Fr Antonio Pineda
t’s your choice but make it the best choice. This is the message that all the readings this Sunday want to impart.
In this Sunday’s First Reading, Sirach reminds us that our life, from here to eternity, is built on our choices. The Lord created us as free beings, but with freedom comes responsibility. We always have to “own” what we have done and what we have failed to do, which is why we make a Penitential Act at the start of every celebration of the Eucharist. What we choose to do makes us who we are. Our choices also often affect other people. Sirach doesn’t just remind us this Sunday that we’re free to choose; he encourages us to make the right choices. The Ten Commandments reflect God’s wisdom, and that not only makes them good choices, but the best choices, even if sometimes, we have to trust in God in making His choices our choices.
In the Second Reading St Paul reminds us that our choices shouldn’t be done just out of obligation, but out of love. I don’t go to church just because it is my obligation as a Catholic but because I want communion with God and His people. Our choices have to be choices made from the heart or they’ll never achieve their full potential. The world has a wisdom to it, but when its surface is scratched, you realise how superficial that wisdom can be. Sometimes scratching below the surface reveals “wisdom” to be folly. What makes a man wise is not the amount of knowledge he has gained but the knowledge that there is a lot that he doesn’t know. That’s what makes him to always continue to seek wisdom. Wisdom is not just an accumulation of information; it is an insight into the big picture. God not only has the big picture, but He also “painted” it, and he unveils it little by little if we pay attention and seek to learn.
Luckily for us, St Paul gives us a shortcut to getting the big picture: love. Love is the summary of all the Commandments and it is the guiding light that we need when making our choices. We should never make a choice if love is lacking. We’ve been created by God out of love and all He wants in return is our love. Nobody who has chosen not to love is ever truly happy.
A common recurring defence today for a watered-down life ethic is, “hey, at least I’m not killing anybody.” Our Lord reminds us that indeed not killing anybody is good, but we have to go way beyond that if we don’t want to be like the Pharisees in the Gospel this Sunday who follow the rules to appear superficially holy and not out of love. When we can say, “Hey, at least I don’t hate anybody,” we’re getting closer to the mark. In an often violent world, sometimes we look the other way in the face of a lack of kindness, but Our Lord this Sunday reminds us to go the distance by not only not killing anybody, but also to actually be kind to everybody.