life is a choice
There was a man one time who had a huge block of marble. His friend asked him what he intended to do with it, and he said that he was going to sculptor an elephant. 'But you are not a sculptor', said his friend. 'I know that, he said, but I thought if I chisel off every¬thing that doesn't look like an elephant, I might succeed.'
First, the reign of God is never received sitting down. It is not something that will fall from the sky one day and lo and behold we are now in the kingdom of God. No. The kingdom of God does not come to us like that. We have to search for it, we have to find it, we have to discover it. And in discovering it we have to go, then we have to sell everything, so that we can buy it for ourselves. In other words the kingdom of God is not something that comes to us complete and entire so that all we have to do is to receive it. We have to create the kingdom of God, or to put it in perspective, we have to permit God to use us to create the kingdom of God. Permit yourself to be used by God in your own profession, in your own vocation in life so that his kingdom may come upon us and in our communities. Permit God to use your talents, your abilities, your position even, and your possessions so that his reign may finally come.
A very religious man was walking towards home one night when he saw a little child sleeping on a street corner sleeping on a well-laid carton for a bed and bundled up in newspapers for a blanket. She looked miserable in that situation and the religious man like all religious man was greatly affected by what he saw. When he reached home he complained to God loudly in his prayers saying, why permit such misery to happen, if you are a loving God you could have done something for that little child. That night as the religious man went to sleep he dreamed and in his dream God responded to his clamor saying, do not say that I have done nothing for that miserable child. I have done something for her. I made you. That’s what I did for her this night, I made you.
The reign of God is not something that God will do solely for us. He will not take away for us all the miseries of this world, the miseries which we have created ourselves. He will not stop us from killing each other or from stealing from each other, or from doing nasty things to each other. We have to decide to stop these ourselves. He cannot take away our greed if we do not consent.
The point is, he made us. We don’t have to do something big, we don’t have to do something great, we don’t even have to do everything. All we have to do is to respond to a situation with whatever we have and with whatever God has given us.
Second for the reign of God to come let us train ourselves not receive everything at face value. With each misery that comes to us as a nation or as a family or as individuals we often say, ti anhon mo kay pagbuot sang Dios. But not everything bad that happens to us is pagbuot sang Dios. Most often the bad things that happen to us are pagbuot ta or pagbuot sang iban. Today the Lord is also reminding us that the kingdom of God is a choice or more precisely the kingdom of God depends so much in the choices we make. We are bad because we choose to be bad. We are good because we choose to remain good. The events in the world around us as we see them now are products and consequences of our choices. Indeed there are things we cannot control. There are things we can only accept. But that does not mean that we do not have a choice. We can still choose how to react. People may hate us and be angry with us but we can always choose not to hate, not to be angry in return, we can choose to forgive rather than get even.
In our gospel today we are reminded of that last day when the good fishes will be put in buckets while the bad ones will be thrown in a fiery furnace. There is a separation on the last day not because of God but because on this day and everyday henceforth we have gone our separate ways already by the choices that we make. If in the end we will be separated as good and bad, it is because today we have already begun to segregate ourselves and separate ourselves from each other by the choices we make and continue to make.
No the reign of God is not God’s sole making. It is also ours by the choices we make. Life is a choice. Eternal life is a choice. Eternal damnation is a choice - each one’s choice.
If we are searching for the pearl of great price, it might be good to ask, how does the pearl of great price look like? How does it differ from the other pearls that I may see? If we are looking for a buried treasure, what does this treasure consist of? How does this treasure differ from the other buried treasures that I may run across? Indeed in searching for something, it is necessary to have some idea of what it looks like! It is necessary to know what we are looking for.
Today we go via negativa - to know what it is not, so that like the sculptor in the story we may succeed in sculpting an elephant by chiselling off from the stone everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.
First, the reign of God is never received sitting down. It is not something that will fall from the sky one day and lo and behold we are now in the kingdom of God. No. The kingdom of God does not come to us like that. We have to search for it, we have to find it, we have to discover it. And in discovering it we have to go, then we have to sell everything, so that we can buy it for ourselves. In other words the kingdom of God is not something that comes to us complete and entire so that all we have to do is to receive it. We have to create the kingdom of God, or to put it in perspective, we have to permit God to use us to create the kingdom of God. Permit yourself to be used by God in your own profession, in your own vocation in life so that his kingdom may come upon us and in our communities. Permit God to use your talents, your abilities, your position even, and your possessions so that his reign may finally come.
A very religious man was walking towards home one night when he saw a little child sleeping on a street corner sleeping on a well-laid carton for a bed and bundled up in newspapers for a blanket. She looked miserable in that situation and the religious man like all religious man was greatly affected by what he saw. When he reached home he complained to God loudly in his prayers saying, why permit such misery to happen, if you are a loving God you could have done something for that little child. That night as the religious man went to sleep he dreamed and in his dream God responded to his clamor saying, do not say that I have done nothing for that miserable child. I have done something for her. I made you. That’s what I did for her this night, I made you.
The reign of God is not something that God will do solely for us. He will not take away for us all the miseries of this world, the miseries which we have created ourselves. He will not stop us from killing each other or from stealing from each other, or from doing nasty things to each other. We have to decide to stop these ourselves. He cannot take away our greed if we do not consent.
The point is, he made us. We don’t have to do something big, we don’t have to do something great, we don’t even have to do everything. All we have to do is to respond to a situation with whatever we have and with whatever God has given us.
Second for the reign of God to come let us train ourselves not receive everything at face value. With each misery that comes to us as a nation or as a family or as individuals we often say, ti anhon mo kay pagbuot sang Dios. But not everything bad that happens to us is pagbuot sang Dios. Most often the bad things that happen to us are pagbuot ta or pagbuot sang iban. Today the Lord is also reminding us that the kingdom of God is a choice or more precisely the kingdom of God depends so much in the choices we make. We are bad because we choose to be bad. We are good because we choose to remain good. The events in the world around us as we see them now are products and consequences of our choices. Indeed there are things we cannot control. There are things we can only accept. But that does not mean that we do not have a choice. We can still choose how to react. People may hate us and be angry with us but we can always choose not to hate, not to be angry in return, we can choose to forgive rather than get even.
In our gospel today we are reminded of that last day when the good fishes will be put in buckets while the bad ones will be thrown in a fiery furnace. There is a separation on the last day not because of God but because on this day and everyday henceforth we have gone our separate ways already by the choices that we make. If in the end we will be separated as good and bad, it is because today we have already begun to segregate ourselves and separate ourselves from each other by the choices we make and continue to make.
No the reign of God is not God’s sole making. It is also ours by the choices we make. Life is a choice. Eternal life is a choice. Eternal damnation is a choice - each one’s choice.
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