(Twenty-eighth Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on October 11, 1998 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read 2 Timothy 2: 8-14.)

"Certainty in the midst of the uncertainties of life."

Life is full of uncertainties. A 44 year-old woman from our parish went down to Costa Rica last week for a vacation with her husband, and she died there in a terrible car accident. She obviously didn't leave the United States knowing that would happen. That's because the moment when God will choose to call us home is one of the uncertainties of life. But it's only one of many. Let's face it, no one of us knows what will happen tomorrow, or ten years from now, or even two minutes from now (although it's a pretty safe bet that I'll still be talking two minutes from now). At this point, we don't even know our moral future as a nation: Will we have the courage as a country to say that adultery and lying are wrong for everybody--the president included? Will we begin to allow the indiscriminate killing of the elderly and handicapped as we've allowed the indiscriminate killing of the unborn for the last 25 years? Will we keep slipping ever more deeply into moral relativism, or will we have the desire and determination to turn things around? I don't know--no one but God knows for sure. Life is full of uncertainties--so much so that you could rightly say that life is like a series of question marks!

Enter St. Paul. In verse 11 from chapter 2 of his Second Letter to Timothy, Paul says: "You can depend on this . . . " Isn't that great news? In the midst of all the changes, the inconsistencies, and the uncertainties of life, Paul tells us that there are actually some things that we can depend on--certain things that we can know by faith to be true. In other words there are definite certainties that we can have as human persons in the midst of all the uncertainty. Paul expresses these in four statements that contain the word "if":

Statement # 1: "If we have died with him, we shall also live with him." Clearly that's a reference to Baptism, but it also refers to the experience of "dying to ourselves"--dying to our selfishness, dying to our anger, dying to our lust, dying to our unforgiveness--things which Jesus tells us we must do as his disciples. If we die with him by receiving the grace of Baptism, and make the sincere effort to die to our sinful desires each day, then we shall live with the Lord (both on this earth and in eternity). Guaranteed! A friend of the woman who died in Costa Rica the other day said to me: "We can take consolation in this: she was someone who appeared to really live her faith." What that friend was saying was this: "We can take consolation in the fact that this woman appeared to make the effort to die to herself. Because of that, we can have a confident hope that she is now living with Christ in his eternal kingdom."

Statement # 2: "If we hold out to the end, we shall also reign with him." There's a song that we sing in our teenagers' prayer group that has this line in it: "So as for me I will press on in running the race, with my eyes fixed on Jesus who inspires and perfects my faith. I will fight the good fight with all my heart and soul, till the day that I'm with Jesus, the day I'm finally home, the day that I have won the crown." That's exactly what Paul is talking about here: if we persevere in faith--even in the midst of difficulty and constant uncertainty--we will win the crown. Guaranteed.

Statement # 3: "But if we deny him he will deny us." From one standpoint, that's a very scary statement--but we actually should thank God it's true. Because it means that we have free will. St. Paul is saying that certain freely-made moral choices will lead us to hell unless we repent before death. Guaranteed. But if that's true, then the opposite must also be true: good moral choices freely made will lead a person to heaven. Guaranteed.

And finally, statement # 4: "If we are unfaithful, he will still remain faithful; for he cannot deny himself." That means, quite simply, that no one is hopeless. God offers the grace of conversion to every person until the final moment of earthly life. Guaranteed. And only God knows if a given person responds to that grace--we don't. That's why we can never judge a person's eternal destiny.