He then said, “Am I saved? Well, I believe that the Lord Jesus by His Death and Resurrection has saved me by my sins, by his blood my sins are washed away, he opened to me the gates of heaven, he gave me the chance to spend eternity with him forever. So yes, I believe I am saved…BUT, I can’t take that for granted. Being saved is something I need to work on every day. There’s nothing I want more than to spend eternity with my Lord and my beloved wife, BUT I can never just presume heaven is guaranteed to me. So every morning I pray, I try my best to get to Mass and Holy Communion, and every night I say an act of contrition, because I know I’m still a sinner. And when I know I’ve committed a serious sin, I go to Confession…I am saved, but I just don’t think we can take salvation for granted.” Good Catholic answer.
In a sense, this answer encapsulates one of the paradoxes of the Christian faith. On the one hand, you bet we are saved: By Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection, Our Lord has saved us from sin and Satan. On the other hand, the reception of that gift of salvation is something we need to be constantly open to. Baptism is not a get-out-of-jail free card. Faith is a living relationship: it requires daily prayer, confession of sin, reception of the Eucharist; and when we cease these things, our souls begin to wither, like the fig tree in the Gospel today.
For if salvation was guaranteed by a one-time profession of faith, why would St. Paul give the warning, we heard in the 2nd reading today? He said, “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” We need to take care not to fall, because falling is a real possibility. Earlier in the same first letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks about the importance of mortifying—disciplining—his flesh for the sake of his salvation. He said, , “ I discipline by body lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. “Disqualification” from what? From heaven! Paul worried, or should I say, he acknowledged the possibility that he could be preaching the Gospel in one moment, and then, because of his failure to control his sinful appetites that he could lose out on heaven.
Jesus in the Gospels gives many such stark warnings. He says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” He says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, unless you take up your cross and follow me, unless you repent…you’ll perish, as we heard repeated twice in our Gospel today, unless you are born again by water and the holy spirit, unless your righteousness surprises the scribes and the pharisees, unless you become like this little child you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Salvation is a path. Baptism sets us on that path, but it does not assure us salvation. Salvation is not assured simply by pronouncing some formula or creed, it doesn’t just require confessing ones sins and receiving communion. It doesn’t just require offering our sufferings in union with Jesus. It’s not just any one of those things by themselves, rather, salvation requires a living relationship with God through Christ that encompasses the whole of life: the rituals of the Church, humility of spirit, the acts of mercy, obedience to Church teaching, fervent recourse to the saints, all of this is part of salvation that we cannot take for granted.
St. Paul’s warning today in the second reading is an essential warning: “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”. If you think your salvation is guaranteed you are on slippery ground. None of us here in this place are beyond the danger of earthly pride, none of us have fully achieved the holy perfection for which we were made. We are works in progress. God is working to perfect us and sanctify us and stretch our hearts to be more like His, and hopefully we are cooperating with God’s grace to this end.
But there is the real possibility that we can turn away or obstruct God’s work, especially if pride gets in the way. And this is a possibility to our dying breath, because if we are not free to turn away we aren’t really free. Love requires freedom. Salvation involves cooperating freely with the grace of God. Saying yes, not just once, but every day, every moment.
We look to the saints as our great examples of sanctity, because they are the souls who say yes to God, over and over, without hesitation, not just when it is convenient for them, even when it means being brought out of their comfort zone. They give God the blank check, they approach the burning bush in prayer, even when it means that their egos might be immolated by that holy fire. They undergo serious penances, so that the soil of their souls be might tilled and made fertile and fruitful. They truly dare to utter from the depths of their being “speak Lord your servant is listening.” You should learn everything you can about your patron saints, who want to teach you how to respond generously to God and heroically, like they did.
In the Gospel, the Lord lamented that the religious leadership of Israel had failed to bear fruit: He compared them to the fruitless fig tree, because they had ceased to bear fruit for God. The leadership had failed to lead people to Jesus and ready acceptance of the Gospel. Fruitlessness. The Pharisees thought that “their salvation was assured” because they were observing certain external precepts that they decided were the marks of holiness.
But salvation requires not just external observance, but the humility to acknowledge that I am still in need of help, I am in need of conversion to the depth of my heart, I need that living relationship with God that is nurtured by prayer and manifested in the acts of mercy.
“Are you saved?” Yes, we are saved by faith, and that’s why I’m here at Mass lest I take that gift of salvation for granted. Yes, we are saved by faith, but that faith tells us that we are works in progress. Yes, we are saved by faith, by that faith that requires daily conformity with Christ, conformity of the mind, the heart, and will, assent to all that the Church proposes for belief, humble acknowledgement of my sins, acts of mercy toward my neighbor, and the reception of his flesh and blood.
May our Lenten observances assist us in seeking that daily conversion the Lord wants for us, that will enable us to bear fruit for the kingdom, that we may “take care not to fall” and so come to our eternal reward for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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