Growing in True Faith: Assume Personal Responsibility for your Choices!

THE WORD IN LENT: Tuesday, 2nd week of Lent

March 2, 2021: Isaiah 1: 10, 16-20; Matthew 23: 1-12

 

There are innumerable non-Catholic friends and groups which pick up the lines of Jesus today, entirely out of its context and keep creating polemics out of it, unfortunately. ‘Do not call any one your Father or your Master here on earth” – what does that injunction actually mean?

 

Let no one be responsible for your judgments, your behaviours, your decisions and your choices! That is in crux what Jesus meant when he said, let no one be your ‘father’ or ‘master’ here on earth. For a Hebrew, father would mean that person who decides everything for you! You have nothing else to say, because the father's decision is final. The master is someone who holds a total authority over you; what he decides to be right has to be right for you; what he decides to be desirable has to be desirable for you! Let that not be your mode of decision making; allow no one make choices for you, says Jesus.  

 

The point is clear beyond confusions: a person will be responsible for one's own choices. It is no more the case that a person does something or decides on something and passes the blame on to someone else: his or her father, or generations before, or persons in authority. That may be an age-old practice; not for a true disciple of Christ, the Son of God.

 

Let each one take responsibility for his or her own choices, challenges the Word today. Your choices determine your destiny, apart from the all-pervading love that is God. It is this love that has invested us with such a great personal will and freedom, using which we are challenged to choose God and all that pertains to God.

 

Let us quit looking for scapegoats; isn’t it essential to assume personal responsibility for our choices.