Earlier this year, my Jesuit mentor Father James V. Schall, SJ died at the age of 91 during Holy Week in Los Gatos, California. In one of his last essays, published three weeks before his death, Father Schall tried to address the question of how we can convince people to stay within the Catholic Church, in the midst of the large-scale exodus from the Church in traditionally Catholic countries and the fact that Evangelical churches are filled with ex-Catholics dismayed at the visible condition of the Church. His answer is that those of us who are Christians must take the Incarnation and the Redemption seriously. He wrote:
Without being overly dramatic, what I want to suggest here is that those of us who are Christians take the Incarnation and the Redemption seriously. Christ came among us because of sin. This is the immediate reason for his insertion into human history. Behind human sin is the overall purpose of creation, God’s invitation to a rational creature to join Him in His own internal Trinitarian life. The rejection of this gift set in motion God’s redemptive “plan”, as St. Paul called it.
In the Gospel today, Jesus wants us to take redemption seriously. However, Jesus takes a long detour before he addresses his main message about redemption. The dishonest steward forgives the debt of his master’s debtors with the hope that someday they will welcome him into their homes. Similarly, Jesus wants to remind us about our hope for eternal life. In the Gospel, Jesus uses the parable of serving the Mammon. Here, Jesus points out that when our wealth or material possession, (known as Mammon), is gone, we must have the hope that we will be welcomed in our eternal home. Here we can see the story of the dishonest steward has parallels on another level with Jesus’s message. While the unrighteous steward has a goal to have a home after his retirement, we as the Christians have a goal to attain eternal life.
Similarly, Saint Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy about Christ’s role as the mediator between God and us in both his incarnation and death. St. Thomas Aquinas has a good explanation about St. Paul’s statement, in which he argues that the work of incarnation is principally ordered to the reparation of human nature through the abolition of sin. Through his death on the cross, Jesus established the new pattern for our return to God, which he abolishes all of our sins and raises us to the beatitude of eternal life. So, in the end, “redemption”—salvation—is not merely a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope for eternal life.
In this early fall season, we can reflect on our understanding about Redemption and Incarnation. Are we willing to take Redemption and Incarnation seriously in our lives? Imagine Jesus ask us personally about these questions. Is there anything that you want to say to Jesus about His Incarnation and His plan for Redemption? Speak with Jesus directly about whatever you in mind.