Hopefully my thoughts about the WAY of Jesus has stimulated my readers to think about their own understanding of the WAY of Jesus. The WAY of Jesus leads to personal transformation and transformation leads to salvation. The only way that we achieve salvation is by personally transforming the way that we think and behave, hopefully becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. To become more like Jesus Christ means to grow in our likeness of God.

This raises one very important question: What exactly is salvation? I suspect there are many and varied ideas about salvation. Probably the most common one is probably to gain a place in heaven (wherever and whatever it is) after death OR to be joined with God.

It is interesting to note that the new United States Catholic Catechism for Adults doesn’t provide a definition for salvation, even though the index contains many references to salvation. It typically defines basic religious ideas.

Salvation is the restoration of the wholeness of God’s image in us, of the possibility of our union with God. Simply stated, salvation is the restoration of our original essence. Holy Tradition teaches that we will be saved when we become like Christ. Because of our faith in Him and our desire to become God-like, we are not so much saved all at once as slowly changed into the creatures we were created to be.

So salvation doesn’t mean going someplace positive and blessed after death but, rather, becoming something ourselves. Salvation is not a reward for having lived a good life. It is, rather, the result of leading a good life that involves personal transformation.

Salvation is directly connected, I believe, with the meaning and purpose of this earthly life. We are here to achieve a state   of salvation. Salvation, in turn, is a transformed life, that is a life which makes us more in the likeness of God as expressed in the Person of Jesus Christ. This is why the Church often has said that there is no salvation accept through Jesus Christ.

So what about the people who do   not know Jesus Christ, who are not Christians. The true message of other religions is all about transformation, that is leading a good and righteous life. The advantage of Christianity is that we actually have a model that we can strive to imitate. That model is Jesus Christ. So there is a real advantage to being a Christian. We have a definite model who, if we make an effort to imitate Him, leads to personal transformation.