The author who recently visited India 29 March 2002 . In it he reflects in the context of worship on the universal significance and value for the redemption by Jesus Christ.
The chronicles of the time describe with a wealth of detail the moment when, watched by Pope Sixtus V, the obelisk was raised in St Peter's square. Each year, on this day, we Christians relive the moment when the true obelisk was planted at the heart of the Church, the main-mast of the barque of Peter, marking the spot on which all things are centred: the Cross.
Let us turn our thoughts to a word that Jesus said about his own cross. John 12:32: "And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself." This is a key to the understanding of the mystery, given us in advance by Jesus himself, or - which for us would carry the same weight - by the Holy Spirit who inspired the evangelist to write the words.
But no sooner has one repeated the words than an objection rises. Twenty centuries have passed since that day, Lord, and it does not look as though you have drawn all people to yourself. Such a great part of humankind does not even know of you yet! This is why we sometimes hear Christian prayer tinged with disappointment: "Up to now, Lord, we have not seen you draw all people to yourself, so we ask you, please hurry the day when you will truly draw them all to you."
Yet, are we sure that we have looked and seen rightly? Jesus was not expressing a pious desire that still had to wait upon its fulfillment. It was always fulfilled, from the moment when he was lifted up from the earth. Who of us can know the infinite ways by which Christ crucified draws all people to himself?
One is the way of human suffering. "Ours were the sufferings he ?ore" (Is a 53:4). Once Christ has taken it upon himself and redeemed It, suffering itself becomes, in its own special way, a universal sacrament of salvation. Universal, because it knows no distinctions, whether between first and third world, northern hemisphere or southern; we find suffering at every spot on the globe.
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He who descended into the waters of the Jordan Col 1:24 ).
Christ has another way to draw an people to himself: he draws them ... towards others. Towards the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned, strangers, those hounded by unjust systems, the defenseless "You did it to me" (Mt 25:40). Neither is this way confined to believers only. The Council states that "the Holy Spirit gives to everyone the possibility of getting in touch with the Paschal Mystery, in ways known to God."2 How this comes about, only God knows, but that it does come about we too know if we grasp the meaning of Christ's words.
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But now we come to the more pressing question. Can we say that there is yet another way in which Christ draws people to himself, and that is by means of all that is true and valid in other religions? The Council and the magisterium have not ruled out this possibility, and it has now become an active focus of theology.
The tendency today is to recognise in God's plan for salvation the special dignity and active role of other religions as expressions of the inexhaustible richness of his grace and of his will for "everyone to be saved" (1 Tim 2:4). The Council (in the decree Nostra Aetate) drew in clear relief the elements of good in certain of the great religions. Christians and bishops too who live in daily and direct contact with the great religions bear witness to their benefit to millions and to the prayer and profound spiritual life they foster in their adherents.
Now it is clear that God does not merely "tolerate" what is good; rather he "wants" it and uses it. Of course, the positive role they fulfill is understood in the traditional sense of "a preparation for the Gospel"(praeparatio evangelica), that is, till people reach the point where in conscience they recognize the truth in Christ and the need to join his Church. Some ancient Fathers saw the religious philosophy of the Greeks as analogous to the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament, which was certainly positive and "willed " by God in spite of its imperfections and the morally unacceptable elements within it.
The crucial point is to know whether, acknowledging that world religions possess their own proper dignity, we are obliged to detach them from Christ Incarnate and from his Paschal mystery. Some think so, and they would view all that is good and true in other faiths in relation to the eternal Word and the Spirit of God. They argue that, as persons of the Trinity, the Word and the Spirit were at work in the world before the coming of Christ and continue to work after his resurrection, not in dependence upon the mystery of Christ but in a way parallel to it, in a relationship of complementarity, not of subordination.
But the question we need to ask is this: in order to accord to other religions a positive role in the order of salvation, is it necessary to hold that they are not linked to Christ's Paschal mystery, or is it possible to arrive at the same result while holding that they are related to it?
"Christ's Incarnation, as a particular event, takes place within the confines of space and time, and so cannot convey all the infinite potentialities of God and his Word." That is true, but it can convey enough of those potentialities to bring about the salvation of a world which itself is finite! If we believe that the blood shed on the cross is the blood of God made man, we will find it no exaggeration to say, "one single drop of it is able to save the whole world": euius una stil/a salvum faeere forum mundum quit ab omni seelere.3
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We should think very carefully, therefore, before we arrive at a conclusion in a matter of such immense importance. A hundred years ago there was 'a philosopher who proclaimed, "God is dead. We have killed him!" And as if taking account of the consequences of the fact, he Went on immediately to write, "What did we do when we broke the link between this earth and its sun? In what direction will it be moving now? Far from any sun? Will we not now always be falling? Backwards sideways, forwards, whatever way?"4 Let us be careful not to make the same mistake, breaking the link between a huge part of humanity and Christ, its sun.
During the Jansenist controversy, it was the fashion to make crucifixes with the arms close together, up in line with the body, greatly narrowing down the space between them. That was done to signify that Christ had not died for everyone, but only for the small number of the elect and predestined, a pessimistic view and one that the Church was at pains to reject. Let us not go back to narrow-armed crucifixes. Let us stay with the cross, arms wide outstretched to embrace the whole world. Let us keep to the cosmic dimension of what Christ did on Calvary . What was celebrated on Golgotha on the first Good Friday: and what we celebrate every year on this day, is in very truth a "Mass over the world."
One thing is certain, and it ought to be the starting-point of every Christian theology of religions: Christ gave his life for love of every human being without exception, because his Father created them all and all are his brothers and sisters. He drew no distinctions.
The greatest wrong in cutting off the greater part of humanity from Christ would be the wrong done not to Christ or the Church, but to humanity itself. It is not possible to take as our standpoint that "Christ is God's supreme, definitive, and normative offering of salvation to the world" without acknowledging that that itself obliges us Christians to recognise that everyone has the right to benefit by this salvation (a right as in relation to human beings, not to God, for we do not merit salvation; it is God's free gift freely offered to all). Would it perhaps be easier for the other religions to acknowledge that Christianity is superior rather than that it is unique? Could we think they would find it easier to see themselves as dependent on the Word and the Spirit (that is, on the Trinity, an idea utterly strange to them), rather than as dependent on Christ and his Paschal mystery?
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Some may ask whether it is realistic to carryon believing in a mysterious presence and influence of Christ in religions that existed before him and that feel no need whatever, after twenty centuries, to
accept his Gospel. The Bible gives us a key that can help us answer this objection: the humility of God, the hiddenness of God. "Truly you are a hidden God, the God ofIsrael, the saviour": Vere tu es Deus absconditus (lsa 45: 15, Vulgate).
God is humble when he creates. He does not put his label on everything as we do. We do not see "Made by God" on his creatures. He leaves creatures to discover that for themselves. There is truth in what the poet H61derlin says: "God creates the world like the ocean makes the continents: by withdrawing." How much time had to pass before people discovered to whom they owed their existence, who it was that created heavens and earth? How much longer must we wait before everyone will have acknowledged it? Does God cease for that to be the creator of all? Does his sun cease to shine on those who do not know it as much as on those who do?
The same applies to redemption by Christ. God is humble in creating, and he is humble in saving. Christ is more concerned that all people should be saved than that they should know who is their Saviour. In the Eucharist too, Christ is the hidden God, latens deitas.5 At the moment when we pass from faith to vision, the greatest wonder will be to discover not God's omnipotence, but his humility.
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On this day, when God hid himself most profoundly on the cross, let us "hold firmly to the faith we profess." As the second reading urges us to do (Heb 4: 14 ), let us proclaim, with John, "He is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world's" (1 Jn 2:2).
In the first three chapters of the Letter to the Romans, after he had described the desperate situation of the Jews and the Greeks (that is, of all humankind), prey to sin and subject to God's wrath, in the third chapter St Paul has the unheard-of courage to say that this situation is now radically changed because of one man who "was appointed by God to sacrifice his life so as to win reconciliation" (Rom 3:25 ). Why did the Apostle call Christ "the new Adam" (Rom 5:12 -19), and why did Luke put Adam rather than Abraham at the beginning of his genealogy, if not to affirm that Christ is the head and origin, not of this or that nation, but of all humankind?
"One man has died for all" (2 Cor 5:14 ). "By one man's obedience many (that is, all) will be made righteous" (Rom 2: 19 ). The courage that we need today to believe in the universality of redemption in Christ is 'nothing compared to the courage that was necessary then.
There is a psalm that says of Zion Tyre , Ethiopia Calvary . There all of us were born. So it is that the rites of Good Friday breathe a 'Quality so all-embracing. In the "Universal Prayer" we pray for all the people of the world, because we believe that Christ died for them all.
Christ's command therefore retains its binding force: "Go out to the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation" (Mk 16:15 ). The mission to the nations remains open, which would have no point if the Gospel were not meant for all nations. We need only to progress beyond a negative motive to a positive one. We must not reach out thinking that if they do not know Christ and the Gospel the nations will not be saved; we need to go, rather, with the longing to share with all people the immense gift that Christ is to the world.
Religious pluralism does not imply that we hold all religions equally "true" (that would be relativism and is rejected by all religions), but that we accord to everyone the right to follow the religion they hold in conscience to be true and to propagate it in ways that are peaceful and worthy of a religion. "With courtesy and respect," as Peter's first letter recommends to Christians (3:15 ) and, we can add, in the spirit of the Assisi
Our chief concern should be not so much about the salvation of those who do not know Christ, as about the salvation of those who do know him but live as though they had never known him, caring nothing about God or their soul or anything else. To those people the Church addresses her pressing plea today: "Be reconciled to God. Brother, sister, come back. Between those outstretched arms there is a place for YOU too!"
Let us end with a prayer: "Lord, we ask you, please, continue to draw all people to yourself, those who know you and those who don't. May your Holy Spirit, by ways that you alone know, continue to bring everyone into touch with your Paschal mystery of death and resurrection. Hear us, Lord! Please hear us!
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