Today's Gospel reading answers the question: "Can a person lose their salvation?" Many Protestants believe in the theology of "once saved always saved" and that heaven is forever guaranteed on the day of conversion when a person says yes to the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus.
Catholic teaching, however, acknowledges that a conversion might not be sincere or complete, and that deliberate, terrible sins will turn an unrepentant sinner away from Christ forever (we call such sins "mortal", because they kill the soul).Knowing this can happen, many good Catholics fear that someday they might choose to turn away from Christ.
Salvation is more than knowing who Jesus is. Many know who he is without knowing him. He is more than a who. Demons know who he is and obey his commands. Obedience alone does not get anyone into heaven.
Jesus is more than an authority we must obey. To know Jesus is to know what he's all about (his purpose, his love, and his life). When we honestly choose to trust in the "what" about Jesus, we naturally want to be just like him. We want to follow him, doing what he does, all the way to heaven.
We can believe in Jesus and yet remain in the darkness of sin and eternal death. To live in the light of Christ and remain there, we must not only believe that he is God. We must not only believe that he is Savior. We must also believe in everything – oh yes, everything! – that he taught by word and by deed.
We enter the kingdom of heaven by listening to his words and acting upon them. Salvation is more than our words of belief. It's our actions, which we do because we believe. We act the way Jesus acted and we do what Jesus did.
This scripture ends the Sermon on the Mount, which started with Matthew's fifth chapter. Read this entire sermon to find out how well you are behaving like Christ with the people around you. We are acting like Christ, for example, when we love our enemies, and when we forgive others as he forgives us and, as he said earlier in this sermon, when we do more than what is asked of us, going the extra mile – not because he told us to, but because we genuinely care.
Obedience is merely the minimum. To be heralds of hope and flames of light that Christ brings to the world, we have to embrace the way he delivers that hope and light. Going the extra mile is the way we go to the cross with him. And while the cross looks like the antithesis of Christmas, it is sacrifice that opens the door of hope in the hearts of others.
Love is what motivates to do more than the minimum. If we care, we cannot help but want to do more for others, because unconditional love is the nature of Jesus. Thus, as long as we love others in him and through him, we are guaranteed eternal life with him.
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