Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Holy fire and brimstone! Both the first reading and the Gospel about God “smiting evildoers” and “bringing down fire on the day of judgment” used to be one of the very things I most disliked about the Church. But as I’ve seen and experienced more in life, I’ve come to realize that I need to be reminded of the real, daily, nitty-gritty struggle between good and evil. Jesus gives us a wake-up call that it’s possible for a soul to be lost. In our “anything goes” culture where we’re told that there’s no such thing as right and wrong, we’re called to teach the same unpopular message that Jesus did: our actions now shape our eternity.
If in past generations, the temptation was to fall too far on the side of fire and brimstone, in our generation, our greater temptation is to cheapen God’s mercy down to a blank check for doing whatever we want, without recognizing that there are consequences for what we choose. Not just eternal consequences, but here-and-now consequences, too: Gossiping about a co-worker ruins his career possibilities and a chance to make real friends at work. The first choice to experiment with drugs turns into a lifelong addiction. A young woman who has sex with several partners is rendered infertile later in life, and paves an easier path for infidelity once she’s married. Skipping Mass becomes a habit, and soon we find that we’re living a life with little meaning or purpose.
In my generation, most of my peers have grown up with the notion that there is no good or bad; that there should never be any judgment; that it’s narrow-minded and ignorant to see anything as right or wrong; that EVERYTHING is gray. “Well, as long as it works for you…” has become our mantra. Our culture desperately needs to hear the message of today’s readings and to be reminded that this path leads to misery.
I fell into this morally relativistic trap in college, and learned the hard way that “the wages of sin is death.” Since I wasn’t going to church in that time, no one presented the idea that those sins could permanently harm me, and could leave life-long marks on my soul. I wish that someone would have sat down with me, to look into my eyes and listen, and to ask me, “Why are you settling for this?” I don’t think I would have been convinced by a Bible-thumper, but I might have been called back to God by someone presenting beauty and goodness.
Jesus himself tells us that He will be our judge. Let’s not ease our consciences, thinking that this is just a literary device! It almost hurts our ears to hear this, but we need a little more judgment in our lives – right judgment, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Another definition for right judgment is “sanctified common sense.” In a culture where common sense is not highly valued and judgment is considered the ultimate faux-pas, we don’t need more condemnation, but we desperately need more right judgment.
The last line of the first reading, “Unless your faith is firm, you shall not be firm,” resonates with this. I’m grateful to have been raised by parents who had the old-school guts to teach us that there is right and wrong, by grandparents who taught me to “offer it up for someone” when suffering. I mourn for the enormous part of our culture and our youth who grow up without this solid ground, sensing that there might be something more meaningful, something higher, something nobler, something more beautiful to live for, but with no guide to find it.
We, as parents, aunts, uncles, mentors, and friends, need to give our youth this counter-cultural foundation of radical Christianity, a vision of something more beautiful and noble, something worth living for, and deliver it with boldness! Our culture is hungering for that message. So let us be bold and unafraid in delivering it, remembering that Jesus is the just judge. May it put some more fire under our feet, remembering that our actions have an eternal consequence, and that souls are yearning to be called to something higher. And may we trust in the great mercy of God on the day of judgment.
- Alyssa Wagner