31 October 2002
INTRODUCTION TO THE CATHOLIC FAITH
REFLECTION PAPER III
The life of man is to know and love God. (CCC 1) Man was originally created for this end, but through the sin of one man, Adam, the original holiness, knowledge of God and the relationship with God was distorted. (CCC 398-399). Thus because of sin the original dignity of man had been lost and unattainable. Yet God did not abandon mankind. Out of love he sent his Son in order to save and reconcile mankind to himself.
For me the “what” of salvation has been less difficult than understanding the “how”. Accepting in faith that Christ, by his life, death, and resurrection has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life is not so difficult. Several topics from the reading and class discussions have provided insight into my limited theology and have pointed to a deeper meaning behind the “slogans” of the Creed. I have been struck by the focus on Christ’s human nature, the work of the Holy Spirit and the Economy of Salvation. Previously I was limited by a Christ-centric theology that failed to understand salvation as a work of the whole Trinity.
John’s Gospel proclaims, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (Jn 1:14) It always seemed to me God changed in the Incarnation. But I never considered rather that God had not so much changed as human nature itself was altered. In the Ascension, the dignity of humanity is raised even farther than could be imagined because the Father so loved the Son, and the Son loved the Father obediently unto death, that the Father glorified the Son by raising him from the dead and “introduced his Son’s humanity, including his body, into the Trinity.” (CCC 648). Human nature has changed in that now a human being, with a human body, sits at the right hand of the Father, with the authority and the power of God. Our hope is that what was accomplished first in Christ will be accomplished in us.
The work of salvation is not the task of Christ alone but is accomplished by the whole Trinity. The Economy of Salvation is such that the Father initiates our salvation, the Son is the agent, and the Holy Spirit is the power that makes it happen. It is the Father’s will that we are saved. The Son obediently does the Father’s will. The Holy Spirit enables the humanity of Jesus and gives him the power to carry out the will of the Father. Jesus, as the model of our salvation, reveals that we are to be similarly anointed by the Spirit so what was worked by him may be accomplished in us. Having ascended, Jesus sits at the Father’s right hand and asks the Father to send the Spirit to us. The Father and the Son send the Spirit, the Spirit of Sonship, to unite us in the bond of love between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit binds together with Christ all those in whom he is active (CS pg 100). Thus the Father adopts us as children in the Body of his Son, united in Christ and made to live in him by the power of the Holy Spirit. (CCC 690).
“The Word became flesh to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’ … the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” (CCC 460) Being a Child of God, man is no longer alienated from God by sin. United to Christ, man’s vocation to know and love God is restored. Faith in Christ is revealed less as an intellectual proposition and more as the living out of the life of Christ as a member of his Body, as a Child of God. The vocation to love God is possible in a new way in that as a member of his Body we enter into the mystery of the love between the Father and the Son. We partake of the divine life of God when we love as Christ loved: when we can love our neighbor, and lay down our lives for others. Our salvation is the present realization of the love of God now in confidence of the full actualization of love in the future.