Repentance: the way of salvation

Francais

On Ash Wednesday, just after we have received the sign of ashes on our foreheads, we pray, “Accomplish in us, O God, the work of your salvation.”  Salvation is one of those words Christians hear and use frequently. What do we mean by it?

For many people, salvation seems to mean some kind of future state of being happy, of being in heaven, of no longer experiencing pain. This is to describe salvation in largely negative terms – of what it is not rather than what it is. Getting into heaven is a kind of fire insurance, a reprieve from the pains of hell. Thus, many Christians back themselves into heaven. They are so concerned with backing away from hell that they eventually stumble backwards into heaven.

It is thought that the way to get a ticket to heaven is to believe in a few required definitions, to behave in a certain way, and follow the rules laid down for us. We are inclined to understand sin essentially as disobedience – breaking a commandment. As we might be punished for doing so, we should avoid it and regret it. This is a long way from understanding repentance as a way of life.

The salvation that the Gospel proclaims, for which the martyrs died, and which the Church has taught from the beginning, is not a means to an end – a way of avoiding pain. It is the end itself. It is the truth of who we really are and of what we can come to be. Salvation is a treasure beyond price, a pearl for which we are ready to give up all things. It is a gift of life.

Salvation restores to us, today, the vision of God, the gift of God’s presence, which we are meant to enjoy every moment of our existence. Salvation is simply participation in the life of God.

Lent can help us to see that the sin of which the Spirit “convicts the world” (John 16:8-11) is much more than any specific wrong we may have committed or may commit, or even the sum total of them all. Sin is the human condition, the state of separation from God.

Repentance is a grace from God, a gift of the Holy Spirit, something we cannot “achieve” by ourselves. Yet we too must do our part, we must work at it, however pitiful and unimportant our efforts may seem to us. We practice a daily death, dying to self in order to rise with Christ to new life. We cannot do this all at once but have to practice dying and rising every moment of our lives.

When repentance becomes for us a ceaseless attitude of spirit, a way of our life with God, it will also become our way of preparing for death. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” At that unknown, mysterious moment when we are summoned to cross the boundary between time and eternity, between heaven and earth, and to meet Christ our God and our Judge at last, what else can we do but repent? Our patient, daily practice of repentance will have taught us that in the presence of the infinite love of God, we do not need to do anything but trust in his mercy. We will have learned that all of us, saints and sinners alike, can enter Paradise only like the Good Thief, through the mercy of Christ.