Saturday, September 3, 2011

Pick up your cross and follow me...

Homily for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time


I was in Wal-mart the other day and I saw a bunch of families buying back to school supplies. I can't believe it's already back to school! Watching the kids pick out notebooks and lunchboxes I thought about choices, the choices we make, the way that life is full of choices: like the choice of a lunchbox, when I was kid, the choice was clear- Star Wars lunch box. Or the choice of notebooks. Or the choice of whether or not to grow a beard.
Life is full of choices. What choices are your confronted with today? Are they choices associated with going back to school? The choices of who your friends are? The choices of what to wear? The choices of where to sit on the bus or in the cafeteria? Maybe you finished school a while ago, maybe you have different choices to make. Maybe they are big important life choices? Choices about work, career, family. Whatever they are, we all have choices to make, life is full of choices. But the most important choice you will ever make is to choose Jesus Christ, and to pick up your cross and follow Him. But what does it mean to choose Jesus and pick up your cross and follow him?
Does God want us to suffer? I don't think so. Suffering was never his plan for us. It is the result of sin. We suffer because we live in a world that is opposed to God’s love, opposed to goodness and life, opposed to the Truth. It wasn’t because God is mean, but because of sin, that Jesus told his disciples he must suffer. Because he was choosing the Truth, Jesus knew he would be attacked, persecuted, afflicted and murdered. The darkness hates the light.  Jesus accepted the Cross. He accepted it at the consequence of his choice to do the will of God.
To follow Jesus and take up the Cross means to do the same: to put God first, to live for him alone, to not let anything or anyone come between us, to not be conformed to this age but to be transformed. Each day we are given an opportunity to become more and more the person God is calling us to be. And when Jesus says to us that we must daily follow him and take up our Cross he doesn’t mean that we need to go looking for ways to suffer or ways to make our lives more difficult. What he means is that daily we have the choice to be faithful; daily we have the choice to live in the Truth, and to offer our lives as a living sacrifice of praise and worship.
The Cross is the result of doing the will of God in a sinful world. It is the consequence of the choice you make to live the kind of life that God wants you to live, in the Truth, in Love, unreservedly, unconditionally, regardless of the consequences. To accept the Cross means to do what is right, even when it isn’t easy; it is the choice to do what you know in your heart you must, even if it is unpopular, or if it means that others will reject you or even hurt you.
My brothers and sisters, life is full of choices. And the most important choice we will ever make is to choose Jesus Christ and pick up our crosses and follow him. This is not a one-time choice, something we do once, it is the daily choices we make to do what is right, to live in the Truth, to be faithful, regardless of the consequences. Life is full of choices. Will you choose Christ?