Saints of God, the Lord be with you!
Years ago, when my friend Sister Kate Murphy, OSF, was in her eighties, I would often ask her, “Kate, if you had to choose Jesus or me, who would you choose?” She always answered that she would choose me, to which I would say, “Wrong choice! You’re 80!” Now picture Fr. David Phan, OFM. As soon as I would say, “David, if you had to choose…” and before I would finish, he would respond, “Yes!”
It seems to me that all the readings hold out to us the demand to choose either a life of blessing or curse. Of course, most of us would choose blessing. The difficulty is that sometimes we must choose so quickly that we choose without reflection. Other times, the choice is not between good or evil, but between two actions or things which are both good. Sometimes, we choose without enough information or life experience. And even not to choose is itself a choice.
What might help us is asking, what a person choosing blessing would look like. In today’s Gospel according to Luke (6:17, 20-26) Jesus describes a blessed person as knowing that no matter how monetarily wealthy one is, they are aware of their existential poverty. None of us will live forever, and all the wealth we accumulated does not go with us.
We are blessed when we realize that no matter how much stuff we have, we are still hungry for more. But more of what? Or better yet, hungry for whom?
The answer, of course, is God.
We choose to be blessed people when we mourn, for our own sins and the sins of the world. And when hated or ridiculed by others because of our choices to trust in God rather than our wealth, we continue to trust in “Christ (who) has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).
All of today’s readings ask us to make conscious choices for God, and God’s values. Moral theologians call this “our fundamental option.” And in choosing choices that point us in the direction of God, we are cooperating with the Holy Spirit living within us.
– Fr. Steve
