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The Theology of Biology I received a “C” in High School biology. The teacher was being generous. In fact, I didn’t have the least bit of interest in science and was unconvinced that anything Mr. Harris had to say was going to change my teenage life, much less have eternal consequences. I was wrong.

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Had I listened to my biology teacher I would have learned many things – among them, undoubtedly, I would have learned that cells have something called cilia, short microscopic“hairs”. Further, as humans, we have cilia – we call them eyelashes.

When humans sit eyelash to eyelash, we have “ciliation”. When two people are brought back together with one another with intense power, we have reconciliation. When God is the One governing and ordering the force and the movement, offering the opportunity and the transformation, we have the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist.

Put simply, reconciliation is an eyelash-toeyelash encounter with the love and the mercy of God. It is intimate and interpersonal. More than an exchange of words or pleasantries, sorrows or penitence (though it is that), reconciliation is an intimate exchange of death and life; God replaces our death with his life – once again, in the most personal of ways.

This is the intimacy as a cradle Catholic that I longed for from my God all of my life. I should have known it has always been available to me, but I was clueless. It was with this intimacy as a foundation for my own life – coming from the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist – that I was able to enter fully into the Sacrament of Matrimony with my bride. For I could not completely offer my life to her until I had first offered it back to the One who gave it to me. It wasn’t mine to give, but his.

I never envisioned God in such an intimate way; never, that is, until I began reading Scripture, never until I was introduced to St. Paul.
How’d He Do it?  Why Did He Do It?

" This is the intimacy as a cradle Catholic that I longed for from my God all of my life "

St. Paul’s passport would have impressed even the most prolific world traveler, not only by miles traveled but by methods and obstacles. His documented journeys in Acts saw St. Paul travel well over 10,000 miles – and not without much difficulty and peril. The question I wrestled with for so many years was this, “Why, Paul? Why not just set up shop in Damascus? Why not startup a small B & B in Jerusalem, brother? After all those floggings and stonings and shipwrecks (2 Cor. 11: 23-29), why not just find a quiet corner of Corinth or Philippi? Why not establish a headquarters in which to write and from which you could minister, one that was safe from inclement weather, pagan attacks and overzealous debate?

St. Paul could never have done that, however, because his was a ministry of presence. Ever since that intimate encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9), Saul (now Paul) viewed faith and life through not only a corporate but a personal lens. For St. Paul, salvation was ultimately personal. He wanted everyone to taste life, to be consumed by God’s grace and to know the love and the mercy of God in an intimate way. It is impossible to read his words to the Romans or the Corinthians, for instance, or to read the intimate words to Philemon and not be swept away by his comprehension of Christ’s presence and grace in every person, even sinners.

His initial encounter with Christ was not a flash in the pan. It was soul-shaking and lifealtering, the kind of alteration that paved the way for increasing “altar-ation” at each recurring Sabbath as he proceeded ever more deeply into his understanding of grace. St. Paul’s entire ministry became one of presence, desiring to look people in the face – eyelash to eyelash – and offer the love of Christ. But St. Paul wasn’t the first or the only person to have their life transformed through a face-to-face reconciliation with Christ.

Good Thief Or Bad Thief?

A few years back, during an ordinary daily Mass, the following verse really struck me when I heard it.   

“Those passing by reviled him, shakingtheir heads... The revolutionaries who were crucified with him also kept abusing him inthe same way.” (Mt 27: 39, 44)

What struck me in St. Matthew’s passage was that the noun “revolutionaries” was plural, not singular. Over the years I’ve gotten so used to the fact that one of the criminals was “the good thief” and the other “the bad thief” that I missed (or had forgotten) that when the actual crucifixion began on Golgotha, as we read in this passage, both the criminals were mocking our Lord.

Then, as the hours ware on under the smoldering skies on that dark afternoon, another (often overlooked) miracle takes place in the midst of the torture. In the final hours, in almost breathless agony, another sinner’s heart is touched by our Lord.

St. Paul’s close friend and traveling companion, St. Luke, tells us something interesting:

“Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus… The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, ‘Have you no fear of God…we have been condemned justly…but this man has done nothing criminal’…Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’” (Lk 23: 39-42)

Why this transformation? Why the change in behavior? What was it that allowed this criminal’s heart to open, his anger to subside and his attitude to change? What clicked?

preachingThis is far more than what some Biblical scholars try to reduce it to – merely a different evangelist making a specific point to a specific audience. No, a penitent sinner knows what
transformed the second bad thief into the good thief. It was the love of his Savior. It must have been mind-boggling for the thieves to witness anyone so forgiving and loving, so trusting in God at such a horrific and painful personal moment. It was that insight, from watching Jesus so intimately, that offered the good thief (which tradition names Dismas) the confidence and humility to approach the Lord for forgiveness.

The entire episode on the cross offers us invaluable insight into how badly God desires our salvation even more than we do ourselves. God is the Reconciler and simply desires our response to God’s gift. God wants our lives to be overflowing with his life, his grace. God desires our salvation. St. Paul is quick to remind us that it is through the cross of Christ that we have been justified and reconciled (Rom. 5:11, Eph. 2:16, Col. 1:20). St. Paul is equally quick to remind us that we must seek and live in God’s grace, guided by the Holy Spirit if we are to have any hope of living good lives or reconciling ourselves with and to one another.

" our Lord literally transforms our sin into love, our death into new life. This transformation is nothing less than miraculous."

God Wants to Reconcile Us

Most of us have a pretty limited view of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Many of us look at Confession as making us square again with God. We look at this Sacrament as wiping away our sin and freeing us from our debt. One problem with this viewpoint is that it’s not broad enough; we fail to see God as personally working for our salvation. Confession doesn’t just erase sin – it replaces sin with God’s divine life and power which we call grace. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, acting in the Priesthood, our Lord literally transforms our sin into love, our death into new life. This transformation is nothing less than miraculous.

The same way in which we bring forward bread and wine to be transformed at each Eucharistic Celebration, so too in the Sacrament of Reconciliation we bring forward our guilt, shame and sin to be changed by God’s grace. In both cases, whether we bring forward bread and wine or sin and shame, it is God who does the work. We do nothing except present the elements for God to make anew.

God desires our salvation so vehemently and desires us to be filled with grace so personally and physically that he offers us not only his very flesh and blood in the Eucharist, but also absolution — forgiveness and reconciliation — through the ministry and blessing of the priest. God does the work and gives the gift. God initiates the awareness that we need the gift; God also excites the inclination for us to seek the gift. Finally God offers absolution through grace and transforms us into “a new creation”.

God Begins the Process of Reconciliation

confessionalGod is the reconciler and when we allow ourselves to be reconciled, we are participating in his movement, his desire, his gift and, of course, his glory. A closer examination of Sacred Scripture echoes this truth – that God does the work before we even ask because God is constantly working for our salvation. The minute the fall occurs in Genesis, God is already promising us a Redeemer (Gen 3:15). the Merciful Father is already scanning the horizon before his wayward son begins his journey home (Lk 15:20). The Good Shepherd is already leaving the ninety-nine to find his lost sheep (Lk 15:4). And the woman doesn’t simply wait for the coin to turn up (Lk 15:8).

Think back to the woman at the well, Peter drowning in the sea, the Centurion’s servant, Jairus’ daughter, Peter’s mother-in-law, the lepers, the blind man, the woman with the hemorrhage, the demoniacs, the woman caught in adultery, Lazarus in the grave, the High Priest’s servant in the garden. The list goes on and on. God’s mercy and love flow freely and intentionally, proactively and yet always remain a free gift. God offers us forgiveness, grace and mercy upon the cross and within the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist.

The ministry of Christ’s apostles, past and present, is one of reconciliation. The job of the priest is to reunite the human family with the Father and with one another. In order to do this, the barrier of sin must be transformed through the Sacraments of the Church. St. Paul explains this ministry succinctly to the Church in Corinth, and it’s certainly worth rereading tofully understand its profound meaning (2 Cor 5:11-21).

The La Salette Missionaries no doubt take this commissioning very much to heart because reconciliation is their community’s special charism. As a sidenote, the word charism comes from the Greek word charis which means grace. You might recognize it in the word Eucharist. What a stunningly simple yet important reminder of the power of the Sacraments entrusted to the Church.

Mary, Mother of Reconciliation

At the close of the October 2008 Vatican Synod on Sacred Scripture, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, issued a bold proclamation to us as Church:

“(there is a)… need emerging today for a more intimate hearing of God, of a truer knowledge of his Word of Salvation… (W)hat this requires first of all is a more intimate knowledge of Christ and an ever-more docile acceptance of his Word.”

Even though I received only a “C” in High School biology, even I can see that this points to the biological and Christological fact that the Word became flesh within the Blessed Virgin – a more intimate connection between humanity and Christ than has ever been and can ever be.

So it makes perfect sense that we would look to our Blessed Lady in our effort to gain a greater perspective on the most amazing gift of Reconciliation. Like Mary, in our docile acceptance of the Word of God (Jesus) and our ongoing living out of the Word of God (Scripture) in our daily lives, we can come to the proper perspective; namely, that God is still hard at work reconciling us and always will be.

As faithful children of Mary, our Mother, may we not only thank God for doing the intimate and personal work of reconciliation in our lives but also may we thank God for giving us a share in “the ministry of reconciliation” as “ambassadors for Christ” to others (2 Cor 5: 19, 21). The Church’s mission – as well as our personal mission from Christ — is to share unhesitatingly this gift of God’s reconciling presence with all we meet.

(Mark is Executive vice president of LifeTeen, an accomplished author and renowned national Catholic speaker.)

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