Reflection for Monday Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time – 19 November 2007
Readings: 1Mc 1: 10-15, 41-43, 54-57, 62-63; Ps 119; Lk. 18:35-43
Nothing is more practical than finding God,
that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way,
what you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what do you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends,
what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
(Pedro Arrupe)
Certainly we agree that to life is to make choices. As human beings, we are surrounded by a large numbers of options. We have to make decision from things that very simple, like: a colour for your clothes, foods that you like to eat, books or movies that you want to read and watch; to things that very complicated or serious which will effect your entire life, like option to ask your love one to marry, or work harder and harder in order to pursue the career you wanted.
As we notice from the examples that I gave you, we know that we cannot grab all choices that we want. Very often when we decide something we have to give up other things as a return. Sometimes it is really easy to find what to choose since we know for sure about things that fit ourselves, but in some critical options, we do not have an easy task to decide since we often confused about what best that we have to choose. They require more from us. At the crossroad, we find pressures and domination from others, which brought us to tension and conflicts within our souls and our selves. Seldom we also have to face risks and dangers which ask ourselves to sacrifice our own life.
The reading from the Maccabees that we hear today does not only describe the struggle that the Jewish should faced during the most heroic times of their history, but also it reflect struggle that we, Christian have to face in order to be a true disciple of Christ. At that time, the Jewish people was divided by hellenization, which brought there along with Greek domination over Palestine. Some were willing to adapt to even adopt certain Greek costums, while others resisted. History made us knew who were made true choices. The sacrifice from those who refused to follow the Greek culture had known to be heroes of their faith and holy covenant. They chose God’s rather than obeyed to Greek rulers. However, if we put ourselves to those times, I think that we might agreed the choices they had were not as clear as we heard today from the reading.
These days, we faced the same problems like the Maccabees. There are people out there that were not really sure when they had to choose between God and wealth. Very often the choices that we have were not as easy as we learned from schools. Corruptions, business manipulations, law malpractices, political games, and false prophecies in religion are only some examples which illustrate the world we live today is a very confusing world.
Still, we must make choices. But, the way we chose certainly does not as same as the world had chose. In the Gospel, we find an example. The blind beggar exactly knew whom he should follow. He ask Jesus what he wanted and he knew from that moment his request also require option that he willing to take, to follow him to Jerusalem. One thing that made him followed Jesus, he just falling in love at once to the Lord.
