God�s alarming gift

by Editor · March 19, 2008

On Easter morning, after the horror of Friday and desolation of Saturday, we arrive at the tomb, with the women, to find the stone rolled away from the now empty sepulchre. Christ has risen to offer us the gift of salvation.

That stone, intended to inter the corpse of Jesus, serves as a handy metaphor for us: if the stone is not rolled away, there is no possibility of redemption. And so it is for us: if Jesus is dead to us, entombed in the sealed sepulchre of our senses, then how can we maintain the hope of our salvation?

Like the two men on the road to Emmaus, we may not be aware that Jesus is with us until we recognise him or he reveals himself, as he so often does in unexpected ways.

God�s love for us is so absolute that redemption is open to all who want it. The magnificent Easter news is that salvation is available to all of us sinners, even if the sins for which we repent were severe and frequent. All we need to do is to humble ourselves in our repentant plea to God to embrace us into his loving arms despite our sins. Jesus died and rose from the dead to prepare our way everlasting life.

What an astonishing gift we have been offered. All we need to do is to accept it. But this comes with an obligation which challenges us in our humanity: in our determination to accept this great gift we may not question God�s munificence towards those we would like to disqualify from salvation. At the very core of our faith is the knowledge that God�s mercy is open to everyone; not just to the nice people we meet at Mass every Sunday, but also to the most repulsive characters.

Surely it is no accident that the first person to be redeemed by Christ was a vulgar criminal, a man crucified with Jesus for a crime that must have been so wicked as to warrant the death penalty. The criminal, traditionally known as Dismas, acknowledged that. Unlike Jesus, he and his more cynical sidekick deserved to be executed (in as far as anyone deserves such barbaric sentence), but nonetheless asked Jesus for his salvation.

If a wicked criminal can be saved, after a lifetime of malfeasance and just moments before his death, then the more virtuous among us should fancy their chances of everlasting life.

And yet, the implications of this may cause us discomfort. Our joy in God�s mercy may be tempered by the notion of arriving in heaven when our day arrives to find it populated by all sorts of reprobates who attained salvation through a late conversion and repentance. It may even seem unfair.

And if our sense of righteousness seeks to deny others a place in heaven (as if we have a say in that), then we may place ourselves at odds with God.

As we survey the empty tomb and rejoice in the risen Christ, we must celebrate that despite our transgressions, some of them perhaps grave, the path to the infinite Kingdom is open to us.