What does the church mean by salvation? Is it just forgiveness of sins so you can enter heaven? What are the implications of having salvation when you are still alive? – Jenny

Dear Jenny,

About the meaning of salvation, it’s a long story and there are many ways of trying to understand it. I offer one.

Let’s start with TV where I saw a picture of an old man digging among the complete ruins of his house in Florida after a recent Tornado there had completely leveled it. He had a smile on his face as he dug under rubble. A reporter asked what he was looking for. He answered ‘his yellow and orange sports jacket’. It was given to him recently by someone he loved very much. He said if he found that jacket that would make everything okay again. Everything important the man had was destroyed, but his jacket was saved and he was smiling.

Think of salvation as us having lost everything that was important to us when, in the story of Genesis, Adam and Eve refused to heed God’s advice and resist eating the fruits from the tree of good and evil. Once they tasted the fruit – of good and evil – they became confused, disoriented and unable to right themselves. Having abandoned their true north star and their own integrity, they were lost, and if they didn’t turn around, they would die lost, separated forever from the Love that created them and placed them in a beautiful garden (life on earth) that had everything they ever really wanted.

God was not happy to see his favourite part of creation (so very good) – his son & daughter – lost and so began the long search for a way to bring them back home. Since God was the original creator and knew the inner workings and desires of the human heart and spirit, God would be the best one to find a way to save them from their situation and lead them back to their first and real home.

God’s solution was to have his Son Jesus be born just like the lost, in human form, to come and live among them, and offer himself as a gift so irresistible – greater love than this no one can offer – to the Father as one he could not deny. God’s love for the lost was greater than the sin of their disobedience. And the Son’s gift of his own life was so much greater than the sin. Thus when the Father accepted the Son’s gift, the original sin was forgiven, and the lost could now find their way back home if they chose.

You remember in the story of the Prodigal Son how the father was so happy to have his ‘lost’ son back, that all the stops were pulled out in welcome as he came home.

So salvation means being saved from our ‘lost’, or perhaps disoriented way of life. It means that God every day, for every one, offers as a gift, all that is necessary for each one of us to find our way, home. This means not just at the end of life, but in every day of life. You remember the Prodigal was far away in a ‘foreign’ land and took a long while to find his way home. But because he always had a ‘good’ heart, even though he didn’t always listen to it, he eventually did listen to it and accepted the help he needed to not just come back home, but to be welcomed with a great party of celebration.

This ‘coming home’ begins for us on the day of our Baptism and continues every day of our life as we walk with Jesus, along his way – however long or short the journey may be – until having embraced and sometimes overcome all that life throws our way, we finally rest, in final peace, back home, in the loving embrace of the One who knows us best and loves us the most. So, in your life, if there is someone who loves you deeply, then that’s just a taste of the love God has for you and that you can enjoy, if you choose to, every day and forever.

Blessings,

aka Fr. Jim C.Ss.R.