Thoughts on choices

 6^th Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Luke 6: 17, 20-26

There is no more common metaphor for following the Christian life than traveling a road. In fact, the first name for Christianity in Apostolic times was simply The Way.

In high school or college, many of us remember reading the poetry of Robert Frost (1874 – 1963). “From 1914 to his death, he was probably the nation’s best-known and best-loved serious poet,” according to the Norton Anthology of American Literature. His accessible imagery, regular metrics, and rhyme have introduced generations of students to poetry. One of his best loved-poems uses the metaphor of a road for our journey through life:

                       I shall be telling this tale with a sigh

                       Somewhere ages and ages hence:

                       Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

                       I took the one less traveled by,

                       And that has made all the difference.

                                                        “The Road Not Taken” 1916

The ideas of a road and a journey were used in the 17^th century by John Bunyan (1628-1688) in his allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), which at one time was second only to the Bible in popularity.

Bunyan describes a journey taken by “Christian,” during which “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” frequently urges Christian to give up his difficult and dangerous journey.

Our Lord teaches, “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction . . . narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Mt. 7: 13-14). So often we are tempted and even counseled to take the common, wide, and easy way. So often we give in to “worldly wisdom.”                                                    

The Beatitudes, which begin the Sermon of the Plain in Luke’s Gospel, are meant to guide us along The Way. Here is a complete reversal of conventional values and ambitions. Here Christ’s counsel stands in shocking contrast to the urgings of Mr. Worldly Wiseman and the “way of the world.” The poor, hungering, weeping, hated, and reviled – are really the blessed, whose reward will be great in heaven. The rich, satisfied, laughing, with sterling reputation – will be woeful, for they have their reward now.

Here we are face-to-face with an eternal choice that begins in childhood and never ends until life ends:

·        Will I take the way of immediate pleasure and profit –

or the way that may involve toil and suffering for the eternally greater good?

·        Will I choose pleasure and profit of the moment –

or sacrifice for the eternally greater good?

·        Will I concentrate on the world’s rewards –

or concentrate on what I know will be Christ’s rewards?

The “challenge of the Beatitudes” is the question: Will I be happy in the world’s way – or in Christ’s way?

Each day I must beg God’s help in following His Way rather than the World’s Way. In each choice I try to see two roads diverging in a wood – and take the one less traveled by.

                                                                                                                     

 Fr. Don Saunders, S.J.