Our Passport to Heaven
This week the Jews asked, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Lk 13:23
Origen, the theologian and biblical scholar of the early Greek Church believed in universal salvation. He believed that “greater than free will is love because love is greater than all things”; even the devil will be saved. He was declared a heretic for his apokatastasis.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church hopes based on Christ’s teaching:
1058 The Church prays that no one should be lost: “Lord, let me never be parted from you.” If it is true that no one can save himself, it is also true that God “desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4), and that for him “all things are possible” (Mt 19:26).
In Ezekiel and Deuteronomy, we are told that we can be saved if we repent and follow God’s way:
“As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die?” Ezekiel 33: 11
“Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the LORD your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways.” Deuteronomy 30: 15-16
Jesus answers, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.”Luke 13: 22-30
The passport to heaven is not based on one’s status. To be saved one has to enter the narrow gate- a path that requires commitment and self-denial. Thus, being a Sunday Catholic does not promise us entry into heaven. We have to carry the cross like Jesus did if we are to get there.
Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)
Fulton Sheen in “Life is Worth Living: Four Last Things- death, judgement, heaven and hell” explains three possible destinies that await us at death – “hell, which is pain without love; purgatory, pain with love; and heaven, love without pain.”
“ Hell is a place where there is no love. Could anything be worse?” Fulton Sheen.
He explains we are responsible for our acts, “Your works follow you.” and judgement is “an evaluation of ourselves just as we really are.” We will be judged “on the way we lived, on the choices we made, on the things we loved.”
Pope Benedict XVI says that our status as a friend of Jesus on a superficial basis does not qualify us into heaven “We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets”(Lk 13: 26). Our ‘identity card’ as a true friend of Jesus and a ‘passport’ to heaven depends on how we live our lives- with love, humility, kindness, mercy, truth, commitment and reconciliation.