“Are you saved?”
Not sure… maybe? How do you respond to this when Protestants ask you, “Are you saved?”
You respond, “Yes. Saved by grace.” Well, if you want to just end the conversation early, that’s a good thing to say. “Yes, I have been saved. Jesus Christ is my Lord and personal Savior.”
But have we been saved? That’s not actually a question that has an easy answer. Because we may or may not know this, but there are things that could jeopardize our salvation. Does anybody know what could jeopardize our salvation? Mortal sin. And what else? Sloth. Blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. And that really means not turning to God, not acknowledging our sins, and not believing that if we acknowledge our sins, God can forgive us. So that’s the unforgivable sin that is in the Bible.
Our salvation could be jeopardized. And that’s where it gets a little bit nuanced to simply say, “I am saved.” What would be a better response? Or what would be a more accurate response than that?
“I’m working on it.”
That’s very good. Who said that?
“And hoping.”
All right—you’re getting all my homily points already.
“I’m working on it. I’m hoping.” That’s really good.
Here in the first reading today from the prophet Isaiah, he’s prophesying that the Lord will come with vindication, with divine recompense. He comes to save you. That’s an interesting word, “recompense,” because it sounds like he’s going to repay you, right? If we do horrible things in this life, God is going to punish us. And if we do good things in this life, God is going to bless us.
But the Hebrew word for recompense actually means something a little different. The meaning is that God is going to bring his salvation. He’s going to repay us for the sin that we have endured. From our very fallen nature, from the sin of Adam and Eve, we have experienced the impact of sin—and God wants to save us.
I would say there are probably three things that we can say about salvation:
I have been saved.
I am being saved.
And I hope to be saved.
So you guys already got like an A‑plus in this homily.
What do I mean by that?
First: “I have been saved.” St. Paul, in his letter to Titus, says this: “He saved us, not because of any righteous deeds we had done, but because of his mercy, through the bath of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
We as Catholics, in a special way, have been saved. What are the two sacraments that allow us to know that we have been saved? Baptism. Confirmation. That’s what we heard at the end of that phrase, “Through the bath of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit.” We have been saved from the moment of our baptism and our confirmation. So you could say, yes, I have been saved.
What does it mean, then, to say, “I am being saved”?
St. Paul says to the Corinthians, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” St. Paul acknowledges that we are being saved.
How are we being saved right now, sacramentally? Eucharist—right? When we come to Mass and we receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Savior, we are being saved right now in this present moment.
What’s another sacrament? Reconciliation. Every time we enter the confessional, if we do have a mortal sin and we confess that to God before his priest, we are being saved in that moment.
What would be the third one? Anointing of the Sick. When we are given that sacrament, we are being saved. We are being healed—body, mind, soul, and spirit.
So we can say, “I am being saved.”
And then finally: “I hope to be saved.” Romans 8:24–25 says this: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.”
We can hope in salvation. We ought to hope in salvation. What that means is that we are hoping that by the very moment of our death, we will have turned away—converted our life—from anything that would keep us from his salvation. And we are also hoping in the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So that’s the proper response:
I have been saved.
I am being saved.
And I hope to be saved.
We come to this Third Sunday of Advent. That’s what we are desiring right now. We are hoping for salvation. As we light this third candle on the Advent wreath—the rose candle—it’s symbolic of this hope. It’s symbolic of this joy of what God is doing in our lives.
It’s important for us to acknowledge: Is there anything I’m doing in my life right now that could jeopardize my salvation? If there is, God gives us a way. He gives us a way right now—to be saved, to acknowledge, to repent, and to turn toward him.
The next time you are asked, “Are you saved?” If you don’t want the easy way out, you can say, “I have been saved. I am being saved. And I hope to be saved.”
And let us take a moment, just after this homily, to reflect on that for ourselves: how we have been saved, how we are being saved, and how we hope to be saved.
