Reformation Sunday: l999

The anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing his ninety five theses to a church door in Wittenberg in 1517 is celebrated each year on the Sunday nearest to October 31. For centuries, Lutheran and other Protestant congregations on Reformation Sunday heard a sermon about the errors of the Church of Rome and occasionally, I’m told, about the Pope as anti-Christ.

In most Protestant churches, the rhetoric has changed in this generation. This Reformation Sunday, l999, Lutherans and Catholics can rejoice together because of the accord to be signed in Augsburg, Germany, about the nature of our being justified by Jesus Christ.

Since “justification by faith alone” was, for Luther, the key for understanding Holy Scripture and the doctrine on which the Church stood or fell, an agreement on this fundamental point is cause for rejoicing indeed. Bishop Ken Olsen, of the Chicago Metropolitan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and I will preside at a joint vespers service on October 31 in order to thank God for the Lutheran-Catholic consensus on this much-contested point of belief. Justification is not a word used as often in Catholic conversation as it is among Lutherans; but justification is central to our relation to Christ. Christ came to save us from our sins. His coming and our consequent justification through his death and resurrection make possible our salvation. Our being justified by Christ is pure gift, which is why the agreed statement says that “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.”

Does this statement mean that the Catholic understanding of our cooperating in our salvation has changed? No, for we continue to believe that, once we have been brought into the order of grace in being made just, God also gives us the grace to act in that order and we can merit through our good works. Once justified, we grow in holiness through cooperating actively with God in working out our salvation. At the end of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Jesus tells us that we will be judged not just by our faith but by what we have done to the least of his brothers and sisters. When faith is informed by charity, our good works contribute to our salvation. Have Lutherans, then, changed their basic teaching that sinners are justified by faith alone? Not really, for faith is a grace, a gift from God, and it is not merited. Lutherans would also teach that people who have been justified will desire, because of their experience of God’s forgiving love, to perform good works; but not all would agree that these works gain “merit”, a concept many Lutherans would believe distracts from our dependence upon Christ for salvation.

If no one has changed anything essential, why all the fuss? First of all, because we have clarified a central point of agreement. The polemics of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation periods often left all parties making points against an adversary who was not properly understood. Catholics and Lutherans have taken time in recent years to listen respectfully to one another and to discover that there is, in fact, agreement where we had thought there was not. The joint document is not a new confession for either Lutherans or Catholics; nor is it a compromise, a negotiated settlement of differences. It is a clarification that, after thirty years of prayerful study and discussion, demonstrates complementarity where we had thought there was conflict. Secondly, agreement on this central point also clarifies the nature of our continuing disagreement on related points. Justification is pure gift; what we do as justified remains a point of some contention, but the context for further discussion is now much changed. In the light of this agreement, a cause of mutual condemnation no longer exists, and we can go on to study sacraments, ministry, Eucharist and Church authority without bearing the burden of historical animosity. This is the first time that the results of formal ecumenical dialogue have been officially received by both parties, and it is an important moment in the history of Christianity. It adds new depth to our Catholic sense that Lutherans are truly our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our joy this Reformation Sunday is a small sign of the great joy that a truly reconciled and unified Church would bring to a world still divided even as it reforms itself into a global society. In the world, Christ wills that his Church be a leaven for unity among all peoples. We enter a new millennium with the hope that Christ will show us the way to further unity and with the belief that he has accompanied this conversation about justification. This Sunday, let us keep Lutherans around the world in our prayers. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.
Archbishop of Chicago

 

Top