From God - Punishment? Or Forgiveness?

From God - Punishment?  Or Forgiveness?

This seems to be a question that can be answered in an equivocal manner.   It is not an ambiguous statement that requires a PHD to explain but does present  some concern to those who see God as one who has a short temper and will be quick to condemn sinners.

After his fall, man was not abandoned by God.  On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall.  This passage is called the Protoevangelium (first gospel): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and the final victory of a descendant of hers.  (CCC 410). 

God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, is a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.  In the Eucharistic liturgy and in daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”  (CCC 1037).

As in past articles the Incarnation is the answer to the above; Punishment or Forgiveness?  God, in his Omnipresence, saw from all eternity how man would need  to be forgiven if he would turn to the generous gift of showing man the only way to find that mercy.  Without this imminent plan for us the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension mean nothing since they all are products of God’s forgiveness for all eternity.  The Incarnation is the impetus for God to put in motion his plan to bring forgiveness rather than punishment for his prized creation, humanity!

Who would believe what we have heard?  To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  He grew up like a sapling before him, like a shoot from the parched earth;  There was no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him.  He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.   Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured.    (Is 53: 1 - 4). 

Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” - Sheol in Hebrew of 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 their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”:  It s precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ delivered when he descended into hell.  Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.  (CCC 633).  

Today great  silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness.  A great silence because the King is asleep .  The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and has raised up all who have ever slept since the world began…He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep.  Greatly desiring to visit those who live in 

Darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him - He who is both their God and the son of Eve…”I am your God, who for your sake have become your son…I order you. O sleeper, to awake.  I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell.  Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.”  (An ancient homily for Holy Saturday).

Through the birth of Christ we find the very generosity of God to save him from eternal death.  There is no rejection of God towards mankind.  He only needs to believe in the reason Christ assumed humanity in the Incarnation and will always give thanks to the nativity of Jesus Christ.  

Ralph B. Hathaway