NO ONE IS ALONE
Even today we find among Christians a certain «religious elitism» that is unworthy of a God who is infinite love. There are those who think that God is a strange Father who, though God has millions and millions of sons and daughters being born generation after generation, in reality God is only truly concerned about the «preferred ones». God always acts this way: God chooses a «chosen people», whether it’s the people of Israel or the Church, and is completely taken up in it, leaving the other peoples and religions in a kind of abandonment.
Even more. It gets stated with complete calm that «outside of the Church there is no salvation», citing phrases like the well-known one of St. Cyprian who, taken out of context, ends up chillingly: «No one can have God as Father who doesn’t have the Church as Mother».
It’s clear that the Second Vatican Council has surpassed this unworthy vision of God, affirming that «God isn’t far from those who seek the unknown God among shadows and images, since all receive life, inspiration and everything from God, and the Savior wants all people to be saved» (Lumen gentium 16). But one thing are conciliar affirmations and another are the mental habits that continue dominating the conscience of more than a few Christians.
It needs to be said with total clarity. God, who creates all out of love, goes about taken up with all that is and each one of God’s creatures. God calls everyone and draws them toward eternal happiness in communion with God. There never has been a man or woman who has lived, except that God has accompanied him or her from the depth of their being. Wherever there is a human being, whatever their religion or whether they’re agnostic, God is there raising up their salvation. God’s love doesn’t abandon or discriminate against anyone. As St. Paul says: «God judges everyone by the same standard» (Romans 2,11).
Rejected by his own people of Nazareth, Jesus remembers the stories of the widow of Sarepta and of Naaman the Syrian, both foreigners and pagans, in order to show with complete clarity that God is concerned about God’s children, even those who don’t belong to the chosen people of Israel. God doesn’t fit into our schemes and discriminations. All are God’s sons and daughters, those who live in the Church and those who have left it. God abandons no one.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
