The Road to Salvation

INTRODUCTION

“We inherit eternal life through love and commitment to God’s work. Human plenitude is service and self-donation without conditions.”

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Salvation – the great hope of Christians and the faithful of other religions – deserves some reflection. Jesus’ teaching on the subject is highly stunning. He stated: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it” (Luke 17:33 and parallel passages). This is the Gospel’s main paradox that underlies Jesus’ life and teachings and defies human understanding.

The way of salvation, according to the Master, implies that we resist and fight against our instinct of self-preservation. It compels us to satisfy our basic physiological needs (hunger, thirst, protection, reproduction…), as well as other needs like those of health, safety, acceptance and love. It is also the self-preservation instinct that makes us develop self-defense mechanisms against emotional trauma which help us to cope with vulnerability, adversity, scrutiny, criticism, fear and shame.

Our innate tendency is to egoistically save ourselves, because we are born self-centered. Salvation means to invert such natural drive to the point of becoming others-centered. Or, to make others’ needs the main aim of our concern, like a self-giving mother for whom the children’s welfare precedes her own interest and comfort; and a weaker or special child tops her care priorities – an eloquent example of what it means taking up one’s cross.

Isn’t it ironic that those who are excessively concerned with themselves and their own wellbeing are often those who complain more about their health troubles? Well, according to the Gospel logic, it is when we forget ourselves to attend to others’ necessities that we give way for God to take care of us – because we do not have the time to look after ourselves. Salvation is God’s gift to those who put their time, resources, energies and skills at the service of the community: they leave their comfort zones to reach out to those in need. In the process, they grow as persons.

Jesus is a model of salvation. He saves Himself and us offering fully His life, as His death on the cross ultimately illustrates. The religious authorities, the crowd, the Roman soldiers and one of the thugs challenged Him to save Himself by descending from the cross. He refuses to fall into that temptation of power as He had done in the desert and throughout His life. He saves Himself through His self-donation – not as the bystanders expected. He is not saved from death, but He is saved in death.

No one is saved alone. Others are a condition for our salvation. Pope Benedict XVI says it clearly in his encyclical letter Spe Salvi: “As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: What can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them the star of hope may rise, too? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well” (SS, 48).

The idea of salvation as a reward for moral perfection is not biblical and has to be avoided as it is outdated. Our commitment to the salvation of the world – the liberation of its poor from any type of bondage, the struggle against its oppressive structures and the work for a more just and humane order – is the road to salvation. The Kingdom of God, with its values of justice, truth, equality, solidarity…, has to be experienced already here on earth. There won’t be paradise in the afterlife without an effort to build it in this life. We inherit eternal life through love and commitment to God’s work. Human plenitude is service and self-donation without conditions.

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