We Don't Deserve Heaven If you were completely sinless your entire life and were the most moral, upright human being that had ever walked the face of this earth, you wouldn't deserve heaven. All you would deserve then is earthly paradise. Heaven is tremendously greater than an earthly paradise. Heaven is living for eternity in the bosom of God's heart, sharing in the Blessed Life of the Trinity!
We're SinnersIf you're able to read this, then you've sinned, which means that you have committed a transgression against an infinite person who is all holy and deserving of nothing less than pure worship: God Almighty. If you were to slap your next-door neighbor across the face, you would be liable to misdemeanor charges. But what if you were to do the same to a police officer who came to your house to arrest you? The charges would be far greater. How about the judge in the courtroom when you're under trial? Much greater still. Now, how about the infinite Lord Almighty of the universe, the one and only God? You could never satisfy for even the slightest transgression against God because it would merit infinite punishment, for you have sinned against an infinite person.
| Jesus Is the RedeemerGod took upon himself flesh in the womb of Holy Mary so that he could, in the flesh, offer himself as a loving sacrifice to satisfy for human sin. Jesus is an infinite person - for he is God - so he can satisfy for our transgressions made against God. Yet, he need not do so, for he is without sin.Out of his unfathomable love for humanity, God immersed himself into the depths of human existence by uniting himself with humanity, so as to offer that humanity on our behalf as the perfect sacrifice that takes away sin. We call this taking upon flesh the Incarnation.The Incarnation united humanity with the very inner life, the very divinity of God, so that those who are redeemed by Jesus will not merely be forgiven but will have eternal life: divine life! |
 |
| This life is heaven. It is a life that fulfills our deepest desires and greatest longings: perfect joy. |
Saved By GraceThe only way to heaven is communion with Jesus. Jesus is the one mediator between God and humanity, and there is no other way to heaven than him, for no one else bridges the infinite gap between Creator and creation. He alone is the bridge. By coming into this union with God through Jesus, we receive the gift of eternal life.Another word for gift is grace. So, eternal life is a grace, a gift given freelly to us by a God who loves us more than we love ourselves. This gift of life makes us interioly holy, so it sanctifies us. It is sanctifying grace. If we die without this gift of sanctifying grace in our souls, we cannot go to heaven. Like scuba gear is necessary to scuba dive, so sanctifying grace is necessary to go to heaven.So far, we have seen that to get to heaven, nothing we can do can earn or force God to hand over heaven. Instead, heaven is a radical gift that God gives to us, in and through Jesus. God has beaten us to the finish line. So, the question now, is how do we get into communion with Jesus - how are we united to him and he to us?
Baptism Incorporates Us Into JesusGod has given us a way to know that we are forgiven of our sin and put into communion with Jesus. St. Paul - who himself encountered Jesus after Jesus had risen from the dead - put it this way: "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." (Letter to the Galatians, 3:27)In baptism, we are given this gift of eternal life. We are put in intimacy with Jesus, our past sins are forgiven, and we are recreated interiorly anew. The Bible is so emphatic about this that it calls this event a "new creation."Jesus showed us the way by being baptized himself. When he was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, the Spirit of God descended from heaven upon Jesus and God declared with an audible voice from the heavens, "You are my beloved Son; with you, I am well pleased." (The Gospel According to Mark, 1:11)Likewise, when we receive Christian baptism, we are given the very life of God, which makes us his children, and God becomes well pleased with his newborn child.
A Life of True FaithBaptism initiates us into a whole new way of living, which is a life lived in Jesus. It is a life of faith. If we don't live with faith, we cannot be saved. Faith is much more than a head nod to the fact that God exists or to the fact that you accept Jesus as your Savior. Faith is inseparable from the obedience of a child to his/her father.Saint Paul called Christian faith "the obedience of faith." (Letter to the Romans, 1:5 and 16:26) Faith means that we submit our entire selves to God our Father. First, we give him the submission of our minds, so we believe whatever he has revealed for us to believed. Second, we give him our choices, our lives, our actions, to be guided by him, so that we do his will.This is the reason Jesus said to his disciples, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." (The Gospel According to Matthew, 7:21) We must live lives of authentic faith, where we live as children of God, who has become our Father in Christian baptism.
We Can Choose to Depart from Communion with JesusWe are not robots once we have come into communion with Jesus. God desires for us to love him, and love must be freely chosen. When still in this earthly life, before our death, we always have the free choice to reject the free gift of salvation we have received.Jesus put this reality in his own words when he said, "Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned." (The Gospel According to John, 15:4-6)One of the Twelve Apostles Jesus taught and discipled by the name of John wrote: "There is such a thing as deadly sin." (First Epistle of Saint John, 5:16) Another word for deadly is mortal, so sometimes this sin is called mortal sin. It is deadly because it is a sin that rejects Jesus to such a great degree that it separates us from him. It breaks our communion with Jesus. Since we lose sanctifying grace, which is our participation in eternal life, we die in a very real way on the spiritual level of our Christian life.In the New Testment, Saint Paul even gives us a sample list of these sins: idolatry, fornication, drunkenness, schism, heresy, and envy. (Letter to the Galatians, 5:19-21) Of those who have committed mortal sin, Paul wrote that they had "fallen from grace." (5:4)
The Return of the Prodigal SonJesus knew well that Christians would commit these forms of sin and then later repent. He even told a parable of a prodigal son who left his father and his family to squander his inheritance in a life of harlotry. Yet, over time, this prodigal son repented and returned home. When he did so, his father ran out to embrace him and exclaimed to his other son, "your brother was dead and is alive again; was lost, and is found" (The Gospel According to Luke, 15:32)
| For this reason, on the evening of the day he rose from the dead, Jesus appeared before his apostles, gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit by breathing upon them, and said to them, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you ... Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (The Gospel According to John, 20:22-23)For nearly 2,000 years now, Christians who have strayed from a life of authentic faith have come back into communion with Jesus by having the successors to the Apostles forgive them in Confession. This event is also known as Penance or by another word: Reconciliation. |
 |
When the bishop or presbyter absolves someone, they receive within their souls the gift of sanctifying grace once again, re-uniting them with Jesus Christ, as they are brought back into communion with God and his covenant family: the Church.
Final PerseveranceIf we die with sanctifying grace in our souls, then we will go to heaven. We must persevere in communion with Jesus by being faithful. Even such an amazing and great disciple of Jesus as Saint Paul never assumed that he wouldn't fall from grace in the future. He wrote, "I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having prached to others, I myself should be reprobate." (First Letter to the Corinthians, 10:27). Then, he tells the Christians to whom he is writing, "Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall." (11:12)
A Moral Assurance of Our SalvationWhile we do not know whether we will make the choice to betray our current life of faithfulness in the future, we do have an assurance of being in a state of grace. Saint John the Apostle said so when he wrote, "I write these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life." (First Epistle of Saint John, 5:13)It's a good idea to open your Bible and read the first four chapters of the First Epistle of Saint John to see if your life corresponds to what John had written. If it does, then you can know that you have eternal life right now, that is, that you are in a state of grace, having communion with Jesus Christ.This communion with Jesus is already a share in heaven, because you have the divine life of God indwelling your human body and soul. It is this life that gives us the power to overcome our sinful tendencies. Who would ever forsake such an incredible gift? If we truly understood how incredible grace is, our lives would never be the same again.
|
