My days often seem to be filled with inane choices of little consequence. There are thousands of small choices to be made: what to wear, eat, the route to work, daily activities, etc… Recently, on a “quick trip” to the store, I inadvertently spent an hour wading through the choices presented by the store’s three full aisles of frozen pizza. Heaven help me, if my wife sends me to pick out a new paint color!
The multitude of choices is overwhelming. The danger of such choice fatigue is that it encourages us to avoid making any choices. We abandon ourselves to the current of life, only attending to superficial decisions that cannot be avoided. Adrift in a world that does not have our eternal goal in mind, we evade consequential decisions for months or even years at a time.
I certainly affirm the need to declutter our unnecessarily complicated lives and thereby reduce the number of tedious options inherent to them. However, this is not to say that small choices are the problem or inconsequential. As beings endowed with free will, our choices are imbued with a moral and eternal character. All decisions either lead us closer or further away from God, and thus have an effect on our final destination.
My intent is not to encourage a paralyzing scrupulosity, or to see God as an overbearing judge. Rather, we need to understand that we are participants in a supernatural reality. God created us for eternal life with Him, and we must respond to that vocation. The choices we make are a direct response to that invitation. The readings from the book of Sirach this Sunday stunningly lay this out: “Before a man are life and death, good and evil, and whichever he chooses will be given to him” (Sir 15:17).
It is almost too terrifying that we should be trusted with such a gift and responsibility. Yet this is an inescapable reality for every person. You will go to heaven or hell, and you are a prime agent in the outcome. With no third option or do-overs, procrastination is not a good strategy. Our choice is not primarily an intellectual calculation of which is better — eternal happiness or eternal suffering. It is lived out through our whole person: thoughts, actions, relationships, and responses to God’s grace.
Jesus tells us that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments (Jn 14:15). In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus not only reaffirms the necessity of adhering to the commandments, He intensifies their meaning. It is not enough to simply abide by the commandments in an exterior manner, we must internalize their spirit. This is because God is not just giving us arbitrary rules, He is conforming our broken hearts to His perfect heart. In the same way, a life-giving marriage is not simply the absence of conflict or adultery. It is one in which the spouses conform their hearts, wills, and mission to one another. Additionally, a successful marriage is not the result of a single “I do” but rather countless daily choices to be faithful, loving, and forgiving. Likewise, our intimacy with God is born of our everyday choices in which we place Him before all other goods.
This may seem like an impossible task, and that is because it is. If Scripture has taught us one thing about humans, it is that they are incapable of responding to God’s invitation on their own. This is why God became man and has invited us to become participants in Jesus’ divine Sonship through baptism.
Where we cannot, He can. Through regular reception of the sacraments, grace moves our hearts towards God and everlasting life. Our whole person — mind, body, soul, will, and intellect — is brought into union with our Divine Spouse. Amidst a myriad of daily choices our sacramental union with Jesus means that each choice, no matter how small, can be a “yes” to God in our journey towards heaven.
