Q2. In the book “salt of the Earth” by our Pope (in the Forward), when asked how many ways are there to God, he said “as many as there are people”. My question is, can we go to God directly, without going through the Church (exclusive agent, using a secular term).

Dear Thirty Eight,

As indicated in my last email, the second way to understand your question above is this: Since there are so many different ways to approach and worship God, why does the Church expect people to do so INDIRECTLY through her, following her teachings and practices? Why, for example, do we need the sacrament of reconciliation? Why can’t I confess my sins DIRECTLY to God?

As far as man searching for and communicating with God, there is a general misconception that the direct way is always the better way. Well, a quick skim through the first few pages of the Scripture suggests otherwise.

God’s plan to save men, announced soon after Adam and Eve fell prey to Satan’s temptation (cf. Genesis 3:14 ff), was not for God to come to men’s rescue directly, beat up on Satan, and then march away like a hero with Adam and Eve on His back. Maybe that’s how a Hollywood script would put it, but not in the divine script that God wrote. What is in the divine script? It is revealed to us in the Protoevangelium (the first gosepel) in Genesis 3: God would send us a savior, who would be the woman’s offspring and through him Satan would be crushed – God’s salvific plan is anything but direct!

Furthermore, the savior whom God sent would be His Son. He is the MEDIATOR (1 Tim 2:5), the “ladder” connecting God and man (Genesis 28:12). Our relationship with God, as this important scriptural teaching suggests, is anything but direct. The Son’s “mediation” is needed; humanity and divinity need to be “connected” like a ladder connecting heaven and earth.

Not only that, the savior did not even come to us directly. Through incarnation, he adopted human nature and came to us in the form of a man through Mary. Why didn’t he just break into human history suddenly like a glamorous knight on a white horse? It would have been so much more “direct”. Isn’t this well within the power of God Who is omnipotent and almighty?

The fact of the matter is: God knows what is the best for us. What is the best according to human judgment and imagination is not necessarily so in God’s infinite and unfathomable wisdom. Therefore, He prepared and implemented His salvation plan in a way that would be the best and most effective for us. Included in this plan are not only “indirect” personalities like the Mediator and the “woman”, but also the Church. God’s plan to save us through the Church was made known to us not only in the New Testament (Matthew 16:18 comes to mind), but also in the Old Testament. The Church is prefigured and foretold in various OT images: the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, the Jerusalem Temple, the nation of Israel, the Davidic Kingdom - just to name a few.

More than just a place to gather and worship, the Church is a unified teaching office, a “spiritual house” or Holy Temple where we, God’s “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own” come together “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-9); she is, above all, the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27). This is no human imagination, no metaphor. By virtue of our baptism into the Church, we become truly and literally part of the Body of Christ!

Out of the same infinite and divine wisdom, the Sacraments as instituted by Jesus himself, the priests, the bishops, the Pope, and the whole Church hierarchy that traces its origin to the apostles and the early Church were given to us for our sanctification and pastoral guidance. “Feed my lambs…Tend my sheep,” our Lord said to Peter in a beautiful morning after his resurrection (John 21:16-17). Following the maternal love of Our Lady, whom Jesus gave us as our mother in his dying breath on the cross, the Mother Church has been carrying out faithfully this sacred mission entrusted to her by Christ through the Sacraments, her teaching office, and her hierarchical structure of national and local churches.

“Why can’t we obtain God’s blessings without going through the Church?” one may ask. Of course one does not necessarily have to obtain God’s blessings through the Church. That’s what the followers of hundreds of religions in the world have been doing from time immemorial. The Church does not dispute the fact that the followers of other religions also have access to God’s blessings and are not deprived of the opportunity to be saved (see my last email). The key question to ask is: which way is better, the Church or world religions, the Church or personal effort? On this issue, the Church’s position is uncompromising. In explaining the need to proclaim Christ to the other religions, Pope Paul VI said, “Respect and esteem for these religions…[is not] an invitation to the Church to withhold from these non-Christians the proclamation of Jesus Christ. Our religion effectively establishes with God an authentic and living relationship which
the other religions do not succeed in doing, even though they have, as it were, their arms stretched out towards heaven” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 53).

If Jesus is “the way and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), “the only mediator between God and man” (1 Tim 2:5), if the Church was instituted by Christ (Mt. 16:18) together with the Sacraments and her priestly hierarchical structure for the sanctification and maternal care of God’s chosen people, if the Church is the Body of Christ and Christ is present in her “always, until the end of the age” (Mt. 28:20), why would one opt to place his bet on other religions or on one’s own personal effort in his quest for truth and eternal life and not on the Church?

Hopefully, I’d be able to answer your last question in one more email.

Edmond Lo