Our society operates most frequently on a transactional mentality. If I give you this, then you give me that. It used to require physical money, or at least a card which represented money, but not you simply click a button, input some information, and the transaction can take place. I click on the song I want in iTunes, it asks for some information which I have to input, and then the song is mine.
Maybe, in hearing the first reading and the Gospel today, we suppose that God’s blessings and eternal life operate in the same way. Elisha goes to the Shunamite woman, who gives Elisha something, so he wants to give her something back. In this case, Elisha intercedes and the woman is able to conceive a son, even though she has an old husband. At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus says that if we host a prophet, we’ll get a prophet’s reward, or if we welcome a righteous man, we’ll receive a reward for that, or if we simply give a cup of cold water to a little disciple, we will not lose our reward. Sounds very much like a quid pro quo.
But, while God does reward generosity, and, in fact, cannot be outdone in generosity, getting to heaven is not about a transaction. It’s not so much about giving up anything, as it is about becoming something. St. Paul in the second reading talks about being baptized into the death of Jesus, buried with Jesus through baptism, so that we can rise with Christ. What St. Paul is talking about here is becoming one with Jesus, in His Death, so that we can also be one with Jesus in His Resurrection. And the whole of the Catholic life is about becoming one with Christ, so that, as St. Paul says elsewhere, it is not longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Heaven is our destiny if and only if we have been transformed into the Person of Christ. In the Christian East we use this term, divinization. St. Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become God.” Baptism, into the Death of Jesus, is meant to being that transforming process by which, each day, we die to our fallen humanity and rise with our risen humanity, which is seated at the right hand of the Father in Christ. Heaven is a reward, but perhaps it’s better to speak of it as the logical destination for one who is configured to Christ, since Jesus Christ is already there. It’s not, “If I give Jesus the right stuff, then He’ll let me in to heaven.” In that mentality, we’re viewing salvation as secular economic theory: I need to give the least I can to get the most I can; it’s getting the biggest bang for our buck. But that mentality is antithetical to the Christian life. Christ demands all of us, because that is what He has given fully the Father. That’s why Jesus also says today, “‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.’” It’s not that Jesus says we can’t love our parents or children, it’s that Jesus deserves all of who we are. He wants to transform us entirely, not simply the parts that we feel we can part with.
How do we know if we’re living in a wrongheaded, transactional mentality? All we have to do is ask ourselves: ‘Is there a part of my life that I don’t want to give over to Jesus?’ And of course, Jesus’ Mystical Body is the Church, so what the Church teaches as belonging to faith or morals is precisely important for recognizing what we’re truly willing to give to Jesus. How often to we hear some form of, “The Church can’t tell me how I’m supposed to live out my sexuality;” or, “I want my wedding on the beach, not in a church;” or “Why does the Church think that she can tell me what to consider when I’m voting?” or, “I’ll only support the Church financially if I approve of what this priest/bishop/pope is doing”? If our mission, as Catholics, is truly to conform our lives to Christ, then no part of our life, those I’ve mentioned or others, is off limits to being transformed by Jesus.
But take comfort that we may want to give ourselves entirely to Jesus, but we’re not quite experts in it, yet. One can easily say, “Jesus, I give you my entire life; do with it as you please,” and shortly thereafter, as Jesus tells us what He desires of us, we fall into the temptation of holding back from the Lord. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, grasped at the fruit because they were afraid that they had to take in order to receive good things, and that tendency remains strong in us.
Still, the important part of our pilgrimage with the Lord is that we are doing our best to allowing the Sacraments of Baptism, Penance, Confirmation, the Eucharist, and Holy Matrimony or Holy Orders to truly transform us to be more like Jesus. It’s not about giving Jesus the least amount of ourselves that we can, just barely enough so that we can squeak into heaven by the skin of our teeth. Today, and everyday, Jesus invites us to give all of who we are to Him, so that we might, in return, receive everything from Him.