Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
A favorite gift for people as they get married, buy a house, or start welcoming children into their family is the famous line form today's first reading, "As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD" (Joshua 24:15). As I write this reflection I'm looking at the one that hangs right next to our crucifix in our living room. It seems so appropriate that both of these hang in our living room, get it 'living' room. Let me explain.
There is a book that I've since donated to our parish's library called Encountering Jesus in Word, Sacraments, and Works of Charity by Monsignor Peter Vaghi. In his book he reworks a famous Benedict XVI quote. Benedict said, "We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (Deus Caritas Est, 1). Peter Vaghi's version says, and I'm paraphrasing as I no longer have the book, "To be Christian is to live in such a way that one's life does not make sense without God." I read both Benedict's and Vaghi's quotes as building upon our scene in Joshua today.
As I look at my Joshua 24:15 sign I'm convinced he was asking the Israelites to live differently. It wasn't about not eating pork or trying to create the most just society. It was about the encounter with the Lord they were given in their rescue from Egypt. That encounter led to a promise to live in a way that doesn't make sense without God. That encounter showed that the Lord cared, that the Hebrew people could believe in God's love. With a god who loves them, why have gods made of wood, stone and precious metals?
But what about us? What part of our lives, excluding Sunday Mass, don't make sense without God? What is different because we know the love of God? How do we see time, money, work, others, and the rest of our lives differently because of God? If God gifted us this world how does that change how we use it? If God is the author of all life, what does that mean for how we treat one another? What about money, our talents, our relationships, and our time? Do our lives make sense to someone who doesn't know God?
- Spencer Hargadon