August 25, 2019

21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

It’s Not How Many are There...but How to Get There!

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

Let me tell you about an event in the life of my friend Theresa. Theresa had a great fear of hospitals, a fear of dying and a fear of God’s judgment. One day she was admitted to the hospital just days before Christmas. Joined to her fears, was her low tolerance for pain and she pleaded often to be sedated. One evening she awoke in a daze to the sight and sound of little angels at her door, singing “Joy to the World.” She began to shout “I made it! I can’t believe I made it” Theresa thought she was in heaven but alas, she was still in the hospital and the angels she saw were schoolchildren dressed as angels caroling at the hospital.
 
Details about salvation and heaven intrigue us. In the Gospel, someone asks Jesus, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Our friends who are Jehovah Witnesses would quickly answer that question for they claim to know the precise number of the saved—144,000. That number is found in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 7 verse 4. Revelation is written in symbolic and allegorical language and should not be taken literally. 144,000 is the square of 12 the number of Israel’s tribes, multiplied by 1,000—symbolic of the new Israel that embraces all people from every nation, race, people and tongue.
 
How does Jesus answer the question? Jesus moves the center of the question from “how many are saved” to “how to be saved.” Jesus is not interested in revealing the “number of the saved” but rather “the way to be saved.” Getting to heaven is our great hope, our goal. But we must avoid two extremes in striving to attain it. These extremes are called “sins against hope.”
 
The first is “presumption.” This is the attitude that God is so merciful that he will not refuse us heaven, i.e. God is so good he will save us without our repentance. This extreme attitude sets aside the reality of Hell and Purgatory, viewing them as incompatible with God’s infinite love.
 
A presumptuous person hopes for salvation without renouncing a contrary past, and hopes for pardon without acknowledging the harmful error of his ways. A presumptuous person would say: “I have no worries, no need to change. Everyone goes to heaven!”
 
If we come to this point, don’t be surprised if we stop praying or having Masses offered for our deceased loved ones. After all, those in heaven have no need of prayers. We would become increasingly undisturbed when our way of life does not conform to the Gospel. Confession goes by the wayside and receiving Holy Communion lacks any discernment.
 
The opposite extreme is despair. Despair is a sense of hopelessness. When we despair, our wrongdoing is so blown out of proportion that is obscures God’s infinite love, patience and understanding. People who despair decide that their sins are too great to be forgiven and that as a result, salvation is out of reach. They agonize over confessing their sins and stay away from Holy Communion...O Lord, I am not worthy.
 
We must avoid these too extremes. Our spiritual lives must be balanced, moderate, and temperate. St. Augustine said “We are at the same time just and sinful.” There is an old saying, “There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it behooves none of us to talk about the rest of us.”
 
Until the last moment of any life there is the potential to sin, as well as to repent. The bad have to get good and the good have to get better, and the better have to get better still because at each stage there is sin and there is virtue. We can’t let the sin in our lives define who we are, nor can we rest easy on our virtues and think there is no need for growth or improvement.
 
God created us in his own image. Sin has corrupted that image, but as we cooperate with God’s grace, the image is restored—gradually, step by step, over a lifetime. Let’s travel along the “via media” to heaven, avoiding extremes, not worrying about the number of people there but that we know and stay on the way there.