21st Sunday of the Year: “Decision Time”
It’s decision time: for Joshua and the people in respect of
whether to keep with the God who lead them out of
I really dislike making decisions, especially life
determining ones. My last one took about
six months, with panic attacks on the way!
But they are so much part of the web of our lives, our little bit in
being created as “God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus for good works” as
In this context of decisions and decision making, the second
reading today might be taken firstly as a reminder to us that it is not only
the big decisions that matter anyway: it’s the detail, the day by day deeds of
love and care and respect and healing and forgiveness, whether in the family or
elsewhere. But for a lot of people it is
also a classic case of an endemic complication in decision having to do with
the message of eternal life. The message
of eternal life, and the mediation to us of the Holy One of Israel, always
comes in time-bound and culture bound interpretations and applications. As
There is another, bigger problem which seems to have emerged in many places in the so-called West in our own lifetime, in which ‘culture’ emerges as a positive rather than a difficulty: namely something like the apparent ending of cultural Catholicism, in the sense of Catholicism and Christianity as a foundational element within various communal and even racial and national cultures. More than at any time for 1600 years, being a Christian or indeed having any serious spirituality or religion of any kind seems to require a positive decision, like with Joshua or the disciples. Nowadays we all need to be able to say with Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go? We believe, and we know, that you are the Holy One of Israel.” Put otherwise, we all end up being people who choose for themselves, which is apparently what the word ‘heretic’ means: nowadays we are all heretics! At least in this literal sense. And we have no choice about it.
Whatever the causes of our new situation, probably deeply related to the particular and peculiar history of the so-called West, it makes for difficulties and losses as well as some possible gains, with losses probably being the more obvious: a drop in overall numbers, a decision which for our young people particularly who are most exposed is much more difficult, and few vocations. On the other hand, it is not as if we haven’t been in this situation before. There is nothing to stop us striving to create life giving and life sustaining communities of our own, for example on the level of the parish. And as individuals and as community we are still called to be salt, and light, and leaven in the midst of our troubled world. Indeed the need to fulfill this role may be even greater, perhaps greater than ever, in a world showing serious signs of having just about used up its moral capital.