The fruits of our labor and God's grace

We have the first fruits, but there are Christians who seem to think that the first fruits are the only fruits. Rather, we might think of the Church as the prolepsis, the preview, of the great harvest that is to be.  Put differently, the Church, which is the body of the risen Christ, is the future of the world. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Those who see the flaws of the Church would be taken aback by such an assertion.  It would seem to them to be a threat or a tragedy, not the promise of hope.  Whereas Christ was fully human and fully divine, the Church is rather partly each, so far. But in God's eternal plan, it is to become so much more than it is - as is our personal destiny, too.  We are personally and collectively to be perfected, and Fr. Neuhaus suggests that this process will not be complete until God has fulfilled his promise in Christ of drawing all unto him.

If, in the mercy and mystery of God, people can be saved who have never even heard of Christ, they are still saved only because of Christ, "for there is salvation in no one else." 
Many Christians are embarrassed by this claim.  They are intimidated by a culture that decrees that all truths are equal.  Who are you to claim that you have the truth and others do not?  It is an intimidating question, unless we understand that we do not have  the truth in the sense that it is ours by virtue of having discovered it; we do not have the truth in the sense of it being a possession under our control. The Christian claim is that we have been encountered by the truth revealed by God in Jesus Christ and by his grace we have responded to that encounter by faith. We hope and pray and work for everyone to be so encountered and to so respond. - ibid.


Many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians would likely disagree with initial premise of this passage, yet this has been Catholic teaching for a very long time. The Church does not assume that those who have not converted in this life are condemned to eternity in hell.  Other Christians would rightly point out the danger in avoiding that assumption: it is important that we not work with any less fervor because of our confidence in God's mercy, as we are instruments of the very mercy we have received in our response, our participation and our labor.