21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B – August 26, 2018

At times God asks too much

 

There is a video by Fr. Fernando Armellini with English subtitles

commenting on today’s Gospel reading:

 

Introduction

 

The results of histological examination, the response of an ultrasound, the results of amniocentesis, the diagnosis of a doctor can disrupt a person’s life. They can disrupt plans and dreams of a couple, placed in front of dramatic choices and the alternative is always between the wisdom of this world and that of Christ.

 

Making a gift of one’s own life is not easy or comfortable. It requires sacrifice, renunciation, asceticism. Accepting the will of God is willingness to follow “the true light that enlightens everyone” (Jn 1:9), even when all would be led to consider it illogical and inconclusive.

 

It’s hard to listen to the promptings of the Spirit, to rise to God and to focus on the life that lives forever. Smoother, but still disappointing, is to enter through the wide gate and to choose the spacious path (Mt 7:13), to fall back on the material prospects, forgetting that “the order of this world is vanishing” (1 Cor 7:31) and that man profits nothing to gain the whole world (Mt 16:26). Making choices “in the flesh” seems reasonable although, in one’s inner self, one realizes that “all flesh is grass, and all its beauty as the flower of the field” (Is 40:6).

 

The disciple who has “tasted the beauty of the Word of God and the wonders of the supernatural world” (Heb 6:5) remains subject to the temptation of turning away from Christ and being “in love with this present world” (2 Tim 4:9).

 

The Eucharist is a proposal. Who decides to receive it says yes to the light and rejects the darkness. This is the choice which qualifies the Christian.

 

To internalize the message, we repeat:

“When all the reasons were on one side and Christ on the other, I would choose Christ.”