Assurance of Salvation

BASIC R.C.BELIEF

   Assurance of salvation is presumption, by which one expects God to do things He does not will to do. This is a mortal sin. From WHAT EXTREME UNCTION DOES FOR THE SICK by E.F. Miller, C.SS.R., "I am not so proud as to believe that the legs of my soul are stout enough merely through the training I have given them to carry me over the last peaks that stand between me and eternity. I may be scared out of my wits by the prospect of standing all alone (I'm sure there won't be anyone to lean upon or hide behind) before his royal majesty the King of Heaven. His eyes will search out every corner of my soul, looking for the cobwebs of sin that I may not have been sufficiently careful to pull down."

   A very complimentary article in THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER stated of Cardinal Krol, "He doesn't have to worry about food, clothing, shelter. What are his worries? `My salvation, getting to Heaven' says the Prelate."

   A prayer card issued by Mother of the Savior Seminary, Blackwood, NJ lists the things necessary for salvation:
1. Belief in God
2. Hope in God
3. Love God
4. Being sorry for offending God
5. Adoring God
6. Aspiring after God
7. Thanking God
8. Calling upon God
9. Being led, restrained, comforted and defended by God
10. Consecrating all thoughts, words, actions and sufferings to God.
11. Referring all actions to God's Glory
12. Suffering whatever God appoints
13. Desiring God's will
14. Having understanding enlightened, will inflamed, body purified and soul sanctified
15. Expiating offences, overcoming temptations, subduing passions, acquiring virtues
16. Loving God's goodness, hating my faults, loving my neighbor, having contempt for the world.
17. Being submissive to superiors, courteous to inferiors, faithful to friends and charitable to enemies
18. Overcoming sensuality, avarice, anger and tepidity
19. Being prudent, courageous, patient and humble
20. Being attentive at prayer; temperate at meals; diligent in employment; constant in resolutions
21. Having a pure conscience, being modest, letting conversation be edifying and deportment regular
22. Laboring to overcome nature, working with God's Grace, keeping His commandments and working out my salvation
23. Seeing the nothingness of this world, the greatness of heaven, the shortness of time and the length of eternity
24. Preparing for death, fearing God's judgments, thereby to escape hell and in the end obtain salvation.

POST VATICAN II    From HANDBOOK FOR TODAY'S CATHOLIC, A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication, Imp. John Wurm, Vicar General of St. Louis, 1978, page 31ff. "Your Baptism ...binds you to God forever. The bond is unbreakable...You are marked as one of God's own... Confirmation is the sacrament by which those born anew in Baptism receive the seal of the Holy Spirit...As Saint Paul wrote to the Christians of Ephesus, `In him you also...were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance...' (Editor - now having received an unbreakable bond and a seal which is our guarantee, we go to the next paragraph.)

   "When a person turns aside or away from, God's love, the harm is to the sinner. Venial sin strains one's (sic) relationship with God. Mortal sin ruptures the relationship.
   Ibid, page 36. "As often as the Sacrifice of the Cross is celebrated on an altar, the work of our redemption is carried on.
   Ibid., page 37. "If your basic love-choice at the moment of death was the absolute Good whom we call God, God remains your eternal possession. This eternal possession is called heaven.
   "If your ultimate love-choice at the moment of death was anything less than God, you experience the radical emptiness of not possessing the absolute Good. This eternal loss is called hell.
   "If you die in the love of God but possess any `stains of sin,' such stains are cleansed away in a purifying process called purgatory."

   On his 80th birthday, the late Pope Paul VI said, "Death holds motives for apprehensive concern by reason of the imminent judgment of God."

   A recent study by the Knights of Columbus has the following: "To the question, `Are you redeemed?' we may all answer `Yes.' To the question, `Are you saved?' there is no answer. Salvation in this sense means being assured of a place in Heaven. Man has always wanted to be sure of that; but neither faith, nor `conversion', nor anything in the ordinary course of events can give him that answer. Only after being judged by God will he know whether he has been found worthy of Heaven."

   During a January 6, 1991 debate between Priest Mitchell Packwa and James White, when asked if a Roman Catholic could know positively that he was going to Heaven, Packwa's reply was "only if he had a direct divine revelation." James White held up his Bible and said, "We do have a direct divine revelation."

CHRISTIAN COMMENT

   A Christian has assurance because he is scripturally grounded in the perfect work of Jesus Christ as his salvation (I Jn 5:13; I Thes. 1:5).

See tract, We Will be Saved I Hope

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