Gospel of John, chapter 6:68

In today’s society, most tests we take demand that we make choices. Choices are the tools we use to chisel our personalities from the hard stone of life. Today, we will talk about making choices and about the most fundamental of choices: Doing God’s will. We sometimes imagine that people of our time rarely, if ever, worship false Gods. But, they do in more ways than one. They choose to worship the idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the marketplace, and idols of the theatre rather than worship God. They even replace these false idols of society for the love of God in their lives.

Do we accept the God of our Society with all the materialistic values and self centered pursuits this social God offers us. Or, will we turn aside from the spirit of materialism and walk no more with it? Will we walk instead with the God of Jesus, the God who loves the poor and the downtrodden, the homeless and the hungry, the deprived and the forgotten? What will be our choice? Will we believe in the gift of the Eucharist? Will we invest in becoming secure and comfortable, rich and powerful, or will we use our gift of life to bring justice to the poor, care to the forgotten and love to the unlovable? Either we stand with Jesus and walk His way or we walk with the idols of the marketplace toward power and worldly prestige. We cannot have it both ways. We must make a choice. That is what Christianity is all about.

Many who abandoned Jesus after His challenging sermon on the Eucharist went away sad. They would have wished that Jesus had not challenged them the way He did. They must have longed for the days before this sermon, the days when they thought they could follow Him without having to make such a hard choice. Yet, they did have to choose. They could not avoid that choice of accepting Jesus as the bread of life; nor can we. We may imagine we can love both God and the ways of the world but we deceive only ourselves.

We cannot serve God and the false Gods of society. Jesus tells us that we cannot serve God and Mammon. Mammon is often associated with love of riches ; but, at a deeper level, it is a malign spirit that whispers in your ear that is alright to love the Gods of this word: materialism, selfish pleasure, position and status in life more than the love of God and neighbor. The Eucharist is the selfless gift of the Son of God to us the night before He died. We are given a choice: To accept it in faith, or to reject it. St. Peter accepted the Lord’s gift of the Eucharist when he declared: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Fr. Hugh Duffy