“I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me.”

Peter Kreeft is a well-known Catholic apologist who has taught philosophy at Boston College for sixty years. He regularly asks his students to reflect on: “Why would God let you into heaven?” Over ninety per cent of the answers begin with the wrong word: I. “I’ve been a good person.” “I try to do the right thing.” “I help people whenever I can,” etc.

But the answer to, “why would God let you into Heaven?” doesn’t begin with “I.” It begins with “Jesus.” “Because Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God the Father, took on human nature, and in our humanity suffered death on the Cross and rose from the dead to reconcile us with God the Father, and then rose into Heaven to send the Holy Spirit upon us, so that through His mystical Body, the Church, we might have part in Him by being baptized into His death and Resurrection, the sins we commit since Baptism might be forgiven in Penance, and Christian believers might be fed with His Body and Blood, a foretaste of the banquet of Heaven. God would let me into Heaven because of what Jesus Christ has done for me.”

But doesn’t St. Paul contradict this emphasis on what Christ does? Don’t all his statements start the wrong way, with “I”? “I have competed well. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” You have to admit; this was an odd passage to pair with the repentant tax collector. Paul sounds more like the smug Pharisee here to me!

What Paul is telling us is that our cooperation with God’s grace is essential. As St. Augustine preached: “God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us.” Thus, Paul emphasizes that, “the Lord stood by me and gave me strength.” But what is the first consequence of Paul being saved by Christ? Why does God save him in the first place? “So that through me the proclamation might be completed and all the Gentiles might hear it.”

For St. Paul, the first consequence of being saved is his role in completing the proclamation of God’s mercy. We are used to thinking of evangelizing, spreading the Good News of what God has done for us and wants to do for the whole world, as a nice “extra.” You get bonus points if you do it, but it’s not really essential, not like “being a good person” is. But that attitude is completely contrary to Christ’s words in the Gospels, and to the self-understanding of the Apostolic Church.

If we are scared to proclaim Christ, it could be because we’re starting in the wrong place, thinking about how we’ll defend all the controversial teachings of the Church on the moral life, or how we’ll prove that the Eucharist really is the Body and Blood of Christ. Newsflash: People don’t usually believe these things because someone proved it to them. They believe them because something opened their hearts to God’s grace, which the real source of Faith – not anyone’s clever arguments.

The starting point our world needs is God’s mercy. Our world masquerades as accepting and tolerant, but in the end it is more often cruel. It is a world without forgiveness, without restoration, without reconciliation. Countless times I’ve worked with converts to the Catholic faith who are over-awed and over-joyed at a simple fact that we so often take for granted: I can be forgiven. At once, the darkest and most sorrowful corners of their lives flash before their eyes, the Evil One having whispered in their ears for so long that their sins define them, but a glorious light is already breaking through: “I can be forgiven.”

The unchurched don’t have many objections to Confession. They don’t need a lot of arguments about why there needs to be a priest, or why they can’t just tell God in their hearts, or why they need to do a penance. They are more often scandalized that the penances aren’t harsher. They know instinctually that if it’s true that forgiveness is real, there has to be a concrete manifestation of that so it’s not just an empty promise. We think it’s tough to share the beauty of the Catholic faith, but we have so much that the world is starving for, that no one else has!

Your non-church-going neighbor is not Richard Dawkins (the world’s most famous atheist). He does not expect you to have fine-tuned philosophical arguments. To live in a world in which more and more people do not know the story of Christ is challenging, but it is also exciting! To be the one to share the story of Christ, to cry and pray with the person who hears for the first time that sins can be forgiven, is a joy without measure. Even Richard Dawkins, who has spent decades trying to convince people God doesn’t exist, recently declared himself a “cultural Christian,” recognizing that the faultline of our civilization is no longer between enlightened atheism and backwards Christianity. (As a friend of mine remarked, having your first grandson named Mohammed changes your perspective.)

But even if your neighbor is Richard Dawkins – the old, aggressively atheist Richard Dawkins – there is still hope. My college fraternity brother, Joe, was a true atheist. Not an uncommitted agnostic, but a real atheist. He was also the angriest person I have ever known. Just mentioning religion sent him into a rage. Joe sent me a message a few years ago, sharing that his life had been turned upside down. He met an amazing woman who completely captured his heart, but who wanted to live and date in a different way than he ever had. Now, the anger and resentment are gone. He has peace. He’s a loving and good husband and father. And he’s Catholic – a Catholic who believes that as amazing as that woman whose love changed his life really is, God’s love is even stronger, and His friendship is even greater.

The difference between me and Joe’s wife is that I had arguments, and she loved him. Of course, someone had to answer those questions he had, someone had to show him how it is intellectually consistent to believe that God made the world, loves it, and suffering and evil still happen. But none of that meant anything until his heart was converted by love.

Last week, Pew Research released a study showing that for the first time in a long while, a growing share of people say that religion is gaining influence in American life. It’s not a majority, but maybe things are turning around. There are other indications too that more people are seeking. What will be proposed to them? As it currently stands, because of our fears, they are more likely to be reached by a brand of Christianity that at its core is little more than American consumerism and individualism dressed up in Christian language.

But what if they were presented with the real thing? What if they could hear that forgiveness of sins is real, and that Christ instituted a concrete way for that forgiveness to be received in their lives? That will only happen if you are more the repentant tax collector than the righteous Pharisee, if you open your heart to being converted by Christ’s mercy, so that through you too, “the proclamation might be completed and all the [world] might hear it.”

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

XXX Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXV