It's Not What We Know, It's Who We Know

Fourth Sunday of Easter

We’ve probably all heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  I experienced that saying firsthand when I studied in Rome for 5 months as an undergraduate.  During  my time I met a monsignor who worked for the Roman Rota, the Supreme Court, as it were for the Catholic Church (though that analogy is not 100% accurate, as the pope is really the supreme judge).  He was also a chaplain for the local chapter of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, a chivalrous religious order that provides medical help in the name of the Church.  He  took me to different churches that I would have never known about, and certainly would not have been able to enter.  To be honest, it was pretty cool.

Msgr. (now-Bishop) Giuseppe Sciacca, me, and some of
my classmates from my semester in Rome

It may sound surprising, but when it comes to eternal salvation, it is also not what you know, but who you know.  No, not in the sense that if you’re best friends with this priest, or this religious sister, or this bishop, then you can do anything you want.  But it is true when it comes to Jesus.  Salvation is intimately connected with knowing who Jesus is, and having a relationship with Him.  We can know all sorts of facts about Jesus, we can even be able to repeat the Catechism word for word.  But that knowledge does not equate to salvation.  Even Satan knows about Jesus; in fact, Satan probably knows more about Jesus than we do.  But Satan does not know Jesus as it pertains to having friendship with Jesus.

Jesus Himself asserts that it’s all about knowing Him.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about Himself as the “gate for the sheep.”  He is the one by whom the sheep (that is, we) enter into the verdant pastures that Psalm 23 spoke of in today’s Responsorial Psalm.  No one else is the gate: not Moses, not Mohammed, not Buddha, no one else.  If we wish to enter into heaven, we have to go through Jesus.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: what about all the people who didn’t or don’t believe in Jesus, who don’t truly know Jesus?  We can talk about people who came before Jesus, who had no way of knowing about Him, and those who have come after Jesus, who maybe do or maybe don’t have access to knowing about Jesus.  What Scripture makes clear, both in today’s Gospel, as well as in Peter’s speech in another place in the Acts of the Apostles, is that there is no other name on earth by when people are saved other than the Most Holy Name of Jesus.  So anyone who is in heaven, and only God decides who is in heaven, is there only because of the one saving act of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection.  Jews are not saved by the Law of Moses (St. Paul makes that very clear); Muslims are not saved by following the Qur’an; Buddhists are not saved because they followed the path of enlightenment.  If they are in heaven, it is only through Jesus.

The Church also taught in Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Vatican II, and I will quote the section: “Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.”  So the Church teaches that is possible that those who are ignorant of Christ through no fault of their own, and who are seeking God and following, to the best of the ability, their conscience, that they be saved.  We don’t know if they’re saved, because the only way we know to receive the gift of salvation is to know Jesus and be in a relationship with Him, begun in Baptism.  But the key is that if any person is in heaven, they are only there because of Jesus.

This should be a catalyst for us not simply to know about Jesus, but to truly know Him.  It should move us to say, ‘Do I really know Jesus?’  Simply being baptized, or even receiving other sacraments, does not necessarily mean that we know Jesus.  We might know about Jesus, but do we know Him as well as we know our friends or our spouse?

It should also be a catalyst to tell others about Jesus.  Your co-worker’s salvation could depend on how well you help them to understand who Jesus is.  Your spouse’s salvation could depend on how well you have made the life of Jesus your own and live it in your marriage.  Your classmate or friend’s salvation could be aided by the fact that you help them to know Jesus and reflect that relational knowledge through what you say and do.  Is that easy?  No.  The cost of discipleship, of knowing Jesus, is very expensive.  But God is pulling for us and giving us what we need to know Jesus and to share that knowledge with others through His divine grace, which is given to us through the Sacraments.

This weekend our First Communicants will receive Jesus, the Gate to Heaven, in the Eucharist.  In this new way, they are receiving the help to have union with Jesus, to truly know Him, and not simply to know about Him.  They asked for His mercy on Saturday, which He readily grants to those who are sorry and who seek to make the life of Jesus their own in their own way.  And on Sunday, having been purified of the obstacles to His life, they then/now receive that life and love in Jesus’ Body and Blood.  What a beautiful gift for Jesus to spread the table of the Eucharist, the altar of life, before us as we gather in the house of the Lord, which anticipates the eternal temple of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, where God wants us to dwell for years to come!  And each week we are invited back to Mass, to get to know Jesus better, and then to make His life our own by the power of His grace.  

When it comes to eternal salvation, to being welcomed into heaven, it’s not what we know, it’s who we know.  Do we know the Good Shepherd, the One who is the Gate for the sheep, who came that we “might have life and have it more abundantly”?

All of Me

Fourth Sunday of Easter

            As Americans, we tend to be very practical people.  After a salesman has told us all the benefits of their new product, all the great things it will do for us, the wonderful way that it will compliment our lifestyle, whatever the product may be, it always comes down to one simple question: how much?

            In today’s first reading, we hear St. Peter speak on behalf of the other Apostles, and proclaim, “‘Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.’”  Then the reading skips ahead of the main body of his argument, 22 verses, in fact, and gets to the response of the Jews who were hearing him: “‘What are we to do, my brothers?’”  Apparently, the Jews who were hearing St. Peter were practical, too.  They wanted to know what they had to do to be saved.

            Some 2,000 years later, we’re still asking the same question: what do I really have to do?  What’s it cost me?  The answer is quite simple: nothing…and everything.

            Salvation costs us nothing because it is the free gift of God, the gift given to us by Jesus, Lord and Christ, the Greek way of expressing the Hebrew understanding of God and Messiah, at Easter.  This Jesus whom we crucified, to paraphrase St. Peter from the first reading, has, in turn, given us salvation.  And to continue to St. Peter’s words from the second reading, by Jesus’ wounds we are healed.  Even though we have wondered away like sheep, Jesus Christ has brought us back to Himself because He is our shepherd and the guardian of our souls.  Even though we freely chose sin, individual acts and lifestyles that are contrary to Divine Will, natural law, and reason, to use St. Thomas’ definition of sin, acts and lifestyles which draw us away from the eternal destiny of our souls to be in heaven with God, Jesus rescued us from sin and death so that, following His example, we could be happy with Jesus forever in heaven, the whole reason for our being.  And rather than having us pay the cost, Jesus paid the price for our sins with His blood.  We are free to say yes to the great gift of salvation offered to us by Christ.

Sheep grazing in Israel

            And yet, salvation costs us everything.  Because, as Jesus tells us today in the Gospel, He is the gate for the sheep, and anyone who tries to enter by any other means is a thief and a robber, who come only to steal, slaughter, and destroy.  But Jesus, the Good Shepherd, came so that we might have life, and have it more abundantly.  But to come through Jesus the Sheepgate means that we try to get in through no other means.  That we can only go through Him.  And Jesus doesn’t just want one hour from us every week.  He doesn’t just want the times that we’re at home before a meal praying.  He wants us all.  He wants our love, our attention, our actions.  He wants us when we’re children, when we’re teens, when we’re adults, and when we’re seniors.  He wants our friendships, our relationships, the totality of who we are as persons.  He wants our work and He wants our vacations.  He wants our health and our sickness.  All of it, Jesus tells us, must go through Him.  And if it cannot go through Him, then it is only stealing from us, slaughtering us, destroying us.

            For our God is a loving God, yes, but as we hear so many times from the Old Testament, our God is also a jealous God.  He does not want us flirting with sin, in any of its forms.  He wants all of our love and affection to be directed to Him.  God is jealous for us because He knows that the only way that we can truly be happy is by going through Him and uniting everything to him. 

            In our times there are so many temptations to leave God outside and to try to find happiness and joy through other gates.  We see and hear about many prominent Catholics who have not given everything to Jesus, but who have tried to separate aspects of their life and get them in by another route.  Too many prominent Catholics or Catholics we know personally will say or tell us by their actions that when it comes to marriage and the relationships therein, the Church, the Body of Christ, has no authority.  “It’s my body, and I’ll do as I please.”  Too many Catholics consider their first allegiance the Church when they enter the pew, but when they enter the polling place or the Legislative chambers that allegiance disappears.  Now, let me be clear, the Church endorses no candidate and no party.  But, we do promote the Gospel and ask Catholics to vote for those, according to a properly-formed conscience, who can best bring about the teachings of the Gospel, the teachings which bring us life, true liberty, and true happiness, especially for those who are marginalized in our society: infants in the womb, the poor, the elderly, and so many others, as well as Catholic Legislators to promote those Gospel values in their work of forming laws for the State and the country.

            We are all of us practical people.  We want to know the cost of salvation.  It is nothing and everything.  It is a free gift, offered to us in Christ that gives us true joy and true freedom.  It is a gift which, to accept it, means that we are constantly working at making sure that all of who we are passes through Christ, the Sheepgate.  If it cannot pass through Him, it will not bring joy or freedom, but sorrow and slavery.  Christ wants all of us.  Bishop Mengeling is well-known for using older songs in his homilies and talks, and, while I won’t sing the song, I think that our desire, our prayer could be expressed in the opening words of the oldie, but goodie, “All of Me.”  Because we should be saying to Christ, “All of me, why not take all of me?  Can’t you see I’m no good without you.”  Or, to use an even older version, we can use the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Suscipe prayer:

                                                

                                                Receive, O Lord, all my liberty.

                                                Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will.

                                                Whatsoever I have or posses Thou hast bestowed upon me;

                                                I give it all back to Thee

                                                and surrender it wholly to be governed by Thy Will.

                                                Give me love for Thee alone along with Thy grace,

                                                and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.