An increasingly significant theological topic is the idea of Universal Salvation, i.e., that Jesus Christ’s Incarnation and Paschal Mystery occurred for the salvation of each and every person on Earth, past, present and yet to come. This increase can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that we are an increasingly diverse, mobile, and mixed-in society. Less and less do we live in any sort of ethnic or religiously homogenous neighborhood, except by choice. Catholics marry spouses of other religions or even no religious faith. We have extended families who’s members we love and, so, we don’t really want anyone we know and love – like us or not – to be excluded from Salvation. (Don’t you want Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi in Heaven?) Thus, because we have come to love outside of our religious and ethnic circles, it has become the perceived Will of God that “everyone be saved,” in the sense of final, heavenly salvation. What are the consequences of this idea? One is that whatever has been meant by “Hell” or “Eternal Damnation” is likely “empty” concept. People who are good, loving, full of hope and who have “a hunger and thirst for justice” (Matthew 5:6) are attracted to this idea. Others who hunger and thirst for a familiar and preferred sense of “fairness” rather than for “divine mercy and justice” may be disappointed at the absence of eternal punishment for temporal crimes. But, this even means that the great villains of history – characters like the Greek King Antiochus IV who persecuted the Jews in the time of the Maccabean Revolts, and the Roman Emperor Caligula, and the Barbarian Attila the Hun, and Adolf Hitler and even the current infamous purveyors of destruction and death today – Universal Salvation means that God still holds out the offer of Salvation even to them! This frightens, irritates, maddens, destabilizes and tempts us sometimes. By “us” I mean we who spend some conscientious portion of our ordinary lives trying to live the Gospel. By “us” I mean we who have suffered loss at the hands of evil doers like terrorists, and irresponsible Wall Street financiers, oil companies and others who ravage our environment and subvert the lives and occupations of thousands and millions. By “us” I mean we who take comfort in our own righteousness, who participate at Mass regularly and receive the Sacraments and pray for peace. By “us” I mean we who seek not only the capture and imprisonment of criminals like drug dealers and smugglers, like child abusers and traffickers in human slavery, like political leaders who betray the public trust and cost our society money better used for education, health care and assistance to those in need. Sometimes we go beyond a desire for divine justice and mercy, and seek nothing less than cold, heartless revenge. Many of us harbor a fair amount of hated when we see and wrestle with tremendous evil in life even as we profess to embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Frankly, this is not because we are essentially bad people; rather, both our intellectual and emotional abilities simply cannot cope effectively with the problem of encountering overwhelming evil at such a large, outrageous and destructive scale. Our powerlessness tells us to try to destroy that evil by imitating evil in turn. We are accustomed to applying the Gospel in rather intimate and personal scales. Global Gospel engagement is a fairly new, and as yet, unmanageable, idea for most of us. Large scale evil overwhelms our critical and emotional abilities. It provokes us to an urgent, vengeful anger, rather than to a more important intelligent reflection and long term wisdom. Pain provokes and incites us. Serious pain provokes and incites us more intensely, but often the provocation is really to revenge disguised as wisdom. This makes us Gospel losers.

But, that ought not stop us from hoping and recognizing that God’s Goodness is sufficiently large to overwhelm in turn any and all overwhelming evil we have had to witness. Somehow God is bigger than, larger than, more loving than, more glorious than all evil and tragedy possible in the world. So, today’s first reading from Isaiah is really right on target. The setting in which the author (whom we call Trito- or 3^rd Isaiah) announced today’s message was a generation or two after the freeing of the Jews of the Babylonian Captivity, i.e., after the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great had freed them and begun to send them back to Palestine to restore, rebuild and renew Judaism. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (587/6 BC) had been in the Jewish religious imagination the veritable End-of-the-World as they knew it. Nothing worse had been imaginable. They thought that God had abandoned them and that there could be no possible improvement. Only with time and effort did they reconcile to reality, and only then, did things begin to improve. However, upon freedom, Jerusalem and it’s rebuilt Temple took on a new and global importance. Today’s text predicts and looks forward to a time when not only Jews, but also Gentiles, would come to Jerusalem to seek the God of Israel. Trito-Isaiah even predicted that God would initiate these pilgrim Gentiles into the priestliness of the Chosen People Israel. There would be then a “New Israel.” Some five centuries later, some New Testament authors will use that label for the Church, including both Jews and Gentiles. Today, we embrace this ideal as a practical and important purpose in announcing the Gospel as a way of life and hope for everyone! Hence, Universal Salvation is our normal, balanced, healthy Gospel expectation!

Today’s Gospel text likewise provoke’s Jesus’ Jewish audience and challenges their presumption of implicit superiority over Gentiles. Jesus labels his audience – we can presume they were his disciples, and generally faithful Jews – as “evil doers.” That must surely have stung them! The same might, however, be labeled at us on those occasions when we choose to be complacent and comfortable in our Gospel faith instead of stretching to meet new challenges and trials. We live no longer in the 20^th Century (nor in any earlier century!), so we must live religiously, intellectually, politically, economically and socially in the 21^st Century! Our Gospel faith must become and be a 21^st Century Christian faith. Our vocabulary must be 21^st Century Christian vocabulary. Our social customs and mores must be 21^st Christian Century social customs and mores. Our ideas of God and spirituality must fit in with, console and challenge our 21^st Century ways of life. To do anything less than this is to pretend to live in the past. Only children at play can afford to do that. Don’t we want 21^st Century health care? Don’t we want 21^st Century appliances and automobiles and opportunities? Would we rather return to farming for a livelihood by following a plow pulled by mules and sowing seed by hand? I hope you are answering appropriately to each of these questions. If you admit to being and engaging life in the 21^st Christian Century, then you must also embrace 21^st Christian Century Gospel insights which are continuous with, but evolving from, all previous centuries. Our religious language, images, practices, values, hopes and loves must be of today, not mere imitation of long ago. We must discover how to rephrase some of our profound Christian mysteries in modern, local living language, and we must imagine and relate to a 21^st Century image, scope and scale of the Divine Mystery. We must practice Gospel Charity in modern terms. We must pray as we engage modern life – as modern believers. This is imperative! We must ... we must ... we must! Or we shall fail to hear the message in Jesus’ Gospel: engage life to the full!

The second lesson today from the Letter to the Hebrews (i.e., Jewish Christians of the late 1^st Christian Century) is an exhortation (an encouraging challenge) to accept the wisdom of discipline. Discipline does not always mean “punishment” as it is sometimes used. It first means “teaching” or “instruction.” And while learning or instruction can seem or feel painful, it is really the path to true Wisdom, God’s Holy Spirit. The meaning of the final lines are important: change your attitude, dream large dreams, have tremendous hope in the Gospel. Engage life fully, even if it is a bit frightening! After all, we have the God who repeatedly restored the holy people to new opportunities, to new abilities and to new hope! God has hope in us! Let us have hope in God and the Gospel, too!