Homily

Jesus calls His first disciples, the fishermen and brothers, Peter and Andrew. Notice what the Gospel says, "Immediately they left their nets and followed Him." Next He calls two more fishermen, also brothers, and "immediately they left their nets and their father, and followed Him." Isn't that extraordinary? Four men, after Jesus calls them, without any discussion, or questions, or persuasive arguments, or explanations, they immediately leave their nets, boat, and their livelihood, and even more dramatically they leave their parents, wives and children behind to become followers of Jesus. There was something powerfully attractive and almost irresistible about Jesus to these men or they never would have done it. They chose Him as a good even over jobs and family.

It is a huge part of our lives, the choices we make, because they determine how we will act, what we will say and how we will live. Our choices show what we value, what we believe is good, or at least good for us, because even when we know we're doing wrong we still see it as a "good for us." Of course it's important that we choose wisely if we want to live a good life, that we follow the guidance of our Lord and we obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit Who speaks to our consciences and is willing to help us live in virtue. We love virtue—but more so in other people. The only problem with virtue is that it is often hard to practice, while sinning is just so very easy. Virtue looks great to us when we think and reflect upon it, but right now, at this moment sin can seem even more attractive.

We choose. We are choosing all the time: where to sit, where to look, what to read, what to eat, how much to talk, which shirt to wear, what station to listen to, which brother to kick. We don't think a whole lot about how many choices we are constantly making, but we are still making them. If you drove to church this morning, did you stop at every red traffic light or stop sign? We may not easily look at it as a choice, because we are supposed to obey the traffic laws, but each and every time we stop we are still making a choice. Some of the choices we make are habits or patterns that don't require such a deliberate decision-making process each time, such as the stopping at a traffic light I just mentioned. We made a general decision to stop at all red lights a long time ago and we automatically apply that decision each time we meet a red light. It's only if we choose, on the spot, to go through the red light that we are making a different decision at that time.

So we are choosing, choosing, choosing all the time, and we are making decisions either based on what is objectively good or bad, or we are making decisions based on what seems to be good or bad for me, no matter what the Lord, the Church, my parents or sometimes even my own conscience tells me. It is not always easy to see, that what is objectively good is always good for me; because our thoughts, our passions and our weaknesses often cloud our judgment, and push us to choose words and deeds that are morally wrong but can seem so very attractive to us at the time. What will we choose?

Our choices are not only about words and deeds, but also about people. The old saying that you can't choose your parents is true. But it's equally true that parents can't choose their kids either. The choices we make about people are not necessarily moral choices, any more than liking Swiss cheese over cheddar, but we do choose. There are brothers or sisters we like more or less than others, friends and acquaintances that are closer or not as close to us, people we cherish more or enjoy spending time with, people we marry, people we may avoid, all the time here too we are making value judgments about other people and how we want to interact with them. We have to be careful here because we all know that we can misjudge a person either for the bad, or for the good. And how do we know that?—because we have been misjudged ourselves. None of us can absolutely know the heart or the intention of another person, since we can have difficulty trying to figure out even why we say or do some of the things we say or do, much less what is going on inside another person. We cannot judge the state of their souls, and we need to be careful about seeing others with too much esteem, but even more so we need to be careful about condemning others, rather than their actions.

Having said that we still need to make choices about other people—is it a better idea, and a wiser choice to take the Hermit Sisters out to lunch, or the wife-beating, crack head, drug dealer who just got out of Lane County jail? Now it may be that the Lord is calling you to try and reach this wife-beating, crack head drug dealer and get him to see the error of his ways and tell him about salvation in Christ. It may be that is what you are certain you're called to do. But if you are not, I suggest it's a better choice to spend the time with the Sisters, and let them have dessert too. Choices about people.

God makes choices about people in this life too. I bring it up because in the past few weeks I have had more than a few people asking why this bad thing or that bad thing is happening to them. Why is God allowing it, why is it happening, why me? I don't have any specific answers for then, and there is a lot of mystery in the topic of why decent people can suffer so much, and yet I think these troubles MAY and should always point us to Christ crucified, so that we may also see Christ risen from the dead. Whatever trials or burdens we bear, they can always push us to the Savior, if we let them. And like the first-called disciples we can renew our commitment to follow Him there.

We can be certain that God has made His choices clear in regard to us, for we know who He loves the most. It is you, and you, and you and you as St. Paul makes it clear in today's epistle God has no favorites, no partiality, no preferences in His love for all people. Whether we enjoy good times or we share in trouble it is not because God loves us more or loves us less. He always chooses us and so let us also choose Him so that we do not live lives of hopeless frustration but rather as those who hold onto His promise, as followers of Christ our Lord.