Tag Archives: Divine Mercy

Death: Punishment or Consequence?

Throughout the Bible, God reveals Himself to us because of His desire for a loving relationship with each one of us. Sin is our rejection of this loving relationship that we enjoy with God.

St. Paul states, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 6:23) Here we see that death is a result of sin and is the opposite of eternal life in Christ. The connotation of ‘wages’ is that death is something that we earn; it stems from our choice.

Many read parts of the Old Testament and overlook God’s perpetual love; focusing on the repugnant gore and violence, they assign undue weight to the horrible things that happen to people. How could a God who is Love do or allow these horrible things to happen? If God really loves us, the thought goes, would He be so unrelenting and harsh? This theology considers death as a punishment. I suggest instead, and will explain below, that the result of sin (wages earned) is not punishment but rather consequence.

A definition of punishment is “the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense”, while consequence is “a result or effect of an action or condition”. If death is punishment, then it would come from God as a penalty for our misbehavior. As consequence, however, death does not come from God, but rather out of the nature of our not accepting the relationship of love that we enjoy with God. Spiritual death is the absence of a relationship with God- our not even acknowledging His existence. Physical death is a consequence of our existence in this material/physical world that is limited by space and time.

Sin – the rejection of God’s intended relationship of love – enters human reality in Genesis 3 with the depiction of Adam and Eve eating of the forbidden fruit. As portrayed in the Bible – Old Testament and New – God’s reaction to sin is one of protection for the sinner. God’s response in Gen 3:17-19 (and Gen 3:16) is clearly that God, in the aftermath of the sin, prepares humankind for life in this new reality that exists as a result of sin. He is not punishing Adam and Eve, but rather lovingly protecting them. God is forewarning them of the new reality that they have chosen; forewarned is forearmed! This understanding is consistent throughout all facets of the Old Testament including the psalms and narrative and prophecy and wisdom literature; it is also consistent throughout the New Testament.

Indeed the Bible, as an indicator of our relationship with God, is the story of our journey from the Garden of Eden through death/sin to redemption/eternal life in Christ as portrayed in Revelation.

In the Old Testament God is consistently the Good Shepherd tending His flock, perpetually bringing the outliers (sinners) back into the fold, i.e., a loving relationship. All it takes is our sincere repentance, which is a result of our acknowledging our true and happy relationship to God: that He is the Creator and we are the Created.

— Eric Wolf

Saint John Paul II

John Paul II’s papacy is noted for many things, yet two stand out for me as significant in his legacy to the Church. Saint John Paul IIToday as the liturgical date for canonization of our two recent popes is not without meaning – even irony –  for one of these.

First of all, who is John Paul? Saint John Paul was born Karol Jozef (Charles Joseph, in English) Wojtyla of Polish nationality in 1920. As an adolescent in Nazi-overrun Poland during World War II, Wojtyla lost close friends and got an up-close view of authoritarian and totalitarian government. As the only pope to serve from Polish ethnicity, John Paul was uniquely qualified in the role he took on in the first decade of his papacy to affirm the dignity of man and thereby assist in bringing on the demise of the atheist Soviet Union.

His Mercy Endures Forever…

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, proclaimed by John Paul in the Jubilee Year of 2000 to be permanently celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter; Psalm 118 is the Scriptural celebration of God’s Divine Mercy. John Paul’s proclamation was at the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska, the Apostle of Divine Mercy’, a 20th century Polish nun who received visions of Jesus and Divine Mercy. While John Paul was an ambassador or role model for divine mercy, no image would be more powerful that that of Saint John Paul meeting with his would-be assassin to forgive him. John Paul attributed his survival of the shooting to the intercession of the Blessed Mother.

Theology of the Body

Saint John Paul’s contribution to theology- the study of our relationship with God- comes from a series of 129 lectures given between 1979 and 1984. His Scripturally-based discourses focused on what it means to be human, created in the imago Dei, image and likeness of God. Anthropologically speaking, John Paul presented an integrated understanding of a human person – body, spirit, and soul. His vision means that if we truly see others, we can see God in each other; we can know God by truly seeing who one another is.

On a related note, Lectio Publishing has just released a new book whose author extends the concept of Theology of the Body – as John Paul himself suggested should be done – to explore the human stages of childbirth, impairment, and dying as spiritual signs pointing to our own human imago Dei. Discover more about this interesting and readable book on the Lectio website, and download an ePub excerpt.

Did You Know?

In the last blog I talked about Saint John XXIII as having rocked the Catholic world by convening Vatican Council II and the following pope- Paul VI as continuing the Council for three more sessions/years. When Pope Paul VI died in 1978, Cardinal Luciani was elected pope and took the names of his two predecessors signifying that he would continue in the ideas and work of the Second Vatican Council. This Pope John Paul I would be the last in a centuries-long line of Italian popes (at least until this writing!). We do not hear anything about John Paul I because he died a month after becoming pope. Cardinal Wojtyla was then elected pope, taking the name of John Paul II again continuing the tradition of Vatican II. John Paul I was one of the shortest papacies in history; John Paul II was the third-longest serving pope in history.

Interesting tidbit: according to John Allen, a reporter assigned to the Vatican, of the 268 popes in Catholic history, only 80 have been canonized, and prior to today, only seven had been canonized in the last 1,000 years!

And in memory of Saint John Paul, I give you his Scriptural mantra: Peace be with you!

— Eric Wolf