THE WORD AND THE SAINT
November 22, 2023 - Remembering St. Cecilia
2 Maccabees 7: 1,20-31; Luke 19: 11-28
The urge to be faithful to God is never a question of maintaining the status quo. As spiritual masters always warn us, not to progress in spiritual life is to regress! Faithfulness to God is not lived or manifested in remaining where we are or merely in moments of legal fulfillment of rules and routine practices of piety. It takes fundamental radical choices at crucial moments to tell, not the Lord who knows our innermost thoughts but the world, that I belong to the Lord, to the One who has created me, the One who has called me and commissioned me.
Like the young lad, following his brothers and his mother, in the first reading chooses God over everything that the king promises and over even his very life; like Saint Cecilia whom we remember today who chose to give of her whole self - her body, soul, spirit and her very life for God, our choices need to speak for themselves.
Not just the choices of life and death, but the choices of what we want to do with the talents, the gifts that the Lord has given us, the choices of what we want to do with every moment of life that God has gifted us with. We can choose to enrich them and enhance them, or to just bury them and be inactive!
My choice for God has to be seen in my daily little choices - Cecilia is often celebrated as patroness of musicians (by the way, let us pray for all the singers and musicians and wish them well), and at times her heroic sacrifice and choice for God has been eclipsed. She decided to giver her whole self to God and she kept that choice till her death.
Just like the mother in the first reading today, Cecilia saw her husband and her brother in law die, but remained unmoved in her choice for God. In my daily events and ordinary tasks, I have to manifest this choice for God, if only I wish to inspire the world today. The choice today, is mine!