Are Catholics 'saved' Part 4

As we continued our conversation it kind of shifted from understanding salvation to understanding how and what works mean and their relationship to our salvation. Our conversation continued:

Joe: “If Paul says we have to work out our salvation how do we do that? Does that mean Christ didn’t really win our salvation? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Fr. Chris: Jesus did win salvation for us. He redeemed us by dying on the cross. His death opened the gates of heaven for us. But accepting that Jesus redeemed us means that we recognize what Jesus has done to free us from sin. We still have to ‘walk through those gates’ ourselves. We have a part to do as well.

Joe: But that sounds like we earn our own salvation. We can’t earn our salvation.

Fr. Chris: You're exactly right. We don’t earn our salvation. Jesus won that salvation for us. We are saved by our faith in Jesus Christ but we are not saved by faith ALONE.

Joe: So if our accepting Jesus as our Savior is not enough then what else do you think we have to do?

Fr. Chris: There is a Baptist minister named Hyle who wrote a book where he responded to the bible verse quoted from St. Paul and said:

“I must not depend on my works for the salvation of my soul, but I must give myself constantly to the working out of my own salvation; that is, the salvaging of my life. It is His [God’s] business to salvage me from the garbage can. It is my business to do my part in working to see that I am salvaged in recycling...”

He sums it up well by saying that God has salvaged us from the garbage…from death due to our sins. But we must do our part too not only embrace that salvation but to continue to work to keep it. Our actions, our worship, our relationship to God, our desire to remain in a holy relationship with God all play a part in living out that salvation. We can't earn our salvation but we can lose it either because of what we do or because of our decision to turn away from God...to sever that relationship with Him.

Joe: I guess that brings me back to the first question I asked this morning. (The question he asked was: "Isn't that what Catholics believe [about doing works]? Don't you believe that you have to go to confession and do all these other things or you won't be saved?) I am struggling to figure out what we are supposed to do for our salvation.

Fr. Chris: Do you still think that we only have to accept Christ as our Savior?

Joe: No. I think I can see what you are saying about our having to do more than simply accept Jesus and I think I am ok with that. "I guess now I don’t understand why Catholics do all these other things. How do we know what else we have to do? Why do you think we are supposed to go to confession or that we have to be baptized to accept Jesus. Why would you pray to Mary and to saints if Jesus is our Savior?"

Fr. Chris: Those are all good questions.

Joe: "I just realized that I've been in here for over an hour. I don't want to take up all your time."

Fr. Chris: That's ok. I'm happy to help you any way I can. If you want we can make an appointment to talk again about the questions you have.

Joe: I think that’d be good.

This is when he asked me if there was any way he could get some thoughts from others on what we talked about. I told him I did take notes during our talk. He took a look at the notes and read them over. He agreed that this was a good summary of our conversation and asked how we could let others see it. For some reason, my blog came to mind. I mentioned the blog and he thought that was the perfect forum…open to the public yet anonymous enough that he was comfortable with it.

So, here we are. I have had another meeting with him and have talked to him on the phone a couple of times. As I mentioned in my previous post, he has been reading the blog and it is helping him. He has a lot of questions still but really wants to continue with this. So, sometime next week I will begin posting our conversation from this last meeting we had. Until next time…God bless.

posted by: crossman at 09:03 | link | comments (1) |
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