Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time: 11-6-16
Peace be with You,
The instruction we have been receiving on how it is that we are to cultivate the goodness of our nature came to a culmination of sorts last weekend in the story of Zacchaeus. The reason for this is that, as we saw, in a certain way, the story of Zacchaeus is our story as well. As Zacchaeus, we all struggle to keep above the distractions of the crowd in order to stay focused on the one thing that truly matters and the only thing that can bring us happiness, our God. Existing in a fallen world, we all fall short of the mark from time to time, we all sin by allowing other things or people to come between us and our Creator, and insofar as we allow this to happen, we fail to experience life to the fullest. This was exemplified by Zacchaeus’ giving into the temptation from time to time of taking advantage of his position as a tax collector at the expense of his neighbors. Yet, for all his faults, the Scriptures bestow upon this man a name which indicates purity. The reason for this, as we saw, is that though fallen, Zacchaeus desired more than anything else to get above the crowd and see his God, in other words, at least in that very moment, his desire was pure, he was pure in heart, and his desire was satisfied in alignment with the promise of our Lord (Matt 5:8). Indeed, as our Lord told those who looked on the scene, “Today, salvation has come to this house…” (Luke 19:9), salvation being nothing else than seeing God and being in perfect relationship with Him, and with everyone else, as exemplified in Zacchaeus’ willingness to set things right with anyone whom he had taken advantage of (Luke 19:8), for as we know, these two types of relationship cannot be separated (Matt 25:40 & 45). This weekend, we continue to explore the theme of salvation and what exactly it means for us to be saved.
In Christian terms salvation consists of being in perfect communion with God. This comes about, of course, through the Incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, Who, as true God and true man, reconciled all of creation to God within His very Person, ‘making peace through the blood of the cross’ (Colossians 1:20), as St. Paul tells us. This is quite often where our understanding of salvation gets a little blurry. Stop and ask yourself, how do I experience salvation? How do I relate to the sacrifice of love carried out on the cross? For many of us, the cross seems something very distant, something that took place a couple of thousand years ago, and herein lies the problem when it comes to how it is that we think of salvation. Because the historical event(s) that effected our salvation (i.e. the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ) took place so far in the past, we almost immediately place our salvation somewhere in the unforeseen future, as something that takes place someday when we die. This is problematic as it pushes us into conceiving of salvation as something to be waited for instead of actively pursued, which in turn necessarily deprives our current reality of any concrete experience of salvation. This is both sad and mistaken, as we see in the words of Jesus to Zacchaeus in last Sunday’s gospel. Look at what our Savior says to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house,” (Luke 19:5) and later to the crowd, “Today, salvation has come to this house…” (Luke 19:9). Today is the day of salvation, not tomorrow, not in ten, twenty, thirty, or a hundred years, TODAY! Why? Because Zacchaeus has met Jesus today, and so it is with us who meet our savior on the road we travel. Now, to be sure, our salvation is not complete in this life, but will be perfected in the life to come as alluded to by our Lord when He makes mention of the resurrection taking place in ‘the coming age, when death will be no more’ (Luke 20:35&36), an age when nothing can separate us from God, not for one single instant. Thus, there is a tension to be held here, we are in a state of “already, but not yet.” In other words, we experience salvation today, but it is not yet complete. And so it is that we come to focus on the resurrection in our readings for today. It should be made clear, that we do not experience the fullness of salvation this side of eternity, but it should likewise be made clear that we are able in some sense and to some degree to experience salvation here and now. The question is, how?
In his work, On the Trinity, St. Augustine speaks of the impact of Christ’s death and resurrection in terms of a 1:2 ratio. As he goes onto explain, the single death of Jesus relates to our double death, first in the soul with respect to sin, and secondly the death of the body. Likewise, he relates the single resurrection of Jesus to our double resurrection, first, with respect to the soul which in a certain sense by being joined to Christ spiritually already experiences resurrection by being joined to Him Who already sits at the right hand of the Father, and secondly, with respect to the body, which in the age to come will no longer experience death (On the Trinity, Bk. 4.5-6; cf. Luke 20:34-36). Therefore, what Augustine helps us to see is that in Christ, we have already experienced death and resurrection in the waters of baptism. Going into the water we die with Christ, and coming out, we rise to new life with him as Paul describes (Colossians 2:12). Now, knowing this, we would be foolish to think that this life that we live is to remain completely hidden until the day we draw our last breath, for if this was the case, what kind of life would it be? This must not be the case, for our God, is a God of living and all are alive to Him (Luke 20:38). Therefore, we experience a resurrected life here and now to the extent that we live united to our God. The way that we do this is living a life of virtue in which love holds a primacy of place. It is by cultivating a life of virtue that our loves become rightly ordered, and in this we grow ever closer to fulfilling the two-fold greatest commandment of love of God and neighbor (Luke 10:27 & Matt 22:37-39).
My friends our God does not ask us to wait to experience of the joy of salvation, rather by calling us to imitate the love he has for us, he at once calls us to the joy of the resurrection. To be sure, to live in such a way is difficult, and we cannot live in such a manner alone, but this is the point. In order to live in such a way we must seek unity with God, Who in turn enables us to grow in such a lifestyle. For this reason St. Paul prays for the Thessalonians that “Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word” (2 Thessalonians 2:16 & 17). Notice please that the grace that Paul speaks of that we receive from Christ is to strengthen us for every good deed and word. In other words the grace we receive enables us to live a life of love with every word we say and every deed we do. In this way, we need not wait until the day we die to experience the life and joy of the resurrection, but instead by allowing the grace of God to penetrate us we allow Him to live in and through us, allowing us both to experience the love and joy of salvation and to share that love and joy with others that they too may experience it TODAY!
Your servant in Christ,
Tony Crescio is the founder of FRESHImage Ministries. He holds an MTS from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a PhD candidate in Christian Theology at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on the intersection between moral and sacramental theology. His dissertation is entitled, Presencing the Divine: Augustine, the Eucharist and the Ethics of Exemplarity.
Tony’s academic publications can be found here.