Christian vs. Daily Life… or Christian Life?

 “This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age” (GS 43). Our faith cannot be severed from our daily lives. Our worship cannot be separated from our regular affairs. Today’s readings remind us of the intrinsic connection between our relationship with God and our relationship with our neighbour.

1. People may get accustomed to worship without thinking about the state of their soul. “Oh father, what happens outside the church remains outside the church. Here we come to worship, the world has nothing to do with church.” But the Lord says, “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). You may say, “My problem is with my brother, not with You, Lord!” He could respond, “And did I not command you to love your neighbour?” Sometimes, however, we are so lost into the superficial aspect of our worship (the songs, the prayers, the standing and sitting, etc.) that we forget that our worship is a relationship with God, is an act of religion (which means precisely “re-connect”) and most of all an act of love.

2. The whole Bible and Jesus Himself insist much on Heaven and Hell, on Judgment and Death. One of the reasons for this is that we are so immersed in worldly, material affairs, so distracted by what can be seen, that we very easily forget God and the things that cannot be seen. The meditation on the last things, even the mere mention of them sometimes, wakes us up. God knows that these things are effective for making us reflect. If you see your child going down the hill towards the cliff, you shout, “Watch out!” God does the same thing. “Before each person are life and death, good and evil and whichever one chooses, that shall be given” (cf. Sirach 15:15-20). If you choose in life what is good, good will be given to you in the afterlife. If you choose evil, you will receive what you have chosen. Watch out, my son, because this life ends soon and the other life does not end.

3. Threats alone can be a mode of oppression, promises alone can be a mode of manipulation. Oppression and manipulation are ways to make people do what you want but for your own sake, not for people’s sake. God does not do that. His threats and his promises are meant to make us think, to make us more reasonable, to make us grow and be better people. That is why He appeals not only to our sensibility, but also and especially to our reason and to our freedom: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and they will save you. If you trust in God, you too shall live, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.” He promises Heaven to those who freely choose Him, to those who love Him: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:6-10).

4. It may not be pleasant to hear about Hell, but Jesus knows more than us, and He knows us more than we know ourselves. He knows we need a wake-up call, sometimes. He knows that, sometimes, not committing a certain sin seems to us so impossible that we don’t even want to think about it. Facing our own inability to forgive someone, for example, makes us feel so bad about ourselves that we simply cannot bear with it. We know we are sinning, we know we should forgive, but we try to avoid the thought and we keep rolling, because we don’t want to feel a failure, we don’t want to feel bad about ourselves. So we distract ourselves, but we know, and there is no peace. And if we keep rolling this way, there will be no peace ever, but rather eternal pain for not having taken our chance…

The good news is that we actually can change. The good news is that, for God, you are still the best, not because you are now perfect, but because He is in love with you and dreams with the day in which you will come back and He will embrace you again.

5. We sometimes think that we cannot avoid sin because it seems impossible for us to live without a certain pleasure that sin promises. In these cases, the thought about death and hell may wake us up: “What is this fleeting satisfaction in the face of eternity?” “How good would this be if I were to die today?” Sin does not fulfill its promise of happiness: because satisfaction and possession are not the cause of happiness, love is; and only the love of God and the love of neighbour can truly make us happy.

True love between two people goes back and forth; but one of them has to start. The one who starts has not been loved yet, but he loves. And he expects the same. This is what happens with God. He loves us, even when we are sinners: but He expects us to love Him back. He desires our love, He dreams with it, He died for it. Let us love Him back and repent from whatever is separating us from Him. Let us love Him back, we will never be disappointed.