Three Life-Changing Ideas
This Sunday holds three ideas that changed my life. And that’s not hyperbole. Each of them, at a different time and place, literally changed who I was and how I lived.
I could spend hours and hours reflecting and discussing each idea but, for the sake of maintaining the frame of keeping these reflections short and digestible, I’ll try and offer something simple for each.
1. Is Jesus a liar, lunatic or Lord?
Jesus is, by far, the most famous person who has ever lived. His name has reached nearly every corner of the world and wherever his name has been made known a believer can be found. Which means, everyone who has ever heard his name, has to answer the question, “Who is Jesus?”
He said he was God. So, as C.S. Lewis so beautifully put it, he is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. He is who he said he was or he is something entirely diabolical. There isn’t an in between.
I spent three years sitting with this question, reflecting on it, wondering if it could be true. Wondering if he really was who he said he was. And when I finally answered, “Yes”, everything about my life had to change.
Everything.
2. Love sometimes requires rebuking
Jesus loved Peter. He would give him the keys to the Church he founded. Yet, without hesitation, he rebuked him, he called him satan!
Our lives change the moment we are willing to let love call us out and call us higher. Twice in my life, love has called me a hypocrite. Both times it hurt. Badly. Yet both people were 1,000% correct. And they risked rupturing the relationship by calling me higher out of love for me. Because loving someone sometimes requires harsh words and hard truths.
If you let yourself be rebuked by love, it will hurt. But it will also change your life for the better. It always has for me.
3. Suffering is a necessary part of the journey to becoming who God made you to be.
When I first heard the words: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” I thought life was about me, I thought comfort was the highest good, and I thought success was something to be obtained.
As a result of those beliefs, I was selfish, conceited, lost, afraid, and lonely.
When I started giving my life away, making it about other people, conforming my life to the Gospel, voluntarily accepting pain and suffering as a prerequisite for joy, and when I considered inner integrity as the pinnacle of success, the peace of God followed me everywhere I went.
None of these teachings are easy. You could spend a life-time simply trying to live into each of them. For this week, just pick one. Meditate on that one. And ask God to show you the next right step in your life at Mass this Sunday.
