“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.”

“I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!” ― Oscar Wilde: (1854 – 1900: was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet)

Gospel Text: (LK 9:51-62)

When the days for Jesus' being taken up were fulfilled,

he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,

and he sent messengers ahead of him.

On the way they entered a Samaritan village

to prepare for his reception there,

but they would not welcome him

because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.

When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,

"Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven

to consume them?"

Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village.

As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him,

"I will follow you wherever you go."

Jesus answered him,

"Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,

but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head."

And to another he said, "Follow me."

But he replied, "Lord, let me go first and bury my father."

But he answered him, "Let the dead bury their dead.

But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

And another said, "I will follow you, Lord,

but first let me say farewell to my family at home."

To him Jesus said, "No one who sets a hand to the plow

and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God."

Within your life, ask yourself today just how seriously you take the two most important moments in your life: the two moments that determine whether your life will be one of peace. You speak of, and pray about, these two moments when you pray the “Hail Mary”: #1, now; and #2, the hour of your death. Not the hour of your birth, or the birth of your first child; not your graduation from school, or the graduation of your last child; not the day of your wedding, or the day you bought your first house; not even the day of your baptism.

The two most important moments of your life are now and the hour of your death. Maybe we know others who live as if the moment of death will never arrive: they live only for “now”. The fact is, though, that every “now” of our life bears a direct impact on which eternal dwelling God will send us packing for at the moment of our death. Everything we do now, or don’t do now, bears on that moment at the hour of death.

Each of us as a Christian does not control his or her life. If you do believe you are in control of your life, the life you’re imagining as your own is certainly not the life God wants for you, and which Jesus died to give you. If you are firmly resolved to prepare your self for the moment of your death, you will be firmly resolved in the “now” of every moment to follow what God is calling you to do.

The call God makes to men and women to various ways of life—to marriage, priesthood, and the religious life—are definitely important for every person, but those calls are not the only calls God issues to us. Every day God calls us to follow Him in different ways by serving others. If we worthily receive the True Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, He will strengthen us at every “now” of the coming week, to more closely follow Jesus, in order to live more fully in the peace of our heavenly Father.