To become a follower of Christ is a choice and as Jesus says, it is a
difficult one. Our faith tells us that heaven is real, but faith alone is not
enough to carry us up there. To profess the faith and to know the content of
our faith are surely important, but it is incomplete. We need to work our faith
out and make it a reality. Otherwise, our faith becomes mere rhetorical
exercise. In the frank words of St. James, “faith without works is dead (Jem
2:17).” Faith is God’s grace yet, it is up to our freedom to make this God’s
gift fruitful.
It is a radical choice to live up our faith daily. We can be baptized
as Catholics or Christians, yet we never go to the Church. We profess our
belief in only one God, but we enjoy reading horoscopes, consulting
fortunetellers and use religious items as mere protective amulets. We can
easily shout, “God is good all the time,” but we have a lot of complains in our
lives. We are often instructed by Jesus Himself to love our enemies, yet we
maintain hatred, remain vengeance-oriented and take pleasure when our enemies
absorb misfortunes.
We like being
called a follower of Christ, but
we do not actually follow His footsteps. We want to be Christian, yet we adopt
our own suitable styles instead of Christ’s examples. This is a serious problem
and indeed we might flung heaven. If we try to paraphrase today’s Gospel, it
will sound like this: We knock the gate of heaven and shout “Lord, I am your
follower”, but the Lord says, “I do not know you because you never actually
follow me.”
Lord, give us determination
and commitment to live our faith daily, to act what we profess and to do what
we believe. Amen
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