Making Choices to be “Heavenly” or “Hellish” Creatures

We are always making choices in life and the choices we make are gradually shaping us either into people of God or of this world.

C.S. Lewis explains that each time you make a choice, “you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.” By doing so, you are either turning into a “heavenly creature” in harmony with God or a “hellish creature” “in a state of war and hatred with God and fellow-creatures.” (Mere Christianity)

Pope Francis clearly depicts that “if we choose to steal, we become thieves. If we choose to think of ourselves, we become self-centered. If we choose to hate, we become angry. If we choose to spend hours on a cell phone, we become addicted.” On the contrary, if we choose God, “daily we grow in his love, and if we choose to love others, we find true happiness. Because the beauty of our choices depends on love.” We become what we choose!

In this week’s first reading, we see Joshua urging the people to make a choice while in John 6:60, we see the followers of Jesus deserting him because they did not understand that he was offering His entire self to them. The followers could not accept that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (158), we are taught that faith seeks understanding -a disciple should seek to understand better the faith that has been given to him. The disciples who quit failed to seek a deeper understanding of Jesus. Jesus does not coerce them to follow him and neither does Joshua because”man’s response to God by faith must be free”.  Jesus thus draws men to Him through His love.

Human freedom as explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Faith (ccc1730-1733) “is the power, rooted in reason and will’ and “it a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness”. The more one choses to do good, the freer one becomes; while the choice to do evil is an abuse of freedom and slavery into sin.

Pope John Paul II (1995) tells us that it is in moments of trials and difficulties that it becomes hard to distinguish between good and evil and thus we need to be attentive to our choices. We have to “pray and listen to His words; let yourselves be guided by true pastors; do not ever succumb to the world’s flattery and facile illusions, which frequently become tragic disappointments.”

To make choices that mould us into “heavenly creatures”, we can choose to heed the counsel of Pope Francis “Let us look to Jesus and ask him for the courage to choose what is best for us, to enable us to follow him in the way of love. And in this way to discover joy.”