Have you ever wanted to save the world? I have. And I do, currently, desire the world to be saved. Now, this bold declaration necessarily implies a couple things. Namely, that the world needs saving and that such a thing is indeed possible. Both statements could be reformulated as very good questions. Does the world need saving? If yes, can the world be saved? In order to continue certain terms need to be defined so as to exclude as much confusion as can be foreseen.
For our purposes let us agree that by the term ‘world’ we mean both this planet earth, made by God for man and also one’s particular place upon it. For clarity, one’s subjective world is your life; the country, city, and house you live in, the people you know, the work that occupies your time, the habits of leisure you may or may not have. Everything of what it means to be YOU is your world.
Next, by ‘save’ we shall mean to prevent some evil, or to rectify that evil which we have suffered. Evil, in its turn, is to mean some privation, lack, deficiency, that something ought to have. If you have 100 dollars, and I take 10, you now lack that which you once had. I don’t mean the 10 dollars, I mean the love and trust you once had in me, your friend. The betrayal of one’s trust is a far greater evil than a measly 10 dollars, I hope you’ll agree. To be blind because you are a tree without that particular sense by nature is no evil. To be a human and lose your sight is a great evil.
Now returning to the questions, does the world need saving? Is there an evil that the world is threatened with or is there an evil the world has suffered that needs to be set right? I hope no one will challenge me on my assertion that there is indeed much that is wrong with the world generally and I will respectfully disagree with he who claims that his personal, subjective “world” is fine and dandy. This leaves the other, much less obvious question, can the world be saved?
As a catholic, my answer is, of course, yes. The world can totally be saved. In fact, I would posit that in a certain sense the world has already been saved by Jesus dying on the cross. Now, to be clear, the sense in which I mean this is strictly in the sense of the objective world (the purpose of which is to merit heaven, which is now possible because Christ has opened the way for us by his Death, Resurrection and Ascension), not each person’s individual world (as Christ does not delete your free will but allows you to cooperate in His salvific work). But I get ahead of myself.
It is part of the nature of man to be religious. All cultures from all times demonstrate belief in that which is unseen and have ideas about what happens to one after death, usually involving punishment or reward for a life lived poor or well. Although atheism has become popular in this day and age, it must be remembered that this is still a religious point of view and not a very intelligent one at that. The first Vatican Council has Dogmatically declared what St. Thomas Aquinas taught and what has always been believed in the Church (indeed also it has been believed by many pagans, too); namely that the existence of God can be shown merely through the application of human reason.
Faith is not needed to know that there is God. Faith is needed to know that God is Trinity, that Jesus of Nazareth is God, the second person of the Trinity. Faith is needed to know that the Catholic Church is the one true church established by Christ, outside of which there is no salvation. Ah, back to the question of being saved! What does it mean that outside the Church there is no salvation? Salvation from what?
Returning to the basic religious beliefs of all time, most religions agree that to be bad during your life is to merit punishment in the life to come and to be good in this life is to merit being saved from such a punishment and/or to merit some reward, paradise or at least a better time in the next life.
It stands to reason that whichever religion is correct will correctly teach what must be done to merit the reward and avoid the punishment. We have already said that the Catholic religion is the correct one, so continuing with that as given what does She teach about what we need to be saved from (what happens if we do bad)? In a word, hell.
What is hell? Fire and Brimstone? Weird people with bat wings doing unspeakable things to you? Pushing a boulder up a hill forever? Sure. From the accounts of some saints I’m confident many of these things await those who refuse God in this life. For a short list read Dante’s Inferno. But worst of all, over and above any punishment the flesh may suffer in hell, those who merit hell are deprived of the beatific vision of God.
As evil, properly so called, is not really a thing, and God is all that Is. “I am Who Am” says God to Moses, and “before Abraham was I AM” says Jesus to the religious authorities. Therefore, to be deprived of the vision of God is to be deprived of the highest good.
So, what does the Church teach on how to achieve this salvation? Even Jesus’s answers are pretty general. In one place (Mt 22) he says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind,” in another (Jn 6), “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him Whom He hath sent.”
Some of my readers might find this simple and the soundbite answer they want. Others have almost certainly clicked away already, “this stuff is basic, I learned it all before I was ten!” Perhaps. I don’t think it’s that simple. I have more questions and I hope you do, too. How does one love God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind? Aren’t heart, soul, and mind just synonyms for the same thing? (no, St. Matthew didn’t waste a letter) Isn’t it easy to believe in Him Whom He hath sent? Belief is a judgment of truth that the mind makes when presented with an idea. Jesus, (He Who Is sent) as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, is the idea God has of Himself, eternally generating, infinite in all infinity. (there is no past or future in eternity, in God. Please excuse my weird wording and poor explanation of the Trinity. By definition it cannot be done well.) Can you give assent to an idea that is infinite? Is the assent given, the belief being had, really all one needs to do to be saved?
I find it interesting that protestants use this verse to support the heretical idea that one only needs to “Believe in Jesus,” whatever that means, to be saved. If I break a single commandment my soul deserves damnation yet that doesn’t matter anymore if I say in my heart, “I’m good, I believe Jesus.” I find this verse in particular to be interesting because if you continue reading at all Jesus Himself helps to clear up (in one sense, in another He makes it way more confusing) what belief in He Who is sent means by explaining the sacrament of Holy Eucharist to the people. The Eucharist is probably the most divisive doctrine of Christ. During the discourse wherein Christ explains this, the people say “This saying is hard, and who can hear it?” (Jn 6:61) and shortly thereafter(vs 67) “many of his disciples went back; and walked no more with him.”
So in the same chapter, the same conversation where protestants pull a proof text to support their heresy which will damn them should they fail to repent of it, Christ explains one of the most saving doctrines He has come to offer. Indeed, His teachings are one, they make a beautiful tapestry of truth. To do away with even one thread of this tapestry is to reject faith all together because to judge the teachings of Christ is to put yourself above Christ. Take, for example, the teachings of Baptism, Confession, and Holy Eucharist. Can one enter heaven without Baptism? No. Can one enter heaven without Holy Eucharist? Conditionally, but Holy Eucharist forms one’s very substance into that of God (The greater absorbs the lesser, so while it looks like we eat the bread and make the bread part of us, which is true for actual bread, when we consume Our Lord we become Our Lord. Don’t worry, it’s not super clear to me either, I’m glad we get all of the eternal now to contemplate these mysteries!). To be divinized (the term for becoming like unto God) is necessary for heaven. We cannot dwell in, with, God without being God (in a sense). Nor can we be admitted to heaven with any stain of sin on our soul. Are we able to sin after baptism? Of course. Can we receive the Eucharist to get rid of this sin? NO. That’s why St. Paul says in one of his letters that those who eat without discerning (that it is truly Our Lord and that we are in a state able to receive Him) eat and drink to their own condemnation. This implies the need for Confession, which is a power explicitly given to the apostles in the Gospel.
The questions I propose here do have answers, and I would like to offer better answers to the few that I have begun to answer as well as provide answers to more practical questions like, “what does it mean to Love God.” I recognize that I am but a poor student of the masters of Truth myself and that I am most certainly prone to error. I simply hope to provide something to make people think about these questions that I believe are the most important to ask and answer. Holy Mother Church has been around for a long time and has answered most of the questions. Unfortunately, we live in a day where the vast majority of those who ought to teach these things have abandoned their duty in favor of some other objective and I want most of all to encourage people to read the saints. Find good, ancient homilies. Learn the basic philosophic principles that are necessary to understand what is said, beginning with that of non-contradiction. I recognize that I have learned a thing or two and people I love have encouraged me to teach as apparently some find what I say helpful. I am not yet convinced of their opinions, but, barring vast public outcry, I will dare to write more on this and other topics pertaining to how to save the world, Faith.