Surely, at least once in our life, we have been asked “Have you been saved?” (or “Are you saved?” as the variant) by Protestants (like Born Again ‘Christians’, Mormons, Iglesia ni Cristo (ni Manalo), or Dating Daan (ni Soriano) members here in the Philippines). I have, even as early as a child, by playmates, and from different people that goes on to adulthood. When they tell you these words, it always sounded with some contempt for the Catholic Church. For a lot of Catholics, they don’t know how to answer. Before, I failed answering them too. And they would get excited for my failure of answer, and say to me like “I was a Catholic, but I got saved!’, and then unrelated things like ‘Only Jesus saves, and we don’t worship saints!’ ‘You’re not Born Again!’ ‘Jesus didn’t like organized religions!’ ‘God has no religion! (usually claimed by Born Again people)’ ‘In the Bible, it’s written that only those in Iglesia ni Cristo would be saved!’ or worst, ‘I’m a Christian’ as if I WASN’T a Christian, or ONLY THEM was a Christian.
How then you would answer them?
“I have been saved, I am working to be saved, I hope to be saved when I die, and be saved on the Final Judgment on the Second Coming of Christ.”
I have been saved
- We Catholics are also Born Again when we received the Sacrament of Baptism.
- “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” (1 Peter 3:21)
- Because of the Fall of Man, by Adam’s choice and disobedience to God, along with Eve, after being tempted by the serpent, Original Sin is inherited by humankind. He was given by God dominion over all creatures, except for one command which was not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. His choice to sin was a ‘fall’ from grace. Sin is rooted in man’s preference for himself over God. He chose himself over God so he could be like God, (Genesis 3:5). It has then brought sin into the world, as humanity loses its innocence of good and evil. When our first parents have been aware of sin and its seduction, people have become susceptible to sin, the soul weakened, which leads to continuation in sinning.
- After them, those who lived prior to Jesus Christ, humanity couldn’t go to heaven anymore. Everyone, including Adam and Eve, or even Abraham, were in “hell”.
- God sent His only Son, Jesus, for the atonement of our sins. By His death and Resurrection, Jesus opened heaven (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1026). We can now enter heaven once more. When ‘He descended to the dead.’, He took many souls of the just with Him to heaven. Adam and Eve, who are now in heaven, and our now saints. Adam ascended into Heaven in body and in soul with Our Lord on Ascension Thursday, forty days after Easter. Adam’s feast is the vigil of Christmas, which is also the feast of Eve, his wife, who is with him in Heaven.
Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell”— Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek—because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him. (CCC 633)
- Salvation is only in the Catholic Church. Only heretics say that there is in other churches or religions, sects or cults. And through Baptism, we are now part of the Church, so we are ‘saved’.
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| Baptism. |
I am working to be saved
- But it doesn’t end in Baptism. Protestants claim ‘If you accept Jesus as your Saviour, you are saved!’ When a person, even throughout his life up to his death, he didn’t receive the Sacraments, he didn’t live a good life for the Church, he didn’t feel sorrow for his sins and didn’t reconcile with God by confessing them to a priest, Protestants say that ‘simply accept Jesus as your Savior’ at one point in your life, you are saved. These are all evil lies. Salvation is not a one-shot deal. Salvation is a process. Salvation is something we are working on throughout our lifetime. “…work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12)
- If we believe in Protestants, there would not be any sense for almsgiving, to do good works to the needy, to make sacrifices and for hardships in doing morality, to stay in the path of truth, and sufferings would have no meaning. But these are their lies. We’re all seeing each other in heaven, anyway, just believing Jesus is Lord. That’s why Protestants like Born Again ‘Christians’ hate sufferings. They hate Holy Week and abstinence, or fasting. They really hate to hear the suffering and the Passion and Death of Jesus, but they celebrate with Catholics on Christmas (because they want gifts and holidays). They are enjoying themselves especially on Good Fridays in outings and eating. How cruel it is to Jesus not to value everything He’s done for us that leads to triumph over death and His Resurrection!
- The Saints and Martyrs who sacrificed and suffered to live holy lives, by taking care of different sorts of poor people, facing prosecutions, leaving their comfortable lives to offer their deeds to God, and all of them tried their best to stay true to the Sacraments by receiving them constantly. If we believe the Protestants, then poor us who as Catholics are striving to be saints and carrying our Cross, and lucky for them who just live their hedonistic lives enjoying… as we’re all seeing each other in heaven! But these are again, all their lies. We need to share a Christ’s passion and carry our own crosses in order to get merits for entering heaven.
- The 7 Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Confession, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony are all instituted by Christ 2000 years ago. We must receive them throughout our life to be saved. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “the seven sacraments touch all the stages and all important moments of the Christian life” (CCC 1210). The sacraments are “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us” (CCC 1131). In other words, a sacrament is a sacred and visible sign that is instituted by Jesus to give us grace, an undeserved gift from God. (check for CCC 1084). Jesus was present when He instituted them, and He is present each time they are celebrated. Through the Sacraments, we receive Grace, which will then help us lead a good life in this world and help save us for the Kingdom of Heaven. “For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” (Romans 11:13)
- For us to receive the Sacraments, we have to be in the Catholic Church. Like I’ve said, there’s no salvation outside the Church.
- We can’t be saved by good works alone. You can’t just live ‘a good life’ like atheists or agnostics say. That is called Pelagianism, which says that we are saved by our own good deeds, acts, prayers alone. And these are lies or heresies.
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| Jesus institutes the Sacraments. |
I hope to be saved when I die and on the Final Judgment on the Second Coming of Christ
- When we die, according to our Dogma, each of us faces a Particular Judgment – particular because judgment is particular to each person. His soul separates from the body. Either we go to Heaven, Purgatory, Hell. There will be an account of our lives – the good we have done and the sins we have committed. If a person is free of sin and of hurt caused by sin, he goes to Heaven and enjoys a beatific vision of seeing God face-to-face. If a person dies with mortal sins, and not remorseful for them, rejecting God, he goes to Hell – and his firm rejection of God continues up to his next life. If a person died with venial sins, out of mercy and love of God, He sends the soul to Purgatory, where the soul gets healed and purged, to be unblemished and worthy. When the soul finishes his healing and purgation, he then will go to Heaven. The Catechism says “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of Heaven– through purification or immediately, – or immediate and everlasting damnation” (CCC 1022). The existence of Purgatory is never believed by Protestants. It would be my another topic some time. Don’t get convinced that they are not in the Bible, because they are, and some mystics and saints were taken there and had visions of it. This proves again that just ‘accepting Jesus as your Saviour’ are plainly lies created by Protestants. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. (Matthew 7:21) It says ‘does’ and not ‘believe’.
- In the Final Judgment, or General Judgment, our Lord Jesus Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. “And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation. I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.” (John 5:27-30) This judgment is now not for individual only, but as a member of the society, and now as a whole community of mankind. Those who have died and have been judged, they will remain either in Heaven or Hell. Those who have not yet died would be judged to go to Heaven or Hell. After the Final Judgment, only Heaven and Hell will exist. Those awaiting in Purgatory have already finished purging, and can already enter Heaven. Like the Catechism teaches, “In the presence of Christ, who is Truth itself, the truth of each man’s relationship with God will be laid bare. The Last Judgment will reveal even to its furthest consequences the good each person has done or failed to do during his earthly life” (CCC 1039). This makes it even clearer that we are still working on our salvation.
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| The Second Coming of Christ. |
Until we die, strictly speaking, we are not certain we are saved. With the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the gates of Heaven has been opened to us again. He gives us the hope of salvation. But we need to be faithful Catholics for us to be entitled to enter, because Salvation occurs when we die. It is not absolutely guaranteed whether we would be saved or not, because of the conditions above, unlike the lies of the Protestants.
I’d like to end with Psalm 12, of the Liturgy of the Hours in the Office of Readings for this day, which have reminded me to discuss this.
Help, O Lord, for good men have vanished:
truth has gone from the sons of men.
Falsehood they speak one to another,
with lying lips, with a false heart.
May the Lord destroy all lying lips,
the tongue that speaks high sounding words,
those who say: “Our tongue is our strength;
our lips are our own, who is our master?”
“For the poor who are oppressed and the needy who groan
I myself will arise,” says the Lord.
“I will grant them the salvation for which they thirst.”
The words of the Lord are words without alloy,
silver from the furnace, seven times refined.
It is you, O Lord, who will take us in your care
and protect us for ever from this generation.
See how the wicked prowl on every side,
while the worthless are prized highly by the sons of men.
***
We know now where the liars would be. I hope to see you in Heaven someday, my brothers and sisters in Christ, with all the angels and saints.
She is the Author of The Best Catholic website. As an experienced Digital Artist and Graphic Designer, she is passionate about creating and appreciating art, having focused on these fields these last few years. She also owns a couple of small businesses.
She graduated cum laude from the University of Santo Tomas, the country's Pontifical and Catholic university, with an AB in Legal Management and minor units in Theology.
As an unmarried woman, prayer holds a central place in her daily life, with a focus on the Rosary and the Divine Office. Embodying her faith, she emphasizes the growth of her inner spiritual life, guided by the wisdom of Carmelite spirituality.
God manifested to her in a unique and radical manner, which made her know Who He truly is and led her to total surrender of her life to Him.
She has studied the Bible with her family, developing a particular fondness for the Old Testament.
Her adorable and intelligent toy poodle is a delightful companion in her daily life, bringing warmth and joy to her home.
Her hobbies include reading about everything, learning Japanese and German, listening to music and playing the flute.
In her leisure time, she enjoys gaming on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch OLED, Nintendo 3DS, iOS and OS, and collecting things related to PlayStation and Nintendo.
Email: [email protected]
Like 'The Best Catholic' on Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheBestCatholic
She graduated cum laude from the University of Santo Tomas, the country's Pontifical and Catholic university, with an AB in Legal Management and minor units in Theology.
As an unmarried woman, prayer holds a central place in her daily life, with a focus on the Rosary and the Divine Office. Embodying her faith, she emphasizes the growth of her inner spiritual life, guided by the wisdom of Carmelite spirituality.
God manifested to her in a unique and radical manner, which made her know Who He truly is and led her to total surrender of her life to Him.
She has studied the Bible with her family, developing a particular fondness for the Old Testament.
Her adorable and intelligent toy poodle is a delightful companion in her daily life, bringing warmth and joy to her home.
Her hobbies include reading about everything, learning Japanese and German, listening to music and playing the flute.
In her leisure time, she enjoys gaming on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch OLED, Nintendo 3DS, iOS and OS, and collecting things related to PlayStation and Nintendo.
Email: [email protected]
Like 'The Best Catholic' on Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheBestCatholic
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