TAKE SERIOUSLY THE DEMANDS OF LIVING

“John said to Jesus,
‘Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name,
and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.’
Jesus replied, ‘Do not prevent him.’

‘There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name
who can at the same time speak ill of me. . . .’
(Here Jesus warns against jealousy and intolerance toward others and then says:)
“‘If your hand causes you to sin, . . . if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off.

It is better for you to enter into life crippled . . . ‘”Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

Please do yourself a favor – your real self that the Spirit is encouraging you to be. Yes, did not Jesus say that he would give each of us the Spirit to guide us? Are we taking the time to let the Spirit stir us from deep within ourselves, to point out things about us that we are not seeing, saying, doing? Let us take time frequently to consider how we can be better daughters and sons of God as we promised to be – how we can be the better disciple (dedicated follower) of Jesus that we, deep down inside want to be.

Carefully engage your heart in this bulletin column reflection by Fr. Tim. This is a very important message that will make us better persons, more capable disciples and a more genuine and joy-filled Saint Michael community of disciples.

“IF YOUR HAND CAUSES YOU TO SIN…”

This Gospel passage offers us something of a ‘whiplash’ experience: from favorably regarding the good deeds done in His name by some outside His immediate circle, Jesus turns to a rather brutally direct commentary on the consequences of sin and of causing others to sin.

SIN IS A REALITY OF WHICH WE ARE QUITE CAPABLE

Obviously, for Jesus ‘sin’ is to be taken seriously. That is sometimes overlooked, in our efforts to ‘humanize’ Jesus and render His teaching ‘reasonable’. There is a risk of thereby neutralizing Jesus’ expectations of how His followers should behave.

Yes, it is important to understand sin as more than simply an infraction of some arbitrary norm. But in Jesus’ view, sin is a reality of which we are quite capable.

We don’t ‘sin’ by accident or by forgetting or in ignorance;
but we can definitely ‘sin’ by conscious, deliberate, knowing choice
of an attitude or behavior that violates God’s law,
whether it is expressed in a Commandment
or is a clear expectation of the ‘spirit’ of the divine law.

We can sin by action and by inaction, neglect or omission.

THE MISUSE AND MISREPRESENTATION OF GOD’S LOVE

God continues to love us totally, but He does not for that reason excuse, without remorse on our part, our sin. In His love for us, God respects our freedom to such a degree that He recognizes our responsibility for the misguided, poor choices that we make.

Serious failings have serious consequences. That is a truth that our contemporary culture, even among the religiously active, often prefers to ignore. “God is good; Jesus is merciful; He understands how difficult it is for us to avoid what is wrong; I can’t believe that it matters much to God that I don’t always do the right thing; life is complicated!”

Let us (you and me, Sister Loretta) think about this, being honest with myself, with yourself. Perhaps, as I do below, consider a similar situation of you and an individual in your everyday situations. How we respond to the everyday can be a window to what is also true in our relationship with God.

We all want to have a spouse, parent or boss who is kind, considerate and patient with us when it comes to our personal flaws and failings. But is there danger that, due to our expecting them to overlook our flaws, we subconsciously slack off on our efforts toward our own growth, especially, our spiritual growth? Do we take advantage of their goodness to indulge in our more pleasurable escapades or engage in our laziness?

How much importance and attention do we give to our relationship with God and our pursuit of perfection, i.e., our becoming more of the “image and likeness of God” which is the true purpose of our earthly lives? (What else could God have had in mind for us in giving us free will?) What is the impact of my lack of attention to this having on me and on those around me? Is my lack of attention on becoming a better “me” depriving my family, friends and fellow parishioners of the example they need to see the wisdom in this?  (In a previous bulletin column, Fr. Tim wrote, “For a Christian, it is ‘faith’ that should motivate ‘good works’, and ‘works’ that reveal a rootedness in ‘faith’.” Do I need to work on deepening the “rootedness” of my faith, just as a ballplayer or a ballerina has to work on the skills of their profession? Otherwise, what good am I to those who need me? Did God create me to be complacent with the way I am now? Or did God create me to become, through the help of the Spirit within me, an truer likeness of God, channeling God’s presence through me to all those who are around me? 

As Fr. Tim said above, there are serious consequences to your and my failing to pay attention to the fact that our God-given freedom of choice imparts responsibility.  Yes, God allows us to choose either to center our attention on our God-given capabilities or to center our attention on what we currently desire for ourselves and others.  What am I spending most of my time on?  Where is this leading me?  Do I care about this? Do I think that God cares about this?

Such a perspective (i.e., relying so much on God’s goodness and forgiveness that we neglect addressing our poor choices) misrepresents God’s love: He sees our capacity for good, and desires us always to stretch to do our best, without excusing ourselves from having to make hard choices and stand by them.

In His love,
God is always willing to forgive,
to start us off fresh;
but expects us
to acknowledge
that we have been wrong:
we can’t stop God from loving us,
but we can impede
the effect of His love in our hearts and souls.

TAKE SERIOUSLY THE DEMANDS OF LIVING AS HIS FAITHFUL DISCIPLES

That is the tragedy of sin. Jesus’ advice to His listeners in this Gospel episode sounds (and is!) harsh to ears accustomed to see Jesus as invariably gentle, haloed in a pastel aura of ‘feel good’ inoffensiveness. There is truth, we know, in the depiction of Jesus as ever-caring and compassionate. He does not expect us to maim ourselves, but does want us to take seriously the demands of living as His faithful disciples—to accept, in our freedom, the responsibilities that flow from seeking to follow Him.