February 27, 2010

Hebrews 3

Apologies for the lateness. Yesterday was an interesting day. I don't think you would have appreciated my drunken ramblings of late last night, so this will have to do. I'll be back tonight with today's gospel.

I understand the tone of this chapter, but it's one of the ones that makes it hard for me to maintain what I do firmly believe about the path to salvation. The focus on the difference between Moses and Christ functions well for his audience, but isn't the whole point of Jesus that now God doesn't have to do all that Old Testament stuff to us? When we turn away we don't have to wander in the desert for forty years so that He can be sure we get the point. He reaches down and speaks to us, He comes to us in a Spirit that inhabits our very bodies. He doesn't have to use the blunt instruments of fire hailing from the sky anymore.

But perhaps the warning is more temporal and earthly. I do believe in sharing faith and trying to bring people to the faith even if I don't believe it's a prerequisite for admission to heaven (not to make salvation sound clinical). Because I believe in the blessings of the sacraments. The price for turning away from the Church or from belief in Christ is not having the sacrament of the Eucharist or Reconciliation or any of them but especially those two. To not commune with the real physical presence of Jesus, to not go to one of his earthly representatives and receive absolution for your sins and failings.

What a price.

Those who can find their way to faith without such things are to be admired. Those who are good people without the touch of God in their lives, who do not have a guidepost to work from, are impressive. More impressive than us. They're doing it the hard way.

They don't have to.

We should be fantastic with our tools, that's the burden of Christianity, especially Catholicism. We should be spectacular, always. They'll know we are Christians by our love - absolutely bursting out of us and growing every second. Because we are full of the Spirit, because we have been to heaven on a regular basis, because God has literally filled us with Himself.

Because we have been loved that much.

I have always believed He finds every chance to tell all of His children that however they will listen, but how lonely it must be to those who are not told and shown as often as we are. For God so loved the world that He sent His only son. John 3:14.