“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t now. What do you want to do?”
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Sound familiar? Sometimes we are afraid to choose, to make a commitment, because what will I do if a better opportunity comes along and I am already committed? The problem is, if we never make a commitment we are no longer in charge of the direction of our lives. We are simply letting random chance determine the meaning or the lack of meaning of our existence.
C.S. Lewis, in “Mere Christianity,” used the image of a house when he was asked about making a commitment to a particular faith. He said that believing in mere Christianity is like entering the foyer of a house. But we don’t live in the foyer. We live in the various rooms that we have access to by entering the foyer. We must make choices, and by their very nature certain choices mean leaving behind other choices.
Lewis was using the image to explain that we can only live our faith in Christ by a commitment to a particular community of faith gathered in Jesus’ name. The image also works for our first reading. “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you will live; … Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him” (Sir 15:15, 17).
We can be afraid that making a definite commitment for God’s commandments may make my life too narrow, too oppressive or that somehow I will lose part of myself. Our fear of making a commitment for God is also tied to our culture’s loss of a sense of trust in God — that he has given us his commandments does not limit us but sets us free.
The German philosopher Max Scheler, who heavily influenced St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, was concerned with this estrangement of modern man from God and how it undermines our sense of self. He argued that it was completely the opposite: “You gain yourself as a person by losing yourself in God” (Scheler, “Of the Eternal and Humanity”).
Don’t be afraid to take up the challenge of the prophet Sirach; don’t be afraid of making defining choices in your life. Choosing to keep God’s commandments will not limit you but set you free to be truly yourselves.
Not to choose, is to choose. We cannot keep the commandments without the help of the Holy Spirit, unless we make a choice that help cannot be given because we are not ready to receive it.
Only when we make the firm commitment to keep God’s commandments, even if we fall from time to time, are we ready to accept the grace of the Spirit that will allow us to keep the commandments. To know and keep those commandments at the deeper level Jesus is calling us to fulfill in the Gospel will lead to an even deeper sense of self and of joy.
Msgr. Timothy Keeney is pastor of Incarnation, Charlottesville.