“You wrote that the world doesn’t need a savior, but every day I hear people crying for one.”
-Superman to Lois Lane in Superman Returns
CCC = Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
I. Let us begin with introductions: Who is Jesus? What is his name?
a. What’s in a name? “A name expresses a person’s essence and identity and the meaning of this person’s life. God has a name; he is not an anonymous force.” (CCC 203)
b. God reveals his name to Moses (Exodus 3:13-15):
“But,” said Moses to God, “When I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” God replied, “I am who am.” Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: ‘I AM sent me to you.’”
- This connotes the very fullness of being; a completeness, a lacking of nothing, the very fullness of every perfection subsists in God. He needs nothing, but everything needs him. (Contrast with what you or I mean by “I am.”)
- This is called the doctrine of “aseity”: the property by which a being exists of and from itself, and is absolutely independent and incapable of change throughout all eternity.
c. First and foremost, then, the name of God is YHWH or “I AM.” And Jesus refers to himself by the divine name, and so reveals himself as God. As his enemies were trying him in the temple, Jesus identifies himself as God three times by invoking his divine name, most emphatically the third time: “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (John 8:58)
d. Jesus has other names, as well. First are the most obvious, “Jesus,” and “Christ.”
- Jesus is the Latin transliteration of the Hebrew, “Jeshua,” which means “YHWH [I AM] is salvation.”
- Christ is the Greek for the Hebrew word “Messiah,” which means “anointed.” Priests and kings in the old days were anointed, as Jesus is anointed in his Divine Person, for the sake of his identity.
e. “Emmanuel,” meaning “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), is another name for Jesus. “Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).
f. Other titles of Jesus, from the prophecy of Isaiah: “For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:5).
II. Jesus as Savior
a. Think of the names and titles we have just discussed. The fact that Jesus is Savior is, first of all, bound up with his very name. “Jesus Christ Emmanuel” means “God is salvation,” “anointed priest,” “God with us,” “God-Hero,” and so on. His mission is inextricably intertwined with his very identity. It’s a little like a husband who works to support his family, comes home and helps his wife to take care of his family, goes on vacation because his family and he need a rest, and so on. Everything Jesus did as Savior was bound up with who he was.
b. The word “salvation” means “the state of being saved or protected from harm, risk, etc.” according to dictionary.com.
- Salvation means first of all that we are saved from our sins. We experience salvation for the first time in our lives when we are baptized, for Baptism wipes away original sin and, if we have any, personal sin. We also experience salvation every time we go to Confession, which cleanses us from personal sin. Msgr. Wald likes to say that this is the greatest miracle Jesus ever worked: the forgiveness and absolution of mens’ sins, without which we would all go to Hell.
- Salvation has a further meaning, the protection FROM harm (or protection THROUGH harm) in this life. According to Jesus, “You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed” (Luke 21:16-18).
- Jesus is making an apparently impossible claim-that we will not be harmed even if we are killed. But that’s the claim he challenges us with, and it is up to us to decide whether we can believe it in faith.
c. “Moral” vs. “Absolute” assurance of salvation
- We have no absolute assurance of salvation, in the sense that after Baptism we are guaranteed to go to Heaven no matter what we do. This is a common mistake made by some Christians who believe that once you have been baptized, or said a certain prayer, or committed your life to Christ that your salvation is assured. It doesn’t work that way.
- What we have instead is a “moral” assurance of salvation; because we know that God is just, if we keep Christ’s covenant by living out our Baptismal promises, we trust that we will go to Heaven.
- The proper way for a Catholic to think about his own salvation is “I have been saved (through Baptism), I am being saved (through the action of Christ as I live my Baptismal promises), and I hope to be saved (when I come before Christ in judgment).”
III. Jesus as Redeemer of Man
a. What does it mean to “redeem”? Pope John Paul II’s beautiful encyclical letter, The Redeemer of Man, gives us an insightful definition:
The redemption of the world-this tremendous mystery of love in which creation is renewed-is, at its deepest root, the fullness of justice in a human heart-the heart of the first-born Son-in order that it may become justice in the hearts of many human beings, predestined from eternity in the first-born Son to be children of God and called to grace, called to love (9).
b. Redemption is about “justice” and it’s about the “renew[al]” of “creation.” “Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor” (CCC, 1807). God created Adam, Eve, and the whole Creation in “original justice”: all the relationships, between God and Man, between Man and each other, and between Man and the creatures were right.
- Realize first that God owes us nothing at all. He created us and could have left us alone to deal with the consequences of our fall, without any injustice whatsoever. So this justice that Pope John Paul the Great speaks of is first about man giving to God the Father what He is due, not about God giving us what we are due.
- Jesus came to give justice to the human heart, to restore that right relationship-original justice-between mankind and God that was present at the beginning between God and Adam, before the fall.
- God does this out of love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16) The Greek word for “love” in this passage is eros, which means “erotic love” or “physical delight.”
- Original justice is restored in the human heart, first, through Redemption- and then this restoration is extended to the whole of Creation. At the end of time, the whole of the Creation is to be remade, human beings are to be resurrected, and they will enter into the New Heavens and the New Earth.
IV. Redemption and eternal life: the gift of a new Creation
“See Mother, I make all things new.”
-Jesus to Mary after falling with his cross in The Passion of the Christ
a. We are saved as a people-a Church-first, and then as individuals.
- This is a very important doctrine that is very widely misunderstood, especially by Americans.
- The parts of my body make no sense considered apart from me. We wouldn’t say, “I have an American finger,” or “My nose is a citizen.” Our parts take on the qualities of the whole and it is not terribly interesting to contemplate them in themselves.
- We are “‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises’ of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9)
- Do not consider your relationship to Jesus as “me and you”-the “Jesus as my personal Savior” syndrome-but consider yourself first a member of the Church. By Baptism you were made a member of the Church, incorporated into the body of Christ.
- Jesus is the head of the Church. The spiritual writers say that God does nothing whatsoever on Earth apart from His Church.
b. Through the Church, united with Jesus as its head, God is redeeming the world. He is completing his act of Creation; that is, the New Creation will be the final completion of the original Creation. Orthodox churches are often built as octagons-having eight sides-because they symbolize that Jesus is the “eighth day” of creation.
The Redeemer of the World! In Him has been revealed in a new and more wonderful way the fundamental truth concerning creation to which the Book of Genesis gives witness when it repeats several times: “God saw that it was good.” The good has its source in Wisdom and Love. In Jesus Christ the visible world which God created for man-the world that, when sin entered, “was subjected to futility”-recovers again its original link with the divine source of Wisdom and Love (The Redeemer of Man, 8).
c. Story about the clock
When we have spread on earth the fruits of our nature and our enterprise… according to the command of the Lord and in his Spirit, we will find them once again, cleansed this time from the stain of sin, illuminated and transfigured, when Christ presents to his Father an eternal and universal kingdom. (CCC 1050).
Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost. (John 6:10-12, RSV)
d. One way to think about salvation vs. redemption is, salvation is the blessed assurance that we will get to Heaven, while redemption concerns what we will find when we get there. “For the world in its present form is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31).
e. Our own unique destinies: redeemed as a people, loved and delighted in as unique individuals, remade as new creations. Consider for a moment our own names.
- Our names mean something. Go to www.parents.com to look yours up. “Anthony” means “priceless” or “praiseworthy.”
- Our names are ours for all eternity (CCC 2159). “To the victor I shall give some of the hidden manna; I shall also give a white amulet upon which is inscribed a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it.” (Revelation 3:17)
- This name, our true name, is a broadening and deepening of the name we already have on earth. Our lives in this world, everything we love, experience, suffer, and undertake, are laying the foundations for our lives in eternity, in the New Creation that Jesus is creating for us.
- We will be remade brilliant and glorious in the eternal sunshine of the New Creation; our true names, our true identities, along with the true consequences of our actions will be revealed to all. Our soul “does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection” (CCC 366).
- Justice, the reason for the sake of which Jesus redeemed us, will be fulfilled with unsurpassed love as we come to share in the divine nature, in the divine name itself: “He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.” (2 Peter 1:4)
