Life and Death

There’s so much emphasis on individual rights and freedom of choice in our days. 

Young people often tell their parents, “Let me decide for myself” – be it what school to go to, what company to keep, what job to take.

Pro-abortionists want women to have the right to choose to terminate the child inside their womb or not.

In the first reading today, Ben Sirach tells the faithful Jews, “The Lord has placed before  each person  life and death, and whichever we choose will be given.”  

The words are also addressed to all of us who claim to be alive.

So let’s try to understand three important things: What is “life,” what is “death,” that Ben Sirach in our first reading claims we have the power  to choose?  How does today’s Gospel concretize that choice?

Life for Ben Sirach does not mean primarily our period from the womb to the tomb. He is not saying that, if you want to, you can choose to live like Moses for 120 years, or be immortal.

Life means what Moses told the Israelites (in Deuteronomy 30:20), while they were struggling toward the Promised Land: “loving the Lord your God, obeying [the Lord], holding fast to [the Lord]; for that means life to you.” And “death” is not when we breathe our last.  “Death” is idolatry in its many forms: not only the Israelites worshiping a golden calf in the desert, but our contemporary idols – from material possessions, to fame, to power. 

In God’s eyes, to die is to set up a creature in place of God.  To be truly alive was to turn to God.

And what does the New Testament add to the Old?  Very simply, life at its fullness is life in Christ. 

I am not fully alive, simply because I go through the motions of living. I can go through the routines of thinking, feeling and doing what enables a person to go through life. In other words, I am not fully alive does not simply mean  I am in the ICU or bed-ridden.     

What I do must have meaning for me –  whether I do it once or a thousand times, be it dull or exciting, comedy or tragedy, entertainment or crucifixion. What I do must be the fruit of intelligence and love.  There must be understanding in it, and heart.   Otherwise, 100 years are no better than 5 – only longer.

But to be Christian,  understanding and heart are not quite enough. 

As the Apostle John makes clear, to know God, to know Christ, is more than a matter of mind – cold intellect and book knowledge. 

John put it clearly:  “Whoever does not love does not know God.” (1John 4: 8).  I do not really know God unless I love God; I do not really know Christ unless I love Christ. 

True, I can know about God, about Christ, from serious research and study. I shall not get to heaven because I know my theology, or because I’m a priest, or a Jesuit, I shall get to heaven only if I love God, if I love Christ, above all else; only if I love the image of God in people at least as much as I love myself. 

It is then that mind and heart reach Christian heights; it is then that I am alive in Christ.  It is then that, as St. Paul declares in his letter to the Colossians, my “life is hidden with Christ in God.”(Colossians. 3:3)  And with Peter, “I share in God’s nature.”  

The Spirit of God dwells in me, and nothing in this world, in all creation can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  It is then that I can say with St. Paul, “For me, living is Christ.”

This brings us to the third question:  How does today’s Gospel concretize all that, bring it down to day to day living?  Our short Gospel passage is part of the Sermon on the Mount that has confronted us these past few Sundays. The point of the Sermon is not “What must I do  to get to slide past St. Peter’s gate.  The heart of the matter is, “What does it take to be a disciple of Jesus, to see him more clearly, to love him more dearly, and to follow him more nearly?   What does it take to be what the disciples of Jesus, you and I,  were told to be in last Sunday’s Gospel, “the salt of the earth, the light of the world”?

Precisely here is the Christian challenge.  For Jesus is not satisfied if I never commit an external action that violates God’s law: If I never take an innocent life, if I never steal someone else’s wife. 

Jesus gets to the roots of immoral activity: what goes on inside the human heart. He knows how often violence stems from anger, the emotion that triggers the violence, the feelings that overwhelm reason. 

And so Jesus goes beyond what has been commanded before: “You have heard the commandment imposed on your forefathers, ‘You shall not commit murder …’ I say to you, ‘If you are angry with your brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.’” 

That is why Jesus insists: before worship, friendship; before litigation, reconciliation. 

That is why St. Paul could say to his Christians at Ephesus,  “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,” – wise counsel for married life, and in your office, in your school, in the shopping mall.

Jesus knows that sexual immorality is not merely external act.  It is not only the visible act of forbidden sex that is destructive.  Equally destructive is the lustful heart – perhaps even more destructive. 

Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J.  tells the story of two monks on their way to their monastery.  They found an exceedingly beautiful woman at the river bank.   Like them, she wanted to cross the river, but the water was too high.  So one of them took her across on his shoulders.The other was thoroughly scandalized.   For two hours he scolded the offender for his breaking the Rule. Had he forgotten he was a monk?  How had he dared to touch the woman?   And worse, carry her across the river?   And what would people say?   Had he not disgraced their holy religious order?  And so on. The victim took it quietly.  At the end of the scolding he said,  “Brother, I dropped that woman at the river bank.  Are you carrying her still?”

Jesus put it bluntly on another occasion: “Out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft,   false witness, slander.  These are what defile a person.” 

Lent is just a few days away.  If you find yourself searching for a Lenten penance, forget the “slim away fat” diet. Ponder and reflect day by day through the whole Sermon on the Mount,  Matthew chapter 5-7.

My dear friends in Christ, it is sad that there is a widespread Christian failure to recognize a different, richer radiant energy,  the Christ-life that radiates within each of us who have been baptized into Christ.   If you are living it consciously now, thank God.   If not, then for your joy now and forever  choose life.   Not the fringe of living; surrender any idols that hold you captive. 

Choose life in its fullness.Choose life in Christ, life with Christ, life for Christ.