30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Jer 31:7-9
Second Reading: Heb 5:1-6
Gospel Reading: Mk 10:46-52

This Sunday’s Readings show that God is compassionate: he wants to save us.

Unfortunately, what Jesus said about hell makes many people think that God delights in punishment; the commandments make them think that God, and the Catholic Church, deliberately make salvation difficult.

For example, said Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, they think that the Church, “with all her commandments and prohibitions,” turns love to bitterness, stopping us just when it offers us a “foretaste of the divine.”

No. Hell means separation from God. It is not an arbitrary punishment for sin, as when a parent stops a child’s allowance because he did not tidy his room. Rather, it is the natural consequence of sin, as when a student has to repeat a course because he has neglected his studies.

When God told Adam and Eve that the moment they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, they were “surely doomed to die,” he was warning them of an unavoidable result. Therefore, when they failed their test, he could not “pass” them or “let them off” the consequences, for “he who is, is truth and love,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. God takes us and our decisions seriously. To ignore them would be to show not love, but contempt for us as persons with free will.

A math teacher I know found that his students regarded high marks as artificial rewards he handed out arbitrarily and low marks as artificial punishments he could revoke if he wished. After a test, they would thank him for “passing” them or reproach him for “failing” them. They seemed to feel that they were “up against him” in their attempts to get good marks.

However, he wanted them to see that they and he together were up against the laws of math. He recalled what Jesus had said: “If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I am not the one to condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save it. Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words already has his judge, namely the word I have spoken; it is that which will condemn him on the last day.”

Accordingly, he began to announce, in advance, precisely what his students had to do to get good marks – as God did in giving us the commandments. He also began to let them re-write tests – as God did when “time and again” he offered us covenants, according to the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer.

Now his students could see that he was on their side. Now he could say, “I can’t mark this right, because it’s wrong, but I’ll teach you how to do it right and then you can try again.” Now he could say, “I can’t give you marks, but I’ll give you another chance to get marks.” Now they began to see what his kindness meant: not making the tests easier, nor giving marks for wrong answers, but rather offering them help and always giving them another chance.

But God went even further: “he sent his only son to be our saviour.” God the Son took on our nature and, as one of us, wrote the test for us, perfectly. Now all we have to do is copy him: make his answers our own.

God tests us not to “fail” us or make us drop the course, but to help us excel; that is, become capable of enjoying him as fully as possible. He is on our side; and if he is with us, who can fail? Only those who choose to fail.

Therefore, says the Letter to the Hebrews, we must not “grow despondent or abandon the struggle,” but endure our tests “as the discipline of God,” who deals with us as a father with his children, “for our true profit, that we may share his holiness.”

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English in both written and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 6, available on YouTube starting Oct. 24, is “The Light of Faith.”