21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time, B
August 22, 2009

Church of the Holy Angels – 5:00 p.m., 8, 10, 12

Friday night I had a funeral at a funeral home on Mayfield Rd. at 8:00 p.m. It was getting late and I hadn't had dinner so I decided to stop off at a small diner in Beachwood on my way home. I sat at the counter with a few other patrons and when I received the menu from the waitress I was overwhelmed. There had to have been at least 50-75 different menu items. My brain was fried and, frankly, I didn't know what I wanted. A small little guy on my left shoulder kept saying, "eat healthy," while the little guy on my right shoulder kept saying, "man that corned beef sandwich looks good." I ended up with a healthy spinach omelet (with eggbeaters, of course). When I got my meal and tasted it, it was good. However, a man a few people down at the counter was eating a huge cheeseburger with a big bowl of cottage fries. I wondered, "did I make the best choice." Then the woman next to me ordered a hot apple pie with a huge mound of melting vanilla ice cream on top. I smelled the cinnamon and the apples and thought, "I'm not sure I made the right choice."

Isn't that the way it is with choices. The more options we have, the harder it is to decide.

1. St. Thomas Aquinas once said that "every choice is a renunciation"

- it's, in fact, a thousand renunciations

- for instance, if you choose to marry one person, you can't marry someone else

- if you choose to live in one city, you can't live in another

- if you choose to spend your time and energies in one place, you can't spend

them somewhere else

2. Our Scriptures today speak to us about those kind of choices
- about choosing the most important thing – the thing that matters most

3. From the book of Joshua, the prophet asks the people to decide: "who will

you serve – the gods your fathers served or the god of the Amorites – or

the Lord, our God, who brought us out of Egypt, out of slavery, who protected

us on our journey

- as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord – and forsake all others

4. And Jesus, in today's Gospel, asks his disciples to re-commit themselves

- life is getting tough – the disciples begin to hear dissent and know that

following Jesus is challenging

- some disciples choose to leave

- Of the remaining disciples, He asks, "do you also want to leave"

- they respond, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of
eternal life. You are the Holy One of God."

5. There is a story that is told about St. Therese of Lisieux

- when she was 7, one of her older sisters decided it was time to give up her toys

- she gathered them all into a basket and went into a room where Therese and her

sister Celine were playing

- she told them that each of them could choose one thing from the basket and the

rest would be given to an orphanage

- Celine chooses a colorful ball but Therese was paralyzed, unable to choose

- she said, "I choose them all! I want them all!"

7. We usually think that having it all will make us happier; our lives more enriched

- but that's actually not the case

- think about our consumer culture

- we can go along content as can be with a product - say Laundry Detergent

- We buy CHEER faithfully for yours

- we're familiar with its comforting blue container and the biggest decision we've had

to make until now is whether to buy the soap in dry form or liquid

- Do you realize that now, there are six different kinds of CHEER

- free and gentle

- high efficiency

- fresh linen

- true fit

- dark formula

- and of course, original

Let me ask you: Has your world been enriched, expanded, opened because there are now

six choices of CHEER to choose from?

- probably not!

- in fact, it has made shopping more complicated, more stressful, more overwhelming

- Wives now wonder, have I been neglecting my husband's shirts for not washing

with free and gentle?

- have I jeopardized the life of my kid's jeans by not washing them with dark formula?

You can see where I'm going with this

- more choices, don't bring more happiness

- in our world today, the messages we receive is that we can have it all

- wealth, power, prestige, relationships, full satisfaction

- and we believe it!

- we buy pills that say we can lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks

- we try hair growth serums

- we want our kids to have everything; to play every sport possible and we exhaust

ourselves in trying to make it happen

- we take our kids anywhere and everywhere they want to go

- we make our lives busy, hectic, frantic, trying to fit everything in – to have it all

When I was growing up, we had "blue laws" which made it easier to choose mass on

Sundays

- businesses were closed so as to help us choose to be in church

- but today, everything is open 24/7 and church is one choice among many choices

- when I was growing up my parents gave us a choice too: go to Mass or find another

place to live!!

8. Life isn't simple – and we can thank, among other reasons, the very way we're made

- we're made in God's image and likeness

- that means that God has given us a divine fire, a hungry energy, an insatiable

appetite, a constant yearning and a paralysis when it comes to decisions

9. But life in this world is also a kind of holy longing

- to live in thirst is to live with an ache

- and remember that in that longing is found the need and the ache for God

- if I can have everything, if I never need to choose, if I never said no to

anything or anyone, there would be no need for God

10. As Soren Kierkegaard once said, "to be a saint is to will the one thing"

- eventually Therese of Lisieux understood that

- when we choose God, above and beyond all things, it ultimately involves a "no" to

something else but on the other hand, we experience a peace and

a happiness that nothing and no one in this world can offer

- and a foretaste of the fullness of joy that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven