Choosing the Lord

Many of the people were leaving.  This message of Jesus was just too much.  “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you.”  Way over the top.

Perhaps the disciples thought that Jesus didn’t recognize the popular reaction to his teaching.  People were leaving.  His mission to change the world would stall if it lost its grass root’s base.  So the disciples came to Jesus and said, “This sort of talk is hard to endure.  How can anyone take it seriously.”  It was time for Jesus to tone things down.  It was time for Jesus to become more politically correct and give the people what they wanted to hear.

But Jesus was not interested in being political.  He wasn’t about to take a poll on what the people wanted to believe.  He was not about to eliminate the gift of the Eucharist because it would take a great deal of faith to accept this belief.  He was not interested in compromising the truth.  When the disciple reported the reaction to his teaching on the Bread of Life to him, his answer was, simply, “So, are you going to leave too?”

Faith is not determined by a poll.  Truth is not established by the number of people who believe one thing or another.  The vast majority of the world believed
in many gods two thousand years ago.  Only the Jews believed in one God.  They were outnumbered, but they were not wrong.  At the time the vast majority of the world believed that morality was only necessary in the ways that actions effected the good of society.  Only the Jews believed that morality was the way one responded to God’s love.  This way of thinking still continues.  Today the majority of people still follow humanitarian or society related reasons for governing their behavior and only a minority of believers see their lifestyle as determined by serving God’s presence in others.  But the minority is still correct.  No poll can decided whether or not something is to be believed or not believed.  No survey can decide whether a course of action is moral or immoral.

Numbers do not matter.  Truth matters.  God matters.  The Lord never, anywhere in the Bible, promised us that we would be on the majority side of every issue, or, for that matter, of any issue; but he did promise us this: that he would be with us always.

“So,” Jesus responded to the Twelve, “Do you want to leave me too.”  Then Peter made his greatest profession of faith: “Where else are we to go, Lord?  You alone have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and we are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter is recognizing and giving deference to Jesus’ origin.  Jesus is the One who was turned to the Father for all time.  He is the Eternal Word Made Flesh.  He is the Source of Eternal Life.  “Where else are we to go, Lord.”

When people are serious about life, they realize that they must choose God or not choose God.  There are no other options.  “As for me and my family,” said Joshua, in our first reading, “we will serve the Lord.”

I have read that Pope John Paul II was a wonderful counselor and a wonderful confessor.  He developed these skills not just as Pope but as a holy man throughout his life.  The interesting thing is that when people told him about a situation of sin they had fallen into, or sought his advice on a moral matter his final answer was always the same: “You must choose.”

And so we must.
And so we have.
And so we do.

We must choose.  We have got to make a decision in our lives to stay with the Lord or to leave him.  Yes, most of our parents decided for us as when they had us baptized when we were babies.  They led us to the Church, and made sure we received the sacraments.  Still, the decision to choose Christ became our own when we entered that stage of life, perhaps in high school, perhaps in college, perhaps at another time, when we were in control of our own decisions.  Perhaps many of you drifted away from the Lord until you realized that you would have children dependent on you for their spiritual life.  At that time you joined Joshua and said with your lives, “as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”  Perhaps you were single in your early 20's and you came upon so many friends who were destroying themselves with drugs, or alcohol, or whatever, and you decided, “That is not for me.  I don’t want a life where I am embarrassed by my actions.”  And you made a conscious choice to be different, to choose the Lord. Whatever your motivation, whatever my motivation, these moments of actual Grace led us to make a decision to follow, to choose, to be disciples.

We must choose, and so we have chosen.  We picked a particular direction to our lives that focuses on the spiritual.  We decided how we will live and that becomes our way, our style.  When people ask us, why we don’t join in with everyone else and do this or that, our response is non judgmental but definitive. We simply say, “that is not our style.”  We have chosen.

We must choose, we have chosen, and we continually choose.  Life is a process, a movement, a continual conversion.  Another great Pope, Blessed John XXIII, formed as his motto, “Now I begin.”  Every day we are confronted with the choice to follow the Lord or to go a different way.  Every day we renew our determination to be his disciples.  Every day we choose him.

And what a choice this is!  Our choice is a choice of life over death.  Our choice is a choice of meaning over futility.  Our choice is a choice of the divine over the mundane.  St. Paul tells the Romans and us, “I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

The choice of the Lord gives us the same gift that Peter and the disciples received.  The choice of the Lord results in our sharing the Bread of Life, the Body and Blood of Christ.  This is not just something we do every Sunday.  The Eucharist is our participation in the death and resurrection of the Lord.  Our choice of the Lord results in our sharing the Lord dying for each of us, rising from the dead for each of us and giving eternal life, eternal happiness and joy to each of us.

He fills the empty hearts.  He gives meaning to life.  The One who is united to the Father offers this life to each of us. How can we go anywhere else? We are not Catholics by default of our family background.  We are not Christian by default of our culture.  We have been chosen by the Lord.  And, we, in response to this choice, have chosen Him.

And what a wonderful choice this has been.

“Lord, where else are we to go.  You alone have the words of eternal life.”