What I Never Learned, Part IV: Why it had to be Jesus, and why He had to die

Years ago, I sent out some "catechesis emails" to interested friends and family. They, like me, never really learned much in Catholic religious education and CCD classes (I was catechized in the 1970s and '80s). What I wrote was pretty basic stuff, and I thought some of the Bubble readers might like the overview. 

Part I: The Fall

Part II: After the Fall

Part III: The Trinity

Previously, we talked about how painful it is for a soul to be separated from God, and that all of life is really a search for union with the Trinity (even though many souls are not consciously aware of what they are longing for).

From the beginning, God’s people have tried to “make things right”, attempting to heal the rift that has existed between God and man since that first sin in the Garden of Eden. The primary means to that end has been offering sacrifice.

Sacrifice is, by definition, a giving up or offering of something precious. In Old Testament days, before Jesus came, the people offered sacrifices to God in order to show them that they loved Him, to thank Him for His many gifts, and in order to make up for their sins. The thing being offered was always burnt or destroyed, to show that it was being given back to God completely. It was also the best that the person had to offer; for example, farmers would offer God the “first fruits” of their harvests, and a shepherd would give his best lamb.

Then, as today, the sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God was one offered with a pure heart, out of true love.

We've talked earlier about the nature of love, about how love must be freely given and freely received, how love must have an object, and how love is always fruitful. I will now add that true love is always sacrificial. Think of our own relationships with our family members and loved ones: We sacrifice for them, i.e., offer ourselves and our lives for them, out of love.

In the Old Testament, we often see the people offering the bloody sacrifice of animals, where the blood of an animal would be shed, then its body burnt. After a while, in Moses’ time, priests were appointed to offer the sacrifices on behalf of all God’s people.

Note: While God’s chosen people (the Hebrew people, also known as the Israelites) were offering all those sacrifices to God, the pagans were busy offering sacrifices to their false gods as well. This is natural, not surprising. Remember we said that God has left His “thumbprint” on each person’s soul, a distant “echo” of Himself? Everyone, on some level, knows that we are separated from God, and that sacrifice is needed in order to make up for our sins. Unfortunately, there were occasions when the pagans sacrificed human beings to their gods, which of course the true God never requires!

But getting back to the Hebrew people, the purpose of all these elaborate, bloody, ritualistic sacrifices was a deep longing to make up for Adam’s sin and to “build a bridge” back to God. In reality, all those millions of sacrifices were pointing to, or foreshadowing, the only Sacrifice which actually could build a bridge back to God, namely Jesus’ own offering of Himself on the Cross.

Think about it, and try to follow my logic here: To make up perfectly for the sin of Adam (i.e., to reconcile God and man perfectly), man’s sacrifice would have to be perfect. Yet, how could sinful man offer a perfect sacrifice when he himself is imperfect, and when the gift, no matter how good, is imperfect as well? The answer is that he couldn’t; it is simply impossible. Only God, Who is perfect, could provide a perfect sacrifice. So we humans really had a problem. Those millions of animal and other sacrifices just couldn’t reconcile us completely, perfectly, with God. We were still lost.

But remember! God had a plan for reconciliation all along. “In the fullness of time,” the Second Person of the Holy Trinity -- the Beloved Son -- came down from Heaven and became man. He became one of us, while remaining fully divine (thus, sinless).


Jesus alone could represent both sides!

Jesus’ Sacrifice on the Cross was the perfect offering, the likes of which no other man could present to the Father. As true man, Jesus is able to act on behalf of all mankind. As true God, the Sacrifice is utterly perfect, therefore completely acceptable to the Father. Jesus, as both Priest and Victim, offered Himself, out of pure love, in atonement for all of our sins.* His Sacrifice of love was so powerful, so beautiful, so complete, that it unleashed a torrent of grace upon the earth, which washed away the sin of Adam and redeemed the whole human race, reopening the gates of Heaven.

Perfect Love reconciled Heaven and earth, God and man.




*Why yes, this does sound like the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!






Next, read Part V: Jesus as the "Lamb of God"

What I Never Learned, Part I

Years ago, I sent out some "catechesis emails" to interested friends and family. They, like me, never really learned much in Catholic religious education and CCD classes. What I wrote was pretty basic stuff, and I thought some of the Bubble readers might like the overview. So, here is the first installment:

Hello everyone!  First, I want to say that as I write this first overview, I am assuming that you are all convinced of the truth of Christianity. If you’re not yet convinced, you still might get a lot out of this, but it's not technically directed at you.

What I'm attempting is a very brief outline of salvation history (God’s relationship with man since the beginning of creation). There is, of course, so much more to it than what I am going to write today, and the way I say things may seem almost childlike. But this is sort of the “skeleton” and we can add the flesh later.

I want to also mention that if there is any error in what I say, it is not the error of the Catholic Church, but my own error. In all things concerning faith and morals, I defer to the Church. I do not ever want to present my own subjective opinion (Christianity is a revealed religion, based in objective truth, not a religion of what any person thinks or decides it should be). I only wish to pass on the unbroken teaching of Christ, through His Church; so, I always stand open to being corrected if I am misrepresenting the Church in any way.

******

We all know instinctively that there is something very wrong with this world. All the suffering and ugliness that goes on daily (just watch the nightly news) makes that pretty clear. We all see that there is incredible injustice, immense pain and suffering, and endless examples of man’s inhumanity to man. This “broken” world is the result of a separation of man from God, which happened with our first parents, Adam and Eve.

But let's back up.

God, Who is infinite, and Who has existed always, decided to create the world and all of us. He created purely out of love. Everything He created was good, and out of all creation, His masterpiece was man. We were created to be in friendship with God. I love how the Cathechism of the Catholic Church puts it:

Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his creator". He is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake", and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity. (CCC, 356)

God is absolutely faithful, but unfortunately, we humans are not. Adam and Eve (our first parents) became prideful, deciding they could name what was good and what was evil for themselves. They committed an act of disobedience against God that broke their friendship with Him. Sin had entered the world, and with sin came death – remember, there was no death and no suffering up until that point.

(By the way, people often wonder why God would allow Adam and Eve to sin, when everything was perfect in the Garden of Eden. Later, I will discuss why God gave us the free will to choose sin. It is very powerful and beautiful, and you will see why it was absolutely necessary.)

After their sin, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden. They had “fallen from grace”, which means they killed the life of God (sanctifying grace) within them. Without this gift of sanctifying grace, they were no longer fit to live in the presence of God. Through their own free will choice, they had separated themselves from the friendship of God, and their lives became lives of suffering and, ultimately, death.

Though Adam and Eve’s actions showed their lack of love for God, God never stopped loving them. Even as He banished them, He promised, waaaaaaaay back then, to send a Savior one day to make things right again between God and man. (Genesis 3:15 is one of the most important and exciting passages in the Bible, but more on that later.)

The heaviest consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin? Essentially it was that the gates of Heaven were now closed to all mankind. Men had become sinners, and sin cannot exist in the perfection of Heaven (if it could, it wouldn’t be Heaven, right? It would be what we have here on earth, which is definitely no picnic!).  So, through Adam’s sin, mankind lost the ability to get to Heaven.

I think I’ll end now, and let you chew on that for awhile. As I said, what I’m presenting is very basic stuff and the actual depth and breadth of it is infinitely deeper than this... but that is why God gives us a lifetime to delve deeper into His Truths. His Truth are accessible to the most humble peasant who cannot read or write, while also being inexhaustible to the greatest minds in the world, to such as a St. Augustine or a St. Thomas Aquinas, etc. Trust me, this stuff gets deeper and deeper and better and better, and God will take you as far as you are willing to go.

Told you it would be simple! Next, go to Part II: After the Fall








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