Our Own Choice
“If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.” (Sirach 15:15-17)
Dear brothers and sisters, every day we make a lot of choices. We all have our reasons for the choices we make. Very often our choices are based upon the costs, benefits, and risks associated with our choices.
Our first reading this Sunday (Sirach 15:15-20) speaks about our choices. There is really only one choice to be made, and it is the choice between life and death. Sure, we make lots of other choices but in the end the only choice that really matters is the one between life and death. It is both the ultimate choice and the ultimate criteria for making all other choices. Verse 14, which is not part of the Sunday reading, can serve as an introduction to it, for it introduces the major theme of the passage, man’s freewill and consequent responsibility: “God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.”
Pope St. John Paul II – (Veritatis Splendour) - Taking up the words of Sirach, the Second Vatican Council explains the meaning of that “genuine freedom” which is “an outstanding manifestation of the divine image” in man: “God willed to leave man in the power of his own counsel, so that he would seek his Creator of his own accord and would freely arrive at full and blessed perfection by cleaving to God”. The idea here and in what follows is similar to that of Deuteronomy 30:15-20: “See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.”
In the Bible we have a lot of stories about choices, both right and wrong, made by people. Adam and Eve chose to eat of the fruit. Peter chose to deny Christ. Saul chose to convert. Moses chose to go back to Egypt after he saw the burning bush. The list goes on and on.
Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross is made so much more powerful by the fact that He chose to endure that suffering; even while He was hanging by the nails in His hands, He could’ve called a battalion of angels to rescue Him. But He chose to see it through to the end.
We should understand the precious freedom of choice that God gives us: there is good news and bad news about the choices we make. The good news is that we will be given what we choose, and the bad news is that we will be given what we choose. So, choose life, choose life often, and if you need to, choose again.
Fr. John Samuel