Pastor's Spiritual Reflections

By Fr. Leo Schneider (4/5/2009)

Dear People of Holy Name,

Monday I met a man in the hospital who was truly a man who lived Christ’s teaching to turn the other cheek. Yet, despite his goodness, this man lived with a strong fear of going to hell. He recounted different images he had seen as a child and lines he had heard from apparitions about people going to hell like snowflakes.

He also shared a story he remembered. It went like this. A man was dying and called for the priest to be baptized. So in the last moments of his life, this man known for his sins, was told by the priest that all his sins were forgiven. It didn’t seem fair, even to the dying man, that after all his sin he should be so freely forgiven. Then the man before me asked, “Father, is that true.”

My response was to admit that the sacraments weren’t magic; but that the important thing was that the man was reaching out to God, whose goal is to bring all people into his kingdom. The man’s story was much like that of the two men crucified, one on the right and the other on the left of Jesus on Mount Calvary. One joined in the mocking of Jesus, the other of equal sin showed reverence for Jesus who was innocent of his crime. To him Jesus said, “This day you will be with me in the Kingdom of God.”

God’s forgiveness is not based on the gravity or the amount of our sin, God’s forgiveness is his gift to those who believe in his loving forgiveness. So when we place our faith in Jesus and his power to forgive, our fear of death and of hell subsides. If we truly believe in God’s love for us, what do we have to fear? As St. Paul has said, “If God is for us, who can be against?”

I pray that the man with whom I spoke could come to that kind of trust in the Lord, so that his relationship with the Lord would be based in love, not fear. As we listen to the passion of Jesus this week, today and Friday, let us remember that it is a story of the depth of God’s love for us. By his suffering and death we are to be inspired to love the same, as we own in our hearts that he died for each one of us. Jesus has paid our debt and has won for us our forgiveness.

It is our faith in his love that allows us to believe and accept his gift without price.

To stay on track with our contemplation of Christ’s passion this week, let us keep before us St. Paul’s words I quoted above. Here is the whole text. It will be good to keep it at our sides and in our hearts this Holy Week as we journey with Christ through his death and resurrection to new life! “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, not depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In Christ’s peace, Fr. Leo