The concept of salvation can be taken from many different perspectives. It can be understood in many ways especially in the context of religions, in a time when we are experiencing a pluralism of religions. The beauty of salvation is that it can constitute a common ground for all religions. In fact if one notices, all religions speak about salvation because humanity has this certain need to be saved. Salvation is not something to be achieved there and then even though Christ saved us, because we are still achieving it since it is a human process through God’s grace.
After the Council of Trent, the requisites about salvation were black on white. There was this certainty of what to do in order to be saved or condemned. For example, in order to be saved you had the need to believe in the Pope. There was this major issue of God’s Universal will to save mankind. What does this mean? God wants everyone to be saved and this was proclaimed since the very beginning of Christianity.
In Acts 10, the Scriptures present Peter’s dream which is often misunderstood. It is not about ‘being allowed to eat unclean meat’ but it is about accepting ‘the gentile believer’ into the community. Then we have St. Paul who delivered Christianity outside of Israel and thanks to his wisdom and knowledge, he was able to communicate the teaching of Christ throughout the nations. Being Maltese, St. Paul is dear to me, as Malta happened to be one of those nations after all. The point here is that God wants to reach out to everybody that He created and this is also written in the Scriptures.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that,
“all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 846
The main theological basis of this doctrine is that Jesus Christ is the founder of the Church and the Church serves Christ to communicate to all believers. Ultimately it is the Church’s mission to continue what St. Peter and St. Paul started two thousand years back. The Church has always tried to make things better in this regard even though it might have not always looked this way.
The mission of the Church is not only to deliver God to those who have not heard about Him but also to bring people together, unite nations irrelevant of the religion they believe in. Pope John Paul II was convinced that prayer could bring believers together for instance. In 1986 he organised a World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, Italy where leaders of Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims, among others. gathered together and prayed for world peace. This was truly beautiful.
Us human beings have tried since always to give explanations when we think of or discuss salvation. What features most here is the issue of suffering. It might not be the first time that we heard of individuals who met God in the hardest period of their lives. It could be during a financial crisis, health crisis, family issues, among others. Coming to think of it, it is during those experiences when we experience God, that is, when we come to realise that we are human after all. Most of the time, it is in such circumstances that we feel the need to connect to something higher than humanity to seek comfort, or perhaps simply, to be able to let go for a while.
In the Gospel of John, chapter 9, we have the narrative of the man born blind where the Jews ask Jesus whose fault it is that this man was born blind. Was it the parents’ fault or his fault? So the Jews here show us how human beings tend to seek whose blame it is when something goes wrong especially in situations of suffering. If we think about it, through the suffering of this man (and then the healing), God was able to communicate with humanity at that point in time. In fact, Jesus then explains that it is God’s glory working through the blind man.
The topic of salvation is never an easy one because as we all know, there is no straight answer. Eventually, as I see it, it is about living according to the Scriptures as much as possible while accepting the fact that it is no easy road because as humans we have our limitations. We should also keep in mind however, that God is our Creator, so He knows about our limitations! We are called to experience this journey on earth with other fellow human beings because it is in relating with others and helping others that we can reach our salvation. Notwithstanding the fact that this is also the Church’s mission, to help humanity reach salvation (c. 1752).
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