Why didn't God make Eve First?

Dear Rev. Know-it-all,

Don’t you think it’s degrading that  God took a rib from Adam’s side to make Eve? Why didn’t he make Eve first?

Sincerely,

Earl Lee Byrd

Dear Earl,

Lots of male chauvinist humor comes to mind, but I will take the high road and keep the jokes to myself. Personally I think it’s a beautiful thing that God made Adam first. The Rabbis explain it this way.

Man was made on the Sixth day, the same day as the beasts. Eve wasn’t really created on the sixth day, she was created in the twilight, just before the 7^th day. Remember that the Jewish day starts in the evening because the Book of Genesis says,  “It was evening and morning, the first day.” (Genesis1:5) Most people think the Jewish Sabbath, as well as every other Jewish day starts at sundown. This is not quite true. It is Sabbath when one sees the first two stars in the heavens, or when one can no longer distinguish between a black and a white thread by natural light.  There is an intermittent period that is not quite Sabbath, but it isn’t quite Friday either. Adam fell into a deep sleep before God took a rib from his side. 

When does one sleep? When the sun goes down. When Adam woke up on Saturday morning, there was his bride, the very personification of Sabbath, the promise of heaven. It is Eve who humanized Adam by drawing him into the joy of Sabbath. Eve was a creation nearer and more conformed to Sabbath. She was the summit of nature, not just an afterthought. That she was a “helpmate” means not that she was to be less than Adam. 

The Scriptures say elsewhere “Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord?  He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword.” (Deut. 33:26,29) The Hebrew word for helper is “Ezer.”  It appears about twenty times in the Bible and usually refers to God. It is a quality of Godliness, not of inferiority. Eve “civilized” man who shares his creation with the beasts. Adam is made from dust. Eve is made from humanity. Thus, it is in the relationship of man and woman that the image of God, and true humanity are found. 

Men, left to their own devices, can be pretty uncivilized. I know. I am one. It is in the give and take, the yielding and the asking of vastly different men and women and especially their submission to the needs of the children their love may produce that the man and the woman are divinized. It is in the service of complimentary and sometimes discordant needs that humanity learns sacrificial love. Man and woman don’t simply take pleasure from one another, but they learn the very nature of God in their mutual sacrifice, and in the sacrifices they make for the sake of their children, if it please Heaven.

The rabbis tell us that woman was not taken from man’s feet that she might be beneath him, nor was he taken from his head lest she boast, but that she was taken from his side, that they might walk hand in hand, side by side.  There is one more thing to remember. It is the job of the rib to protect the heart.

Sabbath is all about marriage and family and the royal dignity of God’s people. Sabbath is regarded by the Jews as a bride. There is a beautiful song, sung on Friday nights in the Synagogue. All in the synagogue turn toward the door and sing the “Lekah Dodi”

Come, my beloved friend, to meet the bride, and let us welcome the presence of Shabbat. .........In fame and splendor and praiseful song.....For she is the wellspring of blessing, Arise! Leave from the midst of the turmoil.......Long enough have you sat in the valley of tears....He will take great pity upon you compassionately.....Shake yourself free, rise from the dust...Dress in your garments of splendor, my people...Your God will rejoice concerning you as a groom rejoices over a bride....  Come in peace, crown of her husband...Come O Bride! Come O Bride!

I ponder and ponder and ponder what the heck happened. In 1865, Lewis Carroll wrote a book called “Through the Looking Glass.” It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In it Alice walks through a mirror (a looking glass) into a world turned inside out, like a mirror image, precise, but backwards. There she meets the brothers Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. They wonder if everything isn’t just a dream. Alice herself might be just a figment of their imagination. 

Well, we in this age are definitely “through the looking glass.” In our attempt to redefine marriage, we are trying to live in the figment that marriage is not about man and woman, and most certainly not about children. We are trying to pretend that a behavior, that I shall not mention here, is the equivalent of the act by which an immortal human being is brought into the world. We insist that babies in the womb are not human life. We insist that we don’t have slaves because we can’t see them, far away in China or India or Latin America. We insist that we are a free people though we are enslaved by our desires and spied on by government drones. I could go on indefinitely, but our prosperity, our freedoms, our educational system and our values have all become figments of our imagination. I maintain that it started when in the name of freedom we introduced a new kind of slavery into the society because we wanted to have more freedom.

When I was a boy, there things called Sunday blue laws. All businesses were closed down on Sunday. You went to church, had dinner with your family and then went out to play with your friends. Someone somewhere decided that Sunday closings were discriminatory against those who did not observe Sunday as a quasi-Sabbath. Jews, Seventh Day Adventist, non- Christians should not be restricted by Christian custom in a secular state. People should be free to buy and to sell on Sunday if they so chose. A blow for freedom! 

Now we, like slaves, work seven days a week, plus shift work, husbands and wives never have a day together and on Sunday as well as Saturday, the kids have sports, ballet, piano, yadda, yadda and so on. There is never a moment to enjoy the freedom of the garden in which we were designed to live. Family and marriage never have a place, a time. Husbands and wives are roommates who see each other between shifts at work and the kids are farmed out to other shift workers.  For the sake of an imaginary freedom we have become slaves. Through the looking glass. The chaos began there, at least in my experience. I am sure there are a thousand causes, but the rejection of this first gift of God to humanity, the Sabbath-Bride, has caused untold misery. 

We work harder and harder just to keep up with our own luxuries and the government taxes imposed on them. A slave works 24/7. A free man has some leisure. We have become slaves. Our children, our spouses and our homes have been devastated by our voluntary slavery, our worship of wealth.  “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat, skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales?”

(Amos 8:5) We are all about money and not about love. We are about pleasure, not the gift of life.

I have the strangest idea. If we lost the battle for sanity in this country when we threw away any restriction on avarice by opening the stores on Sunday, why not undo the harm by restoring the Sabbath. We Catholics are forbidden to work on Sunday. Read your catechism.  Paragraph 2185

 “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are to refrain from engaging in work or activities that hinder the worship owed to God, the joy proper to the Lord's Day, the performance of the works of mercy, and the appropriate relaxation of mind and body. Family needs or important social service can legitimately excuse from the obligation of Sunday rest. The faithful should see to it that legitimate excuses do not lead to habits prejudicial to religion, family life, and health.” 

And paragraph 2194 

“The institution of Sunday helps all to be allowed sufficient rest and leisure to cultivate their familial, cultural, social, and religious lives.” 

 I can hear you say, “The canoe is over the waterfall! If I tell my boss that I won’t work on Sunday, He’ll fire me!” Alright, we can’t turn back the clock, but we can do something else. We can refuse to spend money on Sunday. No fast food, no restaurants, no theater, no K-mart, no dry cleaner, no trip to the gas station. We eat at home, we don’t go to the show, we don’t go out for pizza or for ice cream after Junior’s tiddlywinks tournament.  We don’t even go to the tiddlywinks tournament.

"But Junior loves his competitive tiddlywinks. If we forbid him sports on Sunday or say no to him, he won’t like us. Tiddlywinks builds character and sportsmanship." 

Believe me, when Junior is fat, balding and 40, he wont remember getting creamed as a third string tiddlywinks player, but he will remember that he had a family and parents who loved him if Sabbath is kept as a festival of marital and familial love. There is a saying among the Jews. “If you keep Sabbath, Sabbath will keep you.” We do our shopping on Saturday and if it doesn’t happen on Saturday, it won’t happen until Monday. No shopping!!! No spending money.

There are 91.76 million Evangelicals in this country and 77.7 million Catholics. That’s almost 170 million people, more than half the US population. If half the country refused to shop on Sunday, you had better believe that stores would close, and even Mexican migrants would get to come out of the restaurant kitchens and go to their parks with spouses and children instead of sweating in some cramped back room for your dining pleasure. It is a matter of justice. Do realize that by going to a restaurant on Sunday, you are forcing your Mexican co-religionists to work, and thus endangering their families and their souls?  We may not be able to turn back the clock, but we can rediscover the Sabbath. We can no longer impose our will on the country. We can still impose our will on ourselves. If we rediscover the Sabbath in our own lives as Catholic Christians, perhaps we will rediscover the Sabbath Bride and the exalted role of Eve who creates a home in a way that Adam never could and still can’t. 

“Come my beloved let us greet the Bride, the Sabbath” (from the Lekah Dodi) and “the Spirit and the Bride say 'come!'” Rev. 22:17

Yours, the Rev. Know-it-all.

PS I am going to try to do this in my own life. Baby steps! Start with Baby Steps!

How does a Catholic respond to, "Are you saved"? -- part 2

Continued from last week

Everyone is talking about the New Evangelization. This makes me nervous. We are wasting our time with all this discussion of the New Evangelization if we cannot agree on what Evangelization, new or old, really is.  When I was in seminary Evangelization was definitely out, because one religion was as good as another. There was actually a practicing Buddhist in the class ahead of me. He did not go on to ordination, but I thought his strobe candles were really groovy.  We got past that silliness, but by the time we decided that maybe it wasn’t a bad thing for people to become Christians, and dare I say, even Catholics, we had gotten a bit muddled about what the Church actually taught.  Evangelism or evangelization, or whatever we are calling it these days, meant having people break into small groups in which they discussed their feelings and then comes back together into the large group for a candlelight service during which really catchy tunes were sung. Then we moved on to the early RCIA in which people were taught this was optional and others taught that was optional. Nothing was really required.

I remember some poor fellow who eventually ended up being very Catholic, but  who was told by his pastor that we no longer really believed in the Real Presence. This bewildered catechumen asked, “Am I allowed to believe in the Real Presence?” Things are mostly better now, but when they say “evangelize” most Catholics mean “catechize.” These are two very different things. To catechize is to help others know about the Lord. This is an absolute waste of time unless some one first knows the Lord.  We teach our kids all about the faith and we prepare them for the sacraments and we make them sit in long boring classes in which we explain the fine points of theology to the little numbskulls who haven’t even a clue when Jesus was born, died and rose, much less knowing that he is truly present in the tabernacle. We can get them to parrot back answers on a test with no problem. They are  regularly expected to do this in the government schools in which standardized tests have become very popular as a means of proving that the public funds are not being wasted. This process has nothing to do with the actual education of children whether in the government schools or in our religious education classes. We have religion programs in which all the records are perfectly kept, and all the appropriate courses, diplomas and certifications are required of the DRE, CRE, AC, UC, and DC for the RCIA and the RE and the CCD and all those other inscrutable collections of letters of which we Catholics are inordinately fond. We use them as if anyone actually understands what they mean. The end result of all the meticulous preparation, documentation, orientation, regimentation and consternation is that as soon as school is out, no one actually comes to church because it is as boring as getting a root canal.

Few of the certified and certifiable formators that we produce have a passion for the faith and the Lord. If our volunteers do have a passion for the faith, there is doubtless a diocesan program that can cure them of it. They will soon learn that the Bible is allegory, the sacraments are optional, there is no hell and maybe no heaven. There will soon be women priests and democratically elected popes and on and on and on. I have had people write and call me to say that they had been attending classes to train as catechists and had heard exactly these kinds of things during lectures. '

“Well, Father, that is an isolated instance.” 

Are you sure? It isn’t in my experience. We are in a situation of catechetical chaos in this country, and this muddled catechesis passes for evangelization. That is why I say I am a bit nervous about the new evangelization. I hope it’s more coherent than the evangelization of the past 40 years.

So then what is evangelization? Or evangelism? Or whatever we are calling it?  The best definition I ever heard of evangelism is “to bring someone to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.” We are trying and failing to bring people to a historical or a theological knowledge of Christ but all the history and theology is pretty useless unless we first know the Lord.  Don’t you just hate it when some crashing bore shows you picture of their Aunt Kunigunda’s vacation in the Adirondacks and regales you with humorous tales of her adventures with the local Mohawk Indians?  Perhaps if you knew Aunt Kunigunda personally this might be entertaining. Usually you would rather jump out of a moving vehicle than hear the fellow drone on about his beloved aunt and her indigenous friends. You stare into space until the drone becomes a distant, irritating whine. Doesn’t that sound like religious education classes you have attended? Once I asked a waitress what she had learned in religious education classes. She told me that, “This is how you hold your hands for first communion and Jesus loves me.” I suspect she learned more than most. You can’t catechize someone without evangelizing them first. You are usually wasting your time talking about someone your listener doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know.

So how do you evangelize someone? Easy. You pray with them. It’s easy. I remember a young man, a committed pagan who had started to come to our  prayer group because he wanted to get to know a young woman in the prayer group a little “better.” He was quite confused by all this Christian nonsense. He had cobbled together a personal philosophy from the best of all religions. He had blended Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, especially the more, well, interesting elements of Hinduism. He didn’t understand why the Christian philosophy was so very narrow. I told him that Christianity isn’t a philosophy, it’s a person. To which he responded, “Huh?” I said, “Close your eyes.” which he did. I prayed very simply and out loud, “Lord Jesus when I was about my friend’s age, I was searching, too. Please let him know that You are alive and real  and that You love him.” I left him alone in the room with his eyes closed. He came out into the hall where a few of us were talking after the prayer meeting, and all he could say was “Wow!” He said “Wow.” for about five minutes. He had encountered a third person in that room. He had encountered Christ. I could have argued with him for hours. He was looking for a good argument. It would have been a waste of time. He didn’t need an argument, he needed Christ.

When someone comes to you with a problem, don’t just give them advice, pray with them. After listening with patience ask that person “would you like me to pray for you?’ If he says yes ask him to close his eyes and then pray for him. “What if it doesn’t work? I’ll feel like a fool!” Good. If you are anything like me you probably are a fool. You might as well be a fool for Christ. Pray with your children. Pray with your friends when you visit them in the hospital. Pray with your grandmother. It is simple. Just have them close their eyes, and then, out loud,  you tell the Lord what they just told you. Make it short and simple. The Lord knows the details. You don’t have to explain the situation to Him. You are just inviting Him into the situation. Maybe you can end with a simple Our Father. Then go away. Before you go away, you might give them your phone number or Email in case they have any questions. If they call you, invite them to go to Mass with you. Introduce them to the pastor. Bring them to the Monday night Bible study. That’s what it means to be an evangelist. To evangelize is to invite someone to meet Jesus, and then to meet his wife and family, by which I mean His church.

We Catholics have become so afraid to say anything about our faith that the world wonder if we have any. Another wonderful thing is to kneel at an altar rail in front of a tabernacle, if you can find an altar rail anywhere. Perhaps a kneeler in a pew will have to do. Pray with them there. This can be wonderfully powerful. Don’t explain it. Just do it. You can explain it later when they are signed up for RCIA, which by the way are the initials of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. Just make sure they go to an RCIA taught by a Catholic who believes things like the Real Presence and the teaching authority of the pope and the power of prayer.   

To evangelize is to pray with people, because prayer is a conversation, an encounter with God. You can’t prove that I exist by talking about me. I may be some tortured figment of your imagination. You can, however, bring someone to meet me. This is true of the Lord also. Bring people to Him. He really is alive. You can even say the Sinner’s Prayer with them, Here is a good example of it.

Lord Jesus, We know that we are sinners, and we ask for Your forgiveness. We believe You died for our sins and rose from the dead. Please come into our hearts and lives. We want to trust and follow You as our Lord and Savior. Give us the gift to know You, to love You and to serve You in this world and to be happy with You forever. Amen

A final question: Do you know the Lord? Have you ever felt that He was right there with you, did you once know the Lord but wandered away from Him? Wherever you are right now, you can pray that prayer. You don’t need me to lead you in it. He is in all places at all times and He wants nothing more than to give you new life. Try it. See you in church Sunday.

The Rev. Know-it-all

How does a Catholic respond to, "Are you saved"?

Dear Rev. Know-it-all,

I was minding my own business last week. A perfect stranger came up and asked me, “Are you saved?” I was taught by Sr. Mary Marian my first grade teacher long ago that public discussion of my spiritual life was the terrible sin of presumption and if I boasted about my personal spiritual merits they would all vanish in a puff of diabolical smoke and I would most likely go to hell for the sin of pride and besides you don’t know if you are saved until you have unpacked your luggage in the master bedroom of your celestial mansion on a street of gold in the New Jerusalem, and you had better pack lightly anyway because if by some slim chance you make it to heaven, you’ll still have to schlepp that thing through eons and ages of roasting in purgatory. As a life-long Catholic, how should I have responded to the perfect stranger’s question “Am I saved?”

Yours sincerely, 

Ms. Alma Perdida

Dear Alma,

I have no idea how you should have answered the perfect stranger and are you sure the stranger was perfect?  Kidding aside, let us rephrase the question. I cannot answer for the state of your soul, but I hope that you and all Catholics would be able to answer that question in the affirmative, at least as we Catholics understand salvation.

When an evangelical Protestant says, “I am saved,” the Calvinist doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is often implicit in that statement. Jean (John) Calvin, was a young French lawyer who became the leading light of the Protestant Reformation from 1553 on, Fr. Martin Luther having died in 1546. Much of what Calvin taught can be summarized in the word “TULIP.” Total Depravity( Nothing good is left in humanity after the fall of Adam.) Unconditional Election (Saved or damned by God. Nothing you can do about it.) Limited Atonement ( Jesus died only for the chosen, not for the damned.) Irresistible Grace (One has no freedom to resist God’s overwhelming grace.) Perseverance of the Saints (Once Saved -- Always Saved).

When Protestant Evangelicals ask, “Are you saved?” They usually include this last part of the TULIP (Perseverance of the Saints, once saved -- always saved).  This first question will often be introduced with another question “ If you die tonight, do you know where you will spend eternity?”  If you say” Well, not really,” they will counter with “How would you like to know that if you die tonight that you will go to heaven?” to which you respond, “Of course I would!” They will then lead you in something called the Sinner’s Prayer which includes the words “I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” It’s a fine prayer. I’ve said it often, but they will then inform you that you are now saved and no matter what happens, you are going to heaven. They will then move on to the next available sinner because you are now saved. 

This may seem a little preposterous to a Biblically literate Catholic who recalls the Lord’s words “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” and “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.” (Matt. 25:41,42) It certainly seems that Jesus was of the opinion that reciting a prayer would not get you into heaven.

We Catholics have no problem with the Sinner’s Prayer, but we look at it as a beginning, not an end, and we would hope that having asked for forgiveness, the newly repentant sinner would also go to the Sacrament of Penance, in conformity with the words of St. James. (Confess your sins to one another. James 5:16) We believe that God never takes your freedom away and that if, once having known the Lord,  you deny Him as did Judas, you are perfectly free to burn in hell, that is if you want to. 

“No, No, No!” I can hear some people shouting. “You are  saved by faith not works! Faith alone. Grace alone. Scripture alone! Salvation doesn’t depend on works! You can’t earn it!!!”   

Well, I suppose the Catholic would answer, “If God gives me grace and I throw it in the garbage can, the Lord might just say, ‘Suit yourself.” Admittedly you can’t earn heaven, but you can accept it or refuse it. That seems to be the sense of Scripture. When a non Catholic evangelical  says, “Once saved always saved! All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart to save you”  I always tell them, "Golly, I hope you’re right, because if you‘re right, every Catholic who says the Rosary is going to heaven because the sinner’s prayer is part of the Rosary."

Our Blessed Mother, that great Catholic Evangelist, taught us to say the Sinner’s Prayer when she appeared at Fatima “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy. Amen.”  We say it five times every time we say the Rosary.” On the other hand if “once saved always saved” theology is wrong, there are untold millions of people roasting in hell because they thought that reciting a formula was enough to save them. 

I really hope they are right and we Catholics are wrong. We have nothing to lose, but if they are wrong there are lots of people going who think they are saved who haven’t ever fed the poor or given drink to the thirsty or anything else that Jesus expects. They aren’t saved, but are in fact preparing themselves for an unending barbecue in which they will be an hors d’oeuvre. 

We Catholics would say that we are saved by accepting the grace of conversion. If we allow the Lord to be Lord in our life and to change what we do and who we are, then, even if the work is not perfect, unlike your perfect stranger, God will finish the work in us in, you guessed it, PURGATORY!!! (which is what I believe the Bible means, in part, by judgment.)   

Wait a minute, the Bible says clearly “Know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 2:16) So, we may ask what are works of the law that don’t save us? Surely you are familiar with that rollicking page turner, the Halakhic Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QMTT)? Who doesn’t like to curl up by a roaring fire with a good Dead Sea Scroll? I quote:

 “And also concerning flowing liquids: we say that in these there is no purity. Even flowing liquids cannot separate unclean from clean because the moisture of flowing liquids and their containers is the same moisture. These are.... some of the precepts (“ma’ase” which also means “works”) of the law which we think are good for you and for your people...”

Let me clarify. From your reading of the book of Leviticus, Chapter 11, verse 30 you know that “The gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon are unclean. If one of them falls into a clay pot, everything in it will be unclean, and you must break the pot.” Let us assume that a skink falls into a clay pot and dies, and you, unwittingly pour water from a clay pitcher into the unclean clay pot, does the uncleanness of the clay pot leap up the stream of water and make the clay pitcher unclean so that it too must be broken? The Loons who wrote this particular scroll said “Of course!” The Pharisees said “Certainly not!” Jesus and the ex-Pharisee, Saul/Paul of Tarsus said “Get a life!” 

This discussion should let you in on the theological bedlam that was tearing up the Jewish world at the time of the New Testament. When St. Paul said that one is not saved by works of the law, it is pretty clear that he meant not to worry any more about skinks falling into clay pots. From the rest of his writing, and Jesus said, it is pretty clear that sin is out and generosity is in. 

There was never a question among the first Christians that virtue and generosity and obedience to the universal laws of God are integral to one’s salvation. That idea didn’t arrive in the world until one thousand five hundred years later, when a German priest (like this author, at least ethnically) comes along and decides that not being saved by works of the law means you don’t have to act morally to go to heaven. I quote him: “No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day.” (From a letter of Luther to Melancthon, LW 48:281) Remember the Lutheran/Calvinist doctrine of “once saved always saved?” I suspect that Jesus and Paul would have been horrified by Luther’s opinion and still are.

The great appeal of the Evangelical Protestant message is it’s “assurance of salvation.” You say a prayer, and then go home knowing that even if you are running guns to the Hottentots and regularly beating your dry cleaner, you are guaranteed heaven, no questions asked. Again, I hope that it’s true, but having read the Bible a few times, I suspect it isn’t. 

I had a fascinating conversation with a great evangelical theologian a few years ago. Being a veteran of the Pentecostal movement, and still committed to the spirituality of Pentecost, I speak fluent evangelical-ese. Thus I was invited to appear on a Non-Denominational TV show along with my old friend and classmate, Brother Pfleger. My job was principally to explain the meaning of the hats that Catholics were wearing at some grand interment or installation of a bishop. They were very intrigued by the hats and why they came on and off at different times. I digress. 

Well, I was a bit nervous at meeting the great Rev. Doctor Calvin Moody who, in a pre-popish warm up had just been explaining to the TV audience, that, sweetheart though she was, if Mother Theresa was counting on her good works to save her, she was frying in hell. I tired to make nice by mentioning all the Protestant sounding things I could. I even mentioned altar calls I had led. An altar call is the invitation to someone at a revival or prayer meeting to come up to altar to give one’s life to Christ. Protestants don’t have sacrifices, so I can’t figure out why they need altars. Again, I digress. The Reverend Doctor frowned a little and said that at a North Side Non-Denominational Mega Church and Missionary Bible School, they didn’t often have altar calls, lest someone think that by the work of coming up to the altar they might think themselves saved, and thus might have a false assurance of salvation. 

I asked,  “So you can have a false assurance of salvation?” 

The Rev. Doctor said, “Oh, yes, you can have a false assurance of salvation!” 

To which I replied, “So then you can never be entirely assured of your salvation.” 

He said, “Oh, yes you can have complete assurance of salvation.” 

To which I said, “But it could be a false assurance.” 

To which he said, “Yes, indeed. Now you understand.” 

To which I said “I understand completely,” and quietly thanked God I am a Catholic, who can go to confession, do my best to resist sin and trust Jesus. 

So, it seems that even evangelicals don’t quite believe there is a complete assurance of salvation and it would seem that the Lord Jesus and St. Paul didn’t really believe that one is saved by Faith Alone, despite Luther’s correcting them on this point.

So, can a Catholic say “I am saved!” Darn tootin’ a Catholic can say I’m saved, and he can say it with a good deal more assurance than a Calvinist evangelical can. St. Paul wrote “For in hope we have been saved” (Romans 8:24) Let me give you an example. You are walking through the woods. You come into a clearing and find that you are sinking in quicksand. As you are about go under, you hear a rustle in the bushes and out comes someone with express intention of pulling you out. You shout “I’m saved!” Technically you aren’t saved until you are out of the quicksand embracing your savior, but you have the right and even the duty to rejoice in your narrow escape, while you still only see your deliverer. 

You are already saved in hope, if not in fact. He extends his hand to you. That’s grace, a pure gift. You lift you hand to grasp his hand. That’s faith. You are trusting that he will not yank back his hand at the last minute as a cruel joke. That’s exactly what Calvin’s god would do. He would say to some, “I have no intention of pulling you out. I just came to see you die.” Calvin taught that some were made to prove God’s mercy. Others to prove His justice. Hitler was a pussy cat next to Calvin’s god. Hitler could only make his victims suffer for a time, not an eternity, like the fierce god of Calvin.

So we Catholics are saved in hope. We trust Jesus and not some formulaic prayer. We believe that God’s gift of the Holy Spirit can transform our way of life so that even our works are pleasing to God and reflect His own love for humanity. 

The aforementioned evangelist might ask you if you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. How much more personal can you get than eating someone’s flesh and drinking their blood? Every time we go up to the communion rail to receive the Lord, we are giving our life for Him. We are saying in effect, “Just as you are giving me Your very life, Your body, blood, soul and divinity in this sacrament, I, too, swear to lay my life on the altar, to live for You, Lord, and, if need be, to die for You.” 

We have the most intimate and personal relationship with Jesus, the Son of God and the son of Mary. We do not, however, have a private relationship with him. Some people who talk about a personal relationship seem to mean a private relationship with God. They don’t need sacraments or popes or confession. They confess their sins directly to God, forgetting that St. James tells us in the Bible that we should confess our sins to one another. (James 5:16) They needn’t go to a boring church. They can worship God in the beauty of nature on Sunday morning, or perhaps in the beauty of 18 holes of golf, or even in the splendor of the K-Mart because God is not limited to rituals and buildings. They sing that dear old hymn “He walks with me and He talks with me, and he tells me I am His own...” The Catholic version of that hymn is “He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I had better be in church on Sunday morning and make sure I’m there before the opening hymn starts....” Our relationship is personal and shared. We love the Lord and we love His bride, the Church.

So yes, dear Alma, there is nothing wrong with the sinner’s prayer, provided you see it as a beginning and not an end, and you certainly should be grateful to the Lord for having saved you, and you should trust the Lord and pray for the grace of perseverance, but considering the times it is all the more important for 1 billion, 200 million Roman Catholics to be able to share their faith publicly, and to be ready to invite people to meet the Lord.

To be continued……..