For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
1 Corinthians 2:2, ESV
I often say that the Gospel is easy, but we like to make it hard. We like to add our own little things to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and turn it into something it is not. The Gospel is not a self-help guide or a set of things a person must do in order to find salvation. It isn’t even settled in the things we know we should do but in the person of Jesus Christ. Not only that, it is not based on what we do for the faith or for the Church but on what our Lord and Savior did for us on the Cross. It seems silly to think that God would make it so simple for us for the great amount of suffering that He endured on the Cross in order to win us over. The Gospel is the giving up of oneself to God just as He poured Himself out for us. In our realization of our lack, He fills us and renews us, and redeems us. It’s not a great work or believing a certain way. It is not even obedience to doing certain things in order to satisfy a set of steps to salvation. It is a realization that on our own, we are hopeless, but with Christ, we have all the hope. Out of this, we will find a difference and the things we do flow from that desire in which we become obedient. We become slaves. Unlike the slavery or bondage that entrapped us in sin, which left us hopeless and bereft of any real joy but drove us in service to it, we are now freed in our bondage to serve the Living God with great hope. It isn’t a bondage from which we feel constrained but freed to do what our Lord desires for us to do. It’s not centered on dogma but on the person whom we are called to serve as we see His face reflected to us in our neighbor.
Let us pray. I thank you, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, that you have kept me this night from all harm and danger, and I ask you to protect me this day also from sin and every evil, that in all I do today, I may please you. For into your hands, I commend myself, my body and soul, and all that is mine. Let your holy angel watch over me, that the wicked foe have no power over me. Amen.