The Work of Jesus as Savior

Sisters and brothers. When we were together previously, we talked about the nature of Jesus. We sort of looked at what constituted Jesus is true God and true man. Today we shift to the work of Jesus as Savior. Particularly in the words of the Paschall mystery, this saving mystery of Jesus's Suffering, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. When we use those fancy words of Paschal mystery, we’re talking about Jesus’s work of liberating humanity from sin and death

by his Suffering, Death, Resurrection, and ultimately his Ascension, by which humanity entered into eternal life, into heaven, opening the doors of heaven for all.

The Gospels, Scripture scholars tell us, are really literally written backwards. The central story in every Gospel from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is the story of Jesus's Passion, Death, and ultimately his Resurrection.

Then we go from that story of the meaning of Christ’s life to write the story of His birth, the story of His ministry, His healing, His teaching, His many parables, and the example of His witness of God's Love to us.

So that centrality of that Suffering, Death, and Resurrection is something that can't be lost on us. In fact, in every sacrament, particularly the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we talk about the sacrificial nature of that event by which we are indeed fed by the Body and Blood of Christ. So again, sacrifice and sacrament go together. And there are a number of things that we can talk about when we think about Jesus's redemptive work.

One of the things is, what was he doing? The ancient language that we have used as the Church has been that of atonement or satisfaction or expiation, paying the price of our sins, as it were. Jesus, we can understand, was sent by the Father to teach us what love and mercy in the fullness of humanity look like.

It wasn't that the Father sent Jesus explicitly to die in payment for the scales of justice. That would be a bit of an odd God, but God sent Jesus to us, knowing that he would indeed suffer and die.

What caused Jesus’s Death? One of the things that's very important for us, sisters and brothers, is to understand that Jesus's Death was caused by the sin of all humanity. It was ultimately in history and that year of 30 to 33 A.D., that Jesus was rejected by, the rulers of his time and crucified as effectively a common criminal, in this terrible act of crucifixion.

In the history of the Church, one of the most dangerous phrases that has ever been used was that the Jews killed Jesus. And we have to be very careful about that because in that is the root of anti-Semitism, which the Church declares as a heinous and reprehensible sin. That we should never repeat. It is not the Jews who killed Jesus. There were certainly historical Jews at that time who were involved in that death, but it's not the Jew born today or the Jew born in the 14th century or the fifth century.

It was indeed reflective of the sin of all humanity by which Christ died, offering Himself freely, offering Himself for our suffering, death, and resurrection.

At the Resurrection, a key moment for us to understand is the empty tomb. In a way, the empty tomb doesn’t prove Christ's Resurrection. That’s one of the most beautiful things we can learn.

It wasn't the empty tomb. It was the appearances. And so among the first appearances, it was Jesus to Mary Magdalene, who the Church calls today the Apostle of the Resurrection, the one who was sent to proclaim the Resurrection. As she went back to the apostles and said, I have seen the Lord, He is Risen indeed. The appearances of Jesus are what prove the Resurrection.

Saint Paul, in the first letter of Corinthians, states that at one time, there were 500 people present who saw and experienced the Resurrection of Christ. When we speak of the Resurrection, we have to be careful. They were talking about a bodily resurrection. The empty tomb does show us that there was nobody present left. Rather, Jesus was raised in a glorified body.

What that looks like we can only conjecture. But what Mary Magdalene and the apostles and those 500 experienced was the presence of Christ, not the memory of Christ in our hearts, not a psychological movement of a crowd, not, an imaginary event, but the presence of the bodily resurrection, which for us is a promise indeed of our bodily resurrection, and thus the importance of the Ascension.

 In the Ascension, Jesus goes from here into eternal life, into the reign of God, true God and true man raised, not just God raised, but true God and true man raised. And in that, sisters and brothers is the promise for us that the Resurrection and Ascension into eternal life will one day be ours.