The resumption of meat-eating after Easter was met with rejoicing and relief in my university chaplaincy. Abstaining from meat in our community is an ascetical rather than an ethical practice: we give it up because we enjoy it. The idea that abstaining from meat might be a positive sign of God’s kingdom provokes resistance and even derision among many Christians I know.
This is not surprising when you so often hear people express the purpose and meaning of Christian faith in terms of “the salvation of souls”. I don’t understand how we have got away with this language for so long when it is really bordering on the heretical. In modern English, it inescapably implies that God’s purpose in salvation is to retrieve from the mire of earthly existence a spiritual essence of each human being, which will be whisked away to somewhere called “heaven”, where it will float in a blessedly immaterial manner for all eternity.
As though God’s first creation, this world, was simply furniture, a pleasant setting for our brief sojourn; as though its manifold non-human lives are just passing entertainment, the sea and sky, mountains and forests a pretty backdrop to the true drama, which is conducted in a vaporous realm of soul and spirit.
12 May 2016, The Tablet
The Christian mission is not ‘the salvation of souls’; it is the salvation of the world
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User Comments (14)
Jesus died a criminal's death for mans salvation. "Go into the whole world and preach salvation to all men" is why the Saints and martyrs have given their lives to save as many souls as possible. At Fatima, Our Lady showed the children HELL and said this is where poor sinners go who have none to pray for or make sacrifices for them. Nothing on earth is as important as the person's immortal soul which stands before God in judgment at the moment of death. What's in his heart when he dies is where he goes. At his birth it was announced ,"He shall be called Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins." The term 'Saving the world ' means saving the souls in the world.
The Penny Catechism was written before the theory of evolution was established and before the scientific facts of the Big Bang were proven. The present Catholic Catechism was published (under the imprimatur of Pope John Paul 11) in1994. Relating to the Day of Judgement it teaches (C.C.1059) ... ‘all men will appear in their own bodies before Christ’s tribunal to render an account of their own deeds.’
C.C. 1060: ‘At the end of time, the kingdom of God will come in its fullness. Then the just will reign with Christ forever and the material universe itself will be transformed. God will then ‘be all in all’ in eternal life.
So the risen bodies and souls of the ‘goats’ will go to Hell for eternity. Those of the ‘sheep’ will go Heaven – as will all the rest of the material of the ‘transformed universe’.
Through his life, death and resurrection Jesus is redeeming the world
The Risen Body of Jesus in heaven and in the Eucharist is infinite and contains the whole cosmos, which will be perfectly shared by all of us as one infinite living body in the parousia.
However, in order that the infinite marry the finite without annihilation of the latter, Jesus accepts to be present as living bread under finite constraints within the cosmos. The Marriage of the Lamb then raises the whole cosmos to its true transcendental reality, lost in the beginning by Adam and Eve.
The living bread is truly infinite but present as immaculate finite substance. In all other modes of presence, in the priest, Scripture, the faithful etc, Jesus is present within finite blemished substances.
Immaculate substance, eg the material bodies of Jesus and Mary rightfully belong in heaven, hence the Ascension of Jesus and the assumption of Mary. The continuous celebration of the Mass and Eucharist is incrementally redeeming the whole of creation
In all other modes of presence e.g. in the priest, Scripture, the faithful etc, Jesus is present within finite blemished substances.
The Word made Flesh has equality with the Father and, simultaneously in flesh, equality with all flesh and all material substance, which in its true reality, at transcendental level, is immaculate spiritual substance.
Having created the whole universe “the Lord God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it.” (Gen.2.7).This occurred before Adam sinned. So the “soil” was part of the immaculate, immortal substance of Eden. Therefore Adam, like Eden, was perfect and immortal, made from immaculate, transcendental substance, in the true image of God.
We imperfect humans are chemically based on the element carbon. Every flawed carbon atom in our bodies was made in a star, formed after the Big Bang, caused by Original Sin about 13.7 billion years ago. We are made from the imperfect, perishable dust of Planet Earth (raised up from the dung heap). Each of us came into being through the process of biological evolution and procreation. Each individual needed, wanted, created and loved by God. We are brought into the world by a loving Father, redeemed by Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, and nourished for eternal life by His body and blood (living bread, down from heaven) – in this fruitful universe, which the Creator permits and assists in re-creating itself.
We imperfect humans are chemically based on the element carbon. Every flawed carbon atom in our bodies was made in a star, formed after the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. We are made from the imperfect, perishable dust of Planet Earth (raised up from the dung heap). Each of us came into being through the process of biological evolution and procreation. We are brought into the world by a loving Father, redeemed by Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, and nourished for eternal life by His body and blood (living bread, down from heaven) – in this fruitful universe, which the Creator permits and assists in re-creating itself.
Exceptionally Jesus as Word Incarnate, and the Unblemished Idea Mary Immaculate freely chose to come into exile with us. The Word made Flesh has equality with the Father (Nicene Creed) and, simultaneously in flesh equality with all flesh and all material substance, which in its true reality, at transcendental level, is immaculate spiritual substance.
‘He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them’. (1 Samuel 2:8King James Version)
Not only will God lift up the poor from the dunghill, He will lift up the dunghill, the material universe itself! The C.C. 1060 teaches “At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. Then the just will reign with Christ for ever, glorified in body and soul, and the material universe itself will be transformed. God will be ‘all in all’ (1 cor15:28), in eternal life.
Is this not the final unity of all, the one body, as Jesus prayed for at the Last Supper – ‘that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, (Jn. 17: 20.26)