Today’s readings highlight the struggles that those who live by God’s word often experience. Jeremiah suffered for relaying messages from the Lord that his contemporaries didn’t want to hear. The passage from Hebrews is a reminder that committing our lives to Christ may entail suffering. And if you came to be comforted, that isn’t Jesus’ message today. He came to establish division not peace.
Sometimes we make choices that make a real difference in our lives and possibly the lives of others, from choosing our careers, our relationships, and our faith. Essentially these readings are challenging us to follow Jesus. Our presence suggests that we see ourselves as his disciples but are we willing to follow Jesus at any cost? Pulling no punches, Jesus warns his disciples that following him will not be easy.
One of Robert Frost’s best-known poems, The Road Not Taken, comes to mind as I pondered this rather uneasy gospel. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth…” Ah, which way shall I go?
Before making a choice and taking that next step, we usually ponder the outcome and the cost. After we have considered our options, we consider the alternatives. “Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same.”
Ah, the other path is tempting, so which path do we take? The path to follow Jesus or not? The one that leads to a deeper awareness of what Jesus is asking of us or the one that others won’t find so disturbing? “And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”
Being a prophet isn’t easy yet a prophet sees the need to stand up for what is right to bring about a better world. Yogi Berra is remembered for saying, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” We must take a road, but which one will we venture down? That depends on where we ultimately want to go. Do we heed the Good News and what Jesus is asking of us and make our way to heaven or do we hesitate for fear that we offend others?
“I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Following Jesus and his wisdom has made all the difference as many have discovered.
Unless you want to stand forever where the two roads diverge, you have to make choices as you venture through life. We don’t want to create division but if we faithfully follow Jesus, that is bound to happen when the values we hold clash with the values others hold dear that are a obstacle to building God’s kingdom.
The values we profess, evident by the path we take as Catholics, could put us at odds with others even those closest to us. That fear, which Jesus foretells, could prompt us to go down the path they are venturing instead of following Jesus. Each day, ask yourself if you are being faithful to the gospel values and challenges Jesus has taught us.
Then and now, Christians have been ostracized for following Christ. The standards, which Jesus imposes on his followers, are often countercultural to the values of their peers. Speaking bluntly, Jesus cautions those who follow him that doing so will not always bring us peace and tranquility. Instead, one may experience rejection by those who don’t want to hear the Good News. As I said, that was what happened to Jeremiah.
Few of us live our faith with such drama but I can think of heroes who paid the price for following the prophetic example of Jeremiah and Jesus. Boldly they proclaimed the gospel and consequently they paid the price. The truth they learned was liberating yet divisive. Dietrich Bonheoffer, a Lutheran minister spoke out against Hitler and the Nazis and was killed in a concentration camp, as were St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Edith Stein.
Martin Luther King, Jr., is remembered for sharing his dream that his children would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed while celebrating Mass, for preaching the gospel of nonviolence. Both dared to speak out against the prevailing politics of their times.
Closer to home, we may even know people who have been ostracized by their family and friends because they made the choice to live their Catholic faith. Their choice to follow Jesus met harsh rejection from loved ones as Jesus foretold yet they still chose to continue down the road less traveled by. They come to realize that doing so offers them a sense of peace and security that all the wealth in the world cannot offer.