Passion Sunday
When it comes to salvation, we might feel like we just have to muscle through and do it ourselves. God gives us the rules (the workout), and we have to do it in order to get to heaven (rest). While I’m loathe to compare Anthony to God, because he already has a very-healthy sense of self-worth, what we often find is that the harder we try to keep up, the more we fall behind. We give it our all, but get more and more tired, until we are exhausted and don’t feel like we can do anything else. And, unlike working out with others, you can’t have someone else do the exercise for you.
So today’s first reading provides a great reminder for us: Christ already saved us! His sacrifice, not ours, however good they may be, won reconciliation for us and the Father. Before Christ, we tried all sorts of things to be saved: living according to the law, offering different sacrifices that God Himself had told us to make. But that old covenant, written in stone, could not bring us into right relationship with God. As the Apostle says elsewhere, it was only a tutor for us, to know how wrong our passions led us astray. The new covenant, sealed in the Precious Blood of Christ, opened for us our eternal inheritance of heaven.
But so often, we try to do it all ourselves. We live as if our entrance into the heavenly Temple depends only on us and our moral rectitude. But if we live that way, we become more and more tired, are able to do less and less, and end up in failure.
So, does that mean we can say that we simply believe in the Lord, confess that the Savior died for our sins, get baptized, and then never worry about going anywhere other than heaven? While that is what some of our Protestant brothers and sisters seem to espouse, that is the other extreme, which we also need to avoid. Rather, virtue lies in the middle between trying to earn our salvation (which we cannot do) and presuming our salvation (which we should not do). Our response is to put faith in what God has done (which we could never do) while also working out our salvation with fear and trembling, to paraphrase St. Paul.
Our good actions find their goodness inasmuch as they are connected to Christ. By themselves, they do no more than the blood of goats or calves. But if we unite to the cross our daily efforts to live in according with the covenant written in our hearts, prophesied by Jeremiah and fulfilled by Christ, then we will get somewhere. We will advance in holiness because our efforts are now connecting to the “effort” that truly made a difference, the sacrifice of the unblemished Lamb of God. To go back to my cross-fit analogy, it’s as if God has already done the entire workout and won us the prize. But He wants us to engage in it because it will help us become more like Him. Still, He knows we cannot do it all on our own, so He’s right there, by our side, picking up our slack, doing what we can’t, and encouraging us to do more than we think is possible, because all things are possible with Him.
That is the day that Abraham saw from afar and in which he rejoiced. Abraham longed for the day when God would close the gap that we had created by our disobedience. He looked forward to a time when he would not simply have to act by faith, and presume his own efforts would be enough. He rejoiced in God accomplishing what no mere human could: defeating sin and death and opening up eternal salvation. And Abraham’s faith was not disappointed.
So, by all means, in these last two weeks of Lent, may we not slack off on our Lenten disciplines and penances. Work hard to put to death all within us that is not of God. But do so knowing that God has already saved us; salvation doesn’t depend on us. But God does want us to cooperate with Him in the work of salvation, complete the race, and enjoy the prize of eternal rest with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.