A Reading from the Holy Gospel Not According to Anyone,
As the last healed cripple danced his way from Jesus’ camp in the hill country of Judea, Christ and His Apostles sat in the dirt, the dusty footprints of nearly fifteen hours worth of healings and miracles. Andrew spoke:
“Lord, where should we stay the night?”
Every man’s eyes gazed upon the Lord as He turned to respond. Jesus said:
“I will leave the sleeping arrangements to you, my disciples. It’s been a long day and I’ve already been on the clock for two hours too long. God the Father will have my head for the amount of overtime I’ve worked the past three days! This is going to bump me into the next tax bracket, for sure. You all figure out dinner while I change my clothes; Simon, I swear, if you serve me locusts one more time, I will never change your name to Peter.”
Jesus wasn’t part-time. The example He set wasn’t part-time. The achievement of salvation necessitates a full-time commitment to untarnished love, and the only entity capable of accomplishing our own redemption as a tarnished race dedicated every fiber of his fully human, fully God being to its completion. The man who was hired for your salvation loves you so much that He never paused a moment while seeking to erase a sin He did nothing to accrue.
By extension, we’re sorely mistaken if we view Catholicism as an occupation. No amount of badge removal and accrued sick leave can erase baptism by grace. I don’t care who you are; your salvation is the best thing to ever happen to you. No bucket list of astonishing accomplishment can compare with the single sacrificial act of Christ, because no amount of achievement can merit for you what by death Christ did for us. At our very core, we identity with a title we could never ourselves merit. In fact, to believe that we could somehow merit the salvation which characterizes our very system of beliefs is perhaps as laughable as a Savior who takes time off for Himself. The difference between our own echelon of achievement and our status as children of God is the distance between doubting the wounds in Christ’s side and experiencing the pain which accompanies them.
You could really screw up today. From the time the sun rises until it sets, you could fail every single task which you get out to accomplish. You could burn every existing friendship you have established to the ground in a matter of minutes; you could ruin the temple of your body given to you at birth. You could easily forget your worthy as a son or daughter of Christ. You could compromise your system of beliefs in favor of the lies which manifest themselves as life’s temporary pleasures. You could even identify the love of God before choosing to run so far from it that you’re sure the light could never again find you.
And how wrong you would be. You would be running from the one who never deviated from His desire to save you. And your lack of respect or recognition of the sacrifice on the cross cannot change the fact that it happened, and that it happened for you. Today and tomorrow and forever that cross stands as witness to the fact that until death we are indelibly marked by a blood not our own, a love so pure that it can transcend your ability to hate it. He didn’t hang on two pieces of wood to keep you from leaving. He hung there so that when you came back, you knew why.
