In today’s readings we get yet again a long to do list of what is needed for a good life…aka…holiness.
If you hold back your foot on the sabbath
from following your own pursuits on my holy day;
If you call the sabbath a delight,
and the LORD’s holy day honorable;
If you honor it by not following your ways,
seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice—
Then you shall delight in the LORD,
Here’s the rub though. No one can accomplish all of this, all the time…NO ONE! Let me say it again. No one roaming the earth at this time can ever be perfectly sinless on their own power. We can sin less, and we definitely need to try…but we can never achieve a state of perfect sinlessness on this side of heaven. Not me, not you, not your sweet grandma, not even the Pope himself. So what then? Are we all royally screwed (pardon my language)? We certainly would be if it wasn’t for one thing…or One Person really! Jesus! He loved us so well that He put it all on the line for us. He bought our ‘salvation’…our ticket to holiness and goodness…remember we need that ticket in order to enter heaven, because of its perfection it can’t tolerate anything that is not itself perfect to enter into it. So He’s giving out these tickets that are priceless…it cost Him His very life. But He’s such a gentleman, He honors your free will and will not push it on you. Will you take one from Him?
So you have already…yay…you are my brothers and sisters, the ticket holders. 😉 Now what? Well that ticket even though it is timeless, there is no expiration date (the only way for it to be fully revoked is for you to throw it away yourself)…it has ‘minutes’ in it. We charge it up by our good deeds…it has already been bought…these deeds are simply another way of us going to Jesus and being with Him in relationship. He doesn’t want you to simply grab your ticket and run and then go hide it under a bed and forget about it. Nope…you need to carry it with you…remember…you may need to use it at any moment. But just like we charge it up with good deeds, our bad, crappy stuff…aka our sins… uses up our ‘minutes’. So if you aren’t careful, you can be left standing holding a ticket that you are so darn proud of, but really you’ve let it get nearly empty. (Even then there is hope if you are called home at this point (as long as you don’t throw away the ticket)…a place called ‘Purgatory’…heaven’s filling up, ante room exists. ;))
Here’s the GOOD NEWS though! Jesus knew this ahead of time! He knew our limitations. He knew that even after we had accepted His great gift of salvation that we wouldn’t be able to keep it filled up until we’d need to use it. And this is why He instituded His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church…and gave us the Sacraments…especially the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
During Confession, we take our worn out, nearly empty ticket to a priest who stands in for Jesus Himself and it gets refilled anew…as if we had just received it for the first time. Great deal, right?
Any theologian reading this…I sincerely apologize!
Please stop by my Lenten page and have a listen to Fr. Lauer’s talk on Reconciliation.
Much love and peace to you!
<3