Lectionary: 27
Adults: How are your priorities affected by your faith in Jesus Christ?
Children: When you have important choices to make, do you and your family pray to make the right choice?
by Thomas Gette
This past week, LifeTeen (a worldwide Catholic youth ministry organization) shared an interesting thought on social media: “What you post on your feed should be evidence of your deep relationship with Jesus, not the extent of it.” In other words, we shouldn’t limit being a Christian to the one hour we go to church each week or to those times when we pray in private.
Reflecting on how faith affects our priorities reminds us that faith must be a part of our very being and not just a facet of who we are. When it comes to our goals and passions, we would never think to include “being alive” on such a list. Life is just assumed (maybe even taken for granted) as a prerequisite, a necessity, for everything. Our faith should be no different. Our faith should be the prerequisite for everything else.
Thus, we should ask ourselves: Is our faith simply an item on the list of many things that describe who we are and what we do? Or is faith the power that propels us off the page?
Faith is not intended to stifle us. On the contrary. In Galatians 5:1 we read: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Being a Christian is not some burdensome set of rules and regulations intended to zap all the joy out of life. No. Being a Christian helps us discover what it truly means to be alive, what it truly means to be human.
For example, we might be pulled between various commitments and find ourselves once in a while foregoing Mass on Sunday. But faith demands that nothing replace Mass and that all our plans be made around it. If we cut out the source of life of our faith—the Mass—everything else will, in a sense, be in vain. This is similar for family life. God created us for community, and if our job and other commitments (and phones) are causing us to not be present with our families building and strengthening quality relationships, then we need to reconsider how we are spending our time.
Stopping to consider life decisions and priorities in the light of faith might seem daunting, but the more we intentionally do this, the more it will become second nature. It won’t always be the easy thing to do, but it will always be the right and good thing to do. We will find no greater fulfillment.
Thomas Gette is a family man with a passion for the domestic Church. He holds master’s degrees from both Franciscan University and the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium.