Reformation Sunday: justification and holiness
On October 31, while most Catholics might think only of Halloween,
our Lutheran and other Protestant friends and neighbors also remember
and celebrate Martin Luther’s posting of 95 theses on a church
door in Wittenberg in 1517, arguing against what he considered
abuses in the Church’s teaching on personal salvation. On Reformation
Sunday, the Sunday closest to October 31 in the calendar, many
Lutherans used to hear sermons on the errors of Rome and on Luther’s
teaching that the Pope was the anti-Christ. In some Lutheran Synods
that is still the case, but relations usually are now both mutually
respectful and friendly. We can truly and gratefully see in one
another a love of our common Lord, Jesus Christ.
Along with respect and friendship has come dialogue. Recently,
the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue of the last thirty years has permitted
the Lutheran World Federation and the Holy See to come to a joint
declaration on justification. Justification is a theological term
referring to our movement from being separated from God to our
being in communion with him. Justification by faith alone was
the cardinal teaching of Martin Luther, and any agreement between
Catholics and Lutherans on this matter is of great significance
to those who pray, as should we all, for visible unity among all
those who call Jesus Lord. The agreement does not so much reach
back and judge theological opinions of four hundred years ago,
whether Lutheran or Catholic, as come to a consensus of what we
understand now about justification in the light of both Catholic
and Lutheran faith. In this light, both Lutherans and Catholics
can say, to quote the Joint Declaration: “By grace alone, in faith
in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part,
we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit who renews
our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.” These
are extremely important words, and we should thank God we can
now say them together.
The dialogue will continue, however, because there are still significant
differences between many Protestants and Catholics on the nature
of grace itself and its effects. The Declaration speaks about
our being saved by grace alone, thereby reaching behind the classical
formulation of justification by faith alone to one we can all
say together. Grace is pure gift and our receiving it is due only
to the saving work of Jesus Christ and not to our own merits.
Once justified, however, and living graced lives, the question
of growth in holiness remains. Are we partners with God in advancing
in intimacy with him? Catholics, along with Orthodox, would say
we are. Once graced or justified, we are able to act with Christ
in such a way that we can merit. Our good works are not just results
and signs of our being justified but causes of our growth in holiness.
Both Catholics and Orthodox believe that grace, God’s life in
us, changes us from within. Grace is not a blanket that covers
us but a dynamic principle that transforms us. God loves us personally,
and personal love changes people from the inside out. Catholics
therefore speak less of grace as justifying, although that is
the freely given and unmerited beginning of our life with God,
and more of grace as sanctifying; the Orthodox, similarly, speak
of “theosis” or divinization.
Justification is the work of an instant, but growth in holiness
takes time. When the wound of original sin is healed and personal
sins are forgiven, we are embraced by God’s love; but even divine
love has to overcome the residue of our sinfulness, the acquired
and experienced resistance to intimacy with God. A penance is
given when we confess our sins so that we might take part in making
satisfaction for them, even though they are forgiven. There is
a theological reason for all those retreat houses and novitiates,
for the insistence on habits of virtue and prayer, on exercises
of piety and means for resisting temptation, for the use of the
sacrament of penance even when we are not in mortal sin, for the
discipline of a regular way of life, including the frequent reception
of Holy Communion, which keeps us in constant contact with an
all-holy God.
This inner transformation, the purgation of all the effects of
sin and our growth in personal holiness, may continue after death
until we are ready to live with God forever. A justified soul
in purgatory is something like a child playing in the back yard.
Her mother calls her to say that she should wash her face and
hands because her grandmother is at the front door. The child
knows her grandmother loves her and will embrace her; but the
child still has to wash up, has to be prepared for that embrace.
The soul in purgatory knows that she is saved; but she has to
be further sanctified before coming into the immediate presence
of infinite holiness. Grace transforms us from the inside out.
The possibility of our resisting God’s grace brings home to us
how radical is the freedom God has given us. We can choose to
reject both justification and growth in holiness. Hell is as much
a part of Catholic belief as heaven, although no one can know
who, if anyone, might have condemned himself to hell. To deny
hell’s existence, however, is to trivialize both Holy Scripture
and human freedom and to depart from the apostolic faith. Our
choices have eternal consequences. We can merit and we can sin;
we are agents in the story of our salvation. God is not a script
writer who will automatically guarantee a happy ending to every
life story. God is, however, more eager to embrace us in love
and to save us than we ourselves are eager to be saved. We can
count on God’s mercy; but his mercy does not destroy our freedom.
How our freedom interacts with God’s sovereignty is, of course,
another matter of dialogue between and among Catholics and Protestants.
Mr. Sheridan, the editor of The New World, asked me to write about
voting in this column, and that’s what I’ve just done. The God
we worship is a God of life and love, a God who justifies us and
makes us holy by sharing his life with us. Therefore political
questions which influence our nation’s policies on respect for
life and its preservation from conception to natural death are
the defining issues before us. This is not a narrow or “single
issue” approach. Was slavery a “single issue”? Is the economy
a “single issue”? Respect for life is no more a single issue than
is concern for freedom.
Before we go to vote on November 3, we will have thought about
our own death and judgement (Oct. 31); celebrated all the saints
who, justified and sanctified, are with God forever in heaven
(Nov. 1); and prayed and offered Mass for the souls in purgatory
(Nov. 2). Mexican Catholics will have visited the cemetery where
their family is buried to celebrate the “Dia de los muertos”.
Many Catholics will offer stipends so that Mass can be said for
their deceased relatives and friends. All this is the best preparation
for voting, for it reminds us that the Lord will in some sense
ask us after we die how we voted on November 3, 1998. The choices
we make when voting enter into our own salvation history; they
affect our life with God.
May God bless you as you vote; may God make you holy in all you
do.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
