"Before us is life and death, good and evil
whichever we choose shall be given us."
Sirach says this in the first reading today.
One of the themes of our readings today
is that of the human free will;
that we retain free will at all times;
that we respond, if you would, by free choice
to whatever happens to us.
Now we do not always get to choose what happens to us.
But we do get to choose how to react to what happens to us.
And that is what makes all the difference.
What is interesting about this is that we often
find ourselves just doing what we have always done
and not really being thoughtful about what or why we do it.
I’m not sure if we are conscious of
how well we can choose our response at all.
For example, if somebody said something to us,
in particular, for boys and girls here,
something that is unpleasant,
our immediate reaction can be to say something unpleasant back.
That is a choice.
We can train ourselves to respond to that differently
because we have a free choice;
we can walk away from it,
we can say something different
that may be challenging but not unpleasant.
The point is we still retain the choice
even though what somebody else says to us is unpleasant.
If we have an automatic response,
then we should have some thoughtfulness behind it.
That requires of us to pause and to look at our lives
and see how it is that we are responding;
how is it that we are choosing to act in certain ways to certain things.
That is the purpose of Lent which is coming up soon.
It is to pull back all our stuff and look at this more clearly for ourselves;
to be conscious and to be deliberate
in how I am responding to my spouse, to my children,
to my parents, to my friends, to strangers, to people in need.
Let me illustrate:
There is a book that I have been reading over the last few weeks
that has really been thought provoking.
I will be talking about it quite a bit.
The book is called “Die With Zero” by Bill Perkins.
I do not espouse everything in the book, but the premise is this:
We should be living our life according to our own values
and we should be living a most-fulfilled life according to our values.
To do that, we have to get out of autopilot.
The main idea is that we die with zero money.
The idea is that any extra money you have left over
is money you worked for and
in the time you spent doing that you could have done something else.
Here is an example the author gives:
Let’s say when you die, the net worth is just your house.
Let’s just say that you have nothing else but the house you have left;
and your house is worth let’s say $2,000,000.
That is all you have when you die.
If you were earning $200 an hour, which is a lot of money.
Not everyone is doing that but let’s be generous with our assumption.
That house represents 10,000 hours of work,
which represents 5 years of work.
You worked 5 more years than you needed to, to make it to the end.
What could you have done with those extra 5 years?
Could you have spent more time with family?
Could you have spent more time doing the stuff that you love to do?
It is more complicated than that.
I get it. It is not just that simple.
That is one of my critiques of the book
but it is still thought provoking.
You cannot just burn all the money.
The point is to knock us out of autopilot
and to get us to think about
maybe we do not work that many hours extra
and we spend more time with our children.
You might say I want to leave the money to my children.
How about leaving the money to your children when you are younger?
When the children are younger
and when they might need it more?
It starts to intersect.
How much time do we have?
How much health do we have?
How much wealth do we have?
And the intersection of those three issues.
It is a really a thought-provoking book.
Now the author does not espouse values.
He is not trying to suggest to you to change your values;
he is just saying whatever you value in your life,
you ought to be spending your time, your health and your wealth on that;
whatever that is.
Now, going back to the gospel,
Jesus does, and the gospel and the readings do
espouse values, which is to live according to God’s laws.
But the gospel and the scriptures very clearly say,
if we don’t know where we are
then we are not going to be able to live those laws.
Are we choosing life over death?
And we won’t know that until we reflect on our life.
Thus, the need to pause and say:
“What am I spending my time on?
What are my values?”
This is what Jesus gets to;
what are the desires of my heart?
The desires of our heart will drive our actions
if we are on autopilot for good or for bad.
The idea of the Lenten journey is to pause
and start to examine where are my values;
what do I value; can I listen to what Jesus says
and value those things that are good
and choose those things that are good for us.
If we do that then there is a free choice.
Once we make that choice
then our life will follow that pattern afterwards.
Now look, I’m not saying it is easy. It is not.
But it means we have to get out of autopilot
and stop doing what we have always done.
We need to be thoughtful and be conscious of our choices;
we have free will and how we use that free will.
Whether it be for ourselves or
for others, it matters a great deal whether we are on autopilot
because that is what we call discipleship:
When we thoughtfully, deliberately choose to follow Christ
and have our life follow that pattern
then the core of our belief is that it will not only be a fulfilled life here
but a fulfilled life for all eternity.
Lent is only 10 days away believe it or not.
I ask you to join us during the Lenten time.
Our theme for Lent is “Keeping Time…Sacred”
and I invite you to carve out some extra time for prayer;
carve out some time for fasting;
carve out some time for almsgiving
but most of all let’s get out of autopilot.
Let’s look at our lives and see;
are we living according to our own values
and are those values aligned with Christ’s call for us
to follow and to love God by loving one another?
