Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - June 14, 2015

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

June 14, 2015

Small Choices Have Big Effects

 

            St. Anthony the Abbot became a saint almost by accident. He was going through a tough time – eighteen years old and both of his parents had died suddenly, leaving him in charge of his younger sister and a large farm. He was wandering through town one day, his mind and heart in turmoil, unsure of where his life was going. On a lark he decided to stop into the local church. Stepping inside, Mass was going on, and the priest was reading the Gospel where Jesus said, “Go, sell all that you have, give to the poor, and come, follow Me.” At that moment, God’s grace penetrated his heart, and Anthony went and did just that – he gave up all of his earthly possessions, entrusted his sister to relatives, and went to live as a hermit for the rest of his life.

            From that small beginning, God was able to form a saint. If he hadn’t made that choice to walk into that church, his life would have been completely different. It looked like a small choice at the time, but it impacted him – and everyone who has been inspired by him throughout history!

If we cooperate with God’s grace, even in the smallest things, our choices will have huge – even earth-shattering - ramifications!

            Jesus gives us two parables in today’s Gospel. One is of the mustard seed – the small seed grows into a huge tree, just as God’s grace, when we cooperate with it, will do great things in our lives. The other parable is about how God’s grace is mysterious – like plants grow in silence and mystery, so we grow in holiness when we cooperate with God’s grace in the little things.

            Every choice we make, to cooperate with God’s grace or to reject it, to love or to sin, forms us. It shapes who we become. It either makes us more into the image and likeness of God, or deforms the image of Him within us. All of the simple, small good things we do – giving a smile to someone, holding the door open for another person, making a sacrifice and giving up the last dessert for a family member – it seems small at the time, but it will have a huge impact on who we become…and it will have a huge impact on other people, as well. By the same token, even our small sins – an impure glance, an unkind word, a little white lie, a hateful thought – corrupt us and prevent us from becoming the saints that God wants us to be. The good news, of course, is that God is merciful, and He understands that we mess up in small ways every day – all we need to do is repent, turn back to Him in Confession, and keep striving for holiness.

            As Catholics we believe that after death, we are judged immediately based upon how well we have loved God and our neighbor, and by our choices we are then ushered to Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. This first judgment of our soul is called the particular judgment. But the Church also teaches that at the end of time everyone who ever lived will be gathered again in the presence of Jesus, Who will then reveal to us how our actions – both our virtues and our sins – impacted the course of the world. This is called the general judgment – not that we will be “judged again”, but that we will be able to see how every single action of ours affected the course of world history in some way! I’m excited to see this – but I pray that my actions may have always influenced the world for the better!

            From our vantage point, we often don’t see how our small choices, to love or to sin, affect the world. When I was in my first year of seminary, I had a friend who lived across the hallway named Clinton. He complained about everything – the food, the professors, the homework, the dingy building – nothing was to his liking! One day, I had been listening to another one of his complaint sessions when I was finally fed up with it. Frustrated, I exclaimed, “Clinton, I’m tired of listening to these complaints. I’m going to go pray.”

            He offhandedly commented, “Okay, well, say a prayer for me.”

            Still angry, I shot back, “No, Clinton, go pray for yourself.”

            Later on, I felt really bad about that comment; I came across as such a jerk! But we never talked about it. Fast-forward three years – Clinton was now preparing to be ordained a priest in a few months, and he came to me one day and said, “Hey Joe, thank you for saving my vocation. I never would’ve been a priest without you.”

            I was quite taken aback, and said, “What do you mean?”

            He said, “Remember that conversation three years ago, when you told me to go pray for myself? Well, I realized you were right. I hadn’t been praying – that’s why I was so miserable in seminary. So that night I started praying – really praying – for the first time in seminary. And it’s what saved my vocation!”

            And I thought to myself, “Gee, I thought I was just being a jerk!”

            All of this is both a hope and a challenge. It’s a hope because we realize that no good work, no prayer of ours, is ever wasted. God uses even the smallest acts of kindness and love to build us into saints and to impact the world. It’s a challenge because it means that we can’t give ourselves a break on the “little stuff” – we can’t say, “Oh, that sin’s not so bad, it’s just so little.”

            You see, in God’s economy, everything matters. Whether or not we cooperate with God’s grace and become a saint will change the world!