Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time (October 19, 2017): Memorial of Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.

The Lord said:
“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets 
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.
Therefore, the wisdom of God said,
‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles;
some of them they will kill and persecute’
in order that this generation might be charged
with the blood of all the prophets
shed since the foundation of the world,
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah
who died between the altar and the temple building.
Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with their blood!
Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.”
When Jesus left, the scribes and Pharisees
began to act with hostility toward him
and to interrogate him about many things,
for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.

Somehow or other it got into the Catholic psyche that we can earn our way into heaven by doing good works. This is one of the reasons why some Protestants mistakenly think we’re not saved, for as our first reading for today explains clearly, we overcome the power of sin and death to enjoy eternal life in heaven, not by doing good deeds and obeying Church rules, but by the grace of God through the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus and the power of his resurrection, and by placing our faith in that truth.

Good deeds and obedience are not tolls we pay to cross the bridge into heaven; they are fruits of the journey. They are fruits that prove we are indeed on that journey.

A good example of this is the Catholic teaching that it’s a mortal sin to miss Mass (we’ll go to hell if we don’t go to church). When the reasons behind this teaching are not considered, people assume that showing up on Sundays is all they have to do. That’s why Catholic churches have larger crowds than Protestant services but smaller collections. It’s why there’s poor attendance at other events of the parish and few people get involved in ministries. Lots of folks attend Mass without being changed by their encounter with Christ in the Eucharist, because they’re only using Mass as an insurance policy.

If you sit in your garage for an hour a week, will you become a car? How about if you live in the garage every day and make engine noises? “Vrroom, vrroom!” Likewise, we can sit in church and even sound like Christians outside of church, but we only become free of the hellish forces of sin by wanting to be changed by the grace of Christ’s redemption.

We can only become Christ-like by wanting to be changed by his presence in the Eucharist.

Thus, the Church has always taught that if we prefer to stay away from the Eucharist because (the motive is important!) we want to stay away from Christ or because we don’t want to be changed by Christ’s presence in the Church, we are killing our souls — we are committing mortal sin. It’s less destructive if we stay away from Mass due to laziness or not understanding the importance of the Eucharist, but it’s still detrimental to our souls.

Trying to work our way into heaven by what we do without first having faith in Christ makes us like the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading to whom Jesus said, “Woe!” We could make a large donation to buy statues of the saints for shrines in the church, but if we are not learning from those very same saints, following their example of holiness, we are condemning ourselves by the contrast between our lives and theirs.

True faith motivates us to do good works, not because we want to get into heaven, but because we want to be like the Savior who sacrificed himself for us on the cross and we know that he’s taking us to heaven.

True faith motivates us to obey the rules of the Church because we understand their heavenly origin, even if we don’t understand why they are heavenly.

Obedience and good deeds are the products of a faith that’s alive and truly holy.