Sunday, June 27, 2010

My dear people,

I wonder what it would sound like if we were to go around telling others that we were almost God's people, almost Christians. “Hey! Guess what everybody? I am almost a child of God today!" or maybe in our prayers, "Well, Lord, I have to tell you that I was almost your disciple today!" I wonder what it would have been like had Jesus done the same thing. Or what if God had almost revealed himself in Jesus Christ? What if Christ were almost born and almost lived and almost died? What if he would have said, "Ask and it will almost be given you; seek and you will almost find; knock and it will almost be opened to you"? Or, what if he would have said, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will almost give you rest"? And what if Jesus had told his disciples, "For whosoever would save his life will lose it, and whosoever loses his life for my sake will almost find it"? This kind of Almost Christianity takes on a whole new light, doesn't it? You know, there is a difference between 'almost' and 'done did.' It equals out to the distinction between 'interest' and 'commitment.' When we're interested in doing something, we do it only when it's convenient for us to do it, and if it's not convenient, we don't do it. But when we're committed to something, we accept no excuses, we look only for results.

The urgency of the Gospel message demands that all ties be cut, and there can be no looking back. Once we accept the Christian Way we cannot reflect on how things might have been better for us if we had made another decision. We accept God's call with all the hardships it implies, never looking back. Like St. Paul, when he said, " ... this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.''

Fr. Stan+