Having lived through the worldwide transition from manual to digital, I remember well being excited at getting an email because of how rare they were, and how dismissive we were of physical mail. Just one email rivaled the excitement of ten handwritten notes in the mail at one point in time. Nowadays, it will probably not surprise you to hear that I get disproportionately excited when I get something real in the mail, and every email I receive moves me one step closer to flinging all my electronics off a cliff and disappearing off the grid entirely.
I mention this because even though I now love written correspondence, there is one type of letter that I receive nowadays that breaks my priestly heart every time. About once a month or so, a faithful Christian of good will sends me a letter (sometimes I get more than one copy because of how many parishes I have) telling me how the Catholic Church is wrong about salvation, and therefore I am leading people away from Jesus and into the arms of the devil. Frequently in the midst of selectively chosen and interpreted bible texts, there is an appeal for me to stop relying on “works righteousness” and “telling people to earn their salvation” before it’s too late. I always take a moment to pray for these letter writers and their work and for God to bring about greater Christian unity so that we can work in unison towards the goal of salvation of souls, but these always sting. These letters hurt for several reasons. They devalue the work we try to do here of being present to people and ministering to them in the hopes of bringing them closer to Jesus. It misunderstands the importance of a community of believers living and thinking in unison, which is one of the important aspects of the Church. But most of all, this mindset takes something that is a poverty of the contemporary Catholic outlook and says that it represents the whole of the Faith.
These folks probably think that they will surprise me by telling me that the Bible teaches that we cannot save ourselves, and many Catholics believe that we can be saved by our good works. It does not surprise me in the slightest. I am aware that our salvation is a complete and total gift, and I am terribly aware, on the other hand, that a great many people, including Catholics, believe that they will go to Heaven because they “are a really good person” or are at least trying to be such. Little do these interlocutors know that we are on the same page, and I want people to recognize the exact truth that they are preaching, even if I see the importance of expressing our Faith through works a little differently than they do. So, in case you didn’t know this, you are saved by Jesus’ sacrifice for us, not because you do more good things than bad things in life. God isn’t weighing up what you do to see if you meet a bare minimum requirement to be a “good person.” We are not saved because we are good; we are saved because we are His. Jesus turns to the Good Thief in today’s Passion account and tells him that he will enter paradise because he surrenders himself entirely to Jesus, not because he earned it. This is balanced by the fact that Jesus tells us that whatsoever we do to the least of His people, that we do unto Him. Our Faith must touch our lives, not just our hearts. We rely entirely on the mercy and the gift of God, and that should inform every aspect of our lives. This Palm Sunday, learn from both the Good Thief and from Simon the Cyrenian. As St. Dismas (as the Good Thief is traditionally know) did on the cross, entrust yourself entirely to Jesus’ mercy, knowing that it is only in this that we will be saved. And when the times comes for us to help bear the weight of the cross, do so like Simon did, to offer ourselves entirely to the Lord, generously responding to the incalculable gift we have been pledged.