What Gives?

Photo: R. Turner | Unsplash

What do Catholics need these days? One could answer - 'Well, it depends where you live.' Catholics in Canada have a different situation, generally speaking, than do Catholics in the PRC.

The answer is really quite obvious. Catholics need what Jesus Christ has to offer - salvation.

The Baltimore Catechism

138. Why did Jesus Christ found the Church? Jesus Christ founded the Church to bring all men to eternal salvation. (a) The Church instituted by Christ is the only way to eternal salvation. Christ gave the Church the means whereby man can be sanctified and saved. 

139. How is the Church enabled to lead men to salvation? The Church is enabled to lead men to salvation by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, who gives it life. (a) Although the work of salvation is the result of the operation of all three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, it is especially the result of the Redemption by Christ, and because this work is one of divine love it is attributed to the Holy Ghost, who is the soul of the Church, of which Christ is the Head.

Wed to Jesus and His Church, God - the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - restores the soul to friendship with Him, and pours into the receptive heart faith, hope and love to sustain the soul and enable that person to be a window through whom God draws others to Himself.

Jesus draws us into an intimate communion with Him and His Church, a loving embrace that transforms lives and enables people to achieve their loving potential for the sake of the salvation of the world. If we are possessed by that identity in Christ Jesus, we will have everything we need to weather any storm and to celebrate every gift.

For the Christian immersed in the Holy Ghost by the Holy Ghost, that soul participates in the saving mission of Jesus Christ. That soul elevated by God understands that even adversity is gift, an opportunity to share Jesus through our wounds that He unites to Himself in the Spirit.

We love Jesus by keeping His commandments. So saith Jesus.

John 14:15-21

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

In brief,

John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

People relate to persons, not mere ideas. Ideas can be powerful attractors and worthy vehicles, but relationships are formed between persons. Christianity is meeting Jesus, not merely the idea of Jesus. How do we meet Jesus? Through His word, the Gospel. Hearing the Gospel, we hear the voice of Jesus. That Voice enters the heart and expands it so it is able to open and respond in the Holy Ghost to the call of God to new life. The heart is purified by its encounter with the Word of God in and through the living word of God, i.e., Holy Scripture. The soul is shaped in the Word - Jesus, the Eternal Logos - and the person, sustained by the Holy Ghost, becomes a means through which the Word speaks truth into the hearts of others. We are meant to become witnesses to Him in Whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

witness (n.)

Old English witnes "attestation of fact, event, etc., from personal knowledge;" also "one who so testifies;" originally "knowledge, wit," formed from wit (n.) + -ness. Christian use (late 14c.) is as a literal translation of Greek martys.