumption that Heaven is guaranteed no matter how or which way we live our lives. Truly, our Lord Jesus is the Divine Mercy. Truly, He wishes and desires for all of us to be saved. But more urgently, He wants us to understand that there can be no other way to salvation other than passing through the Narrow Door. He is that Narrow Doorway to Heaven. It is the Gospel of Christ, paid by His own blood on the cross. It is demanding. It demands that we make the ultimate sacrifice by turning our backs on all the false gods that have become the defining elements in our lives. It demands repentance on our part.