Missive

What a week.  Oy!  There were a  couple of days where it just seemed like the bad news kept piling on; and then the significant increase in covid-19 cases in La Crosse & Monroe counties keeps us wondering what the future holds: hopefully not (speaking for myself) the lockdown experience of the first couple months of the pandemic.

What does one do in such times?  It seems to me that times such as these will either drive us to give in to inevitability, bringing with it a life of hopelessness and following (more often than not) licentiousness, OR it will focus us on the purpose of our existence – the love of God and our neighbor.  There are many experiences in life that bring us to that particular fork in the road.  It is important that we recognize in times such as these that we always have a choice – and the choice we make is what will define us.

This week I think in particular of the stories my dad told of growing up during the immediate post-war years of the late 1940’s.  His family was rather poor, and yet his mother consistently made choices to live in hope: working for a better tomorrow for her children, taking care of sick relatives, looking out for those who were poorer still than her, living her life as best she could and in accord with her Catholic faith.  It seems to me that no matter where or when we find ourselves we are confronted by that same choice: Who do I choose to be?

So many people we find in the Gospels faced the same question – Mary Magdalene, Matthew and Zacheus the tax-collectors, the woman at the well, the rich, young man, Judas Iscariot.  Each of them were, at some point, confronted by their life story, each of them in that life story had an encounter with Christ and in that encounter were confronted with a choice.  Each chose.  Some chose to live in hope, following in the footsteps of Christ; some chose to walk away not conceiving of how they could go on, how this could work.

So, when you come to that fork in the road what will you choose to do?  Will you choose to allow Christ to accompany you in hope, or not?  Why not take some time to stop in at church, even if you aren’t yet ready to come to Mass?  Take some time to encounter our Lord; hear what He has to say; feel His presence; know His love.

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Trial, or distress, or persecutions, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?  Yet in all this we are more than conquerors because of Him Who has loved us.”  (Romans 8:35, 37)