Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
There are a lot of attractive elements to Christianity: God’s endless love and mercy, a personal relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit dwelling in your heart, and forgiveness for any sins throughout the course of your life!
But…that’s not all of it. Sometimes, we have the great discomfort of dealing with the Gospel sections where it sounds like Jesus is actually asking something of us. And most of the time, He does NOT do anything to sugar coat it. Take Sunday’s reading for instance. If something is causing you to sin, cut it out of your life or face eternal fire. That’s it. No soft landing on this teaching.
And the realization that we can’t do this on our own is devastating. Who can avoid everything that drives us to sin? Who can predict where people or relationships or decisions will lead us with 100% accuracy? It’s a good thing He was speaking figuratively about the amputations because I’d be blind, with no hands, probably mute, and I might be a couple feet shorter! Didn’t He know we would be likely to fail miserably at this?!
Yes. He did know. To quote an extremely wise, sage-like, very smart person: “…and forgiveness for any sins throughout the course of your life!” (see the last line of the first paragraph of this post).
Okay…So I’m not actually all that sage-y. First, I make up words like “sage-y.” Second… “I would be blind, with no hands, probably mute, and I might be a couple feet shorter” if Christ were being literal in this teaching. But I do know that HE knew we would mess up. So that Catholics over the world wouldn’t have to support the bone saw industry, He gave us the Sacraments…particularly the two you can receive every day if you choose, His body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist, and His divine forgiveness in Reconciliation.
See, we can’t cut it on our own. It’s part of our broken nature to be drawn to sin. So, Christ heals us by forgiving that sin in Reconciliation and strengthens us by physically entering into communion with us and nourishing our souls in the Eucharist. He does all the heavy lifting!
Or…we can choose to go it alone.
Something I was told when receiving Reconciliation keeps coming up in various situations. Today, it is here. The priest said to me, “Wherever we choose not to rely on Christ in our lives, we flounder.” I don’t know about you, but I’d rather lean on Christ and put down the bone saw.
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