At this year’s Chrism Mass in Rome (April 5, 2007), Pope Benedict used a story from the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy to explain what God does in the lives of human beings.  The story goes like this:

A severe king asked his wise men to show him God so that he could see Him.  The wise men could not do this, but a simple shepherd accepted the challenge.  He told the king that, while we cannot see God directly in this world, we can see how God acts.  “’To do this, we must exchange clothing,’ said the shepherd to the king.  Hesitantly, but urged by curiosity, the king consented, giving his regal clothing to the shepherd and dressing himself in the simple clothing of the poor man.  And then came the answer:  ‘This is what God does,’ he continued, ‘In fact, the Son of God – true God from true God – left his divine splendor […] took on the condition of servant and became man.’” 

Now although the Holy Father quotes Tolstoy, I’m going to quote the country singer Patty Loveless.  She has a song called “Two Coats.”  In the song, we hear these words sung: 

            “The first man was earthly and made from the ground;

            We bore all his image, the whole world around.

            The next was my Savior, from heaven so fair,

            He brought me this new coat you now see me wear.

            I’ll tell you the best thing I ever did do –

            I took off the old coat and put on the new.

 

            My Savior has dressed me in a garment so rare;

            He brought me this new coat you now see me wear.

            I’ll tell you the best thing I ever did do –

            I took off the old coat and put on the new.” 

The ancient fathers of the Church called this reality the “marvelous exchange.”  God took what was ours and made it His, so that He might in turn give what is His and make it our own. 

This was foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament.  For example, Ezekiel (36: 26-27) says: “I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.  I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees.”

Through Christ, we, all of us, become something new, something we were not before.  As St. Paul tells us in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (5: 17): “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold new things have come.” 

That my brothers and sisters is the essence of the reality we call justification. 

There are some who criticize the Church and say that we teach justification through works.  Justification, they say, is by faith alone. 

Well, the Church has never, ever, at any time, taught that justification is by works.  Nor, frankly, is justification by faith.  Faith is certainly a fundamental and necessary part of justification.  But faith by itself does not justify a human being.

So what does make us just?  Grace.  “Our justification comes from the grace of God.  Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to His call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” (CCC 1996)

“Partakers of the divine nature” – the phrase is straight out of Scripture (II Peter 1: 4).  “Children of God, adoptive sons,” also Scriptural concepts and central to understanding what is meant by the word “justification.”

For justification is not merely a forensic process by which God, as a judge, imputes righteousness to us – simply choosing to not look at our sins and instead crediting us with the righteousness of Christ.  And all the while, doing nothing for us that really changes us.  That is the position of fundamentalist Protestants.

The truth of the matter, the truth that the Church teaches, is something quite different.  When God justifies us, He does not merely impute righteousness to us.  He changes us. He actually makes us righteous, through the gift of grace.  More than judge, God is Father.  He makes us His children.

And what has made all this possible?  It is Christ, beginning with the Incarnation, when the Second Person of the Trinity took on a human nature, and fulfilled through His Death and Resurrection, the Resurrection we are here to celebrate. 

Justification, the gift of grace, comes to us through the Sacraments.  When we are baptized, we are born again, of water and the Spirit, as Christ tells Nicodemus.  We are changed and made new.  The old self is crucified.  In Confirmation, the new self is sealed with the Holy Spirit.

Those two Sacraments, the Church tells us, put an indelible mark on the soul.  They effect a change in our very being.  They make us something we were not before.

Tonight, as we celebrate the Baptism and Confirmation of those who are entering the Church, we each need to recall the dignity that God has imparted to us, to strive to live our lives in accordance with that dignity, and to refuse to allow anyone to take that dignity away.

In the words of St. John (I John 3: 1): “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.  Yet so we are.”