A thirsty Snoopy is looking forlornly at his empty water bowl. He picks up the bowl with his teeth and positions himself under the water spigot. He waits, hoping for the water to gush from the faucet.

He waits some more and momentarily thinks of giving up, but decides to persist.

Soon it starts to rain and the rain becomes a downpour, then a deluge. The bowl is filled, he returns and drinks.

The rain stops as he lies on top of his doghouse. He thinks, “That’s one I’m going to have to think about for awhile.”

Joshua and his people are in the promised land, led there by God, who has delivered them from seemingly hopeless situations. Even so, after all God has done for them, blessing them, Joshua tells his people you can stay or leave. Their choice was to stay.

St. Paul provides the insight that a man and woman who strive to marry, make a choice. They choose to shape their identities around each other, a set, a pair. Despite the many ups and downs, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, you can’t think of one, without the other.

“Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Husbands, love your wives. Wives love your husbands. Paul is saying that, like a husband and wife, you must become a set with God; you develop a life around Jesus where you can’t think of yourself without him, and that others should be able to recognize the relationship you have with Jesus that they can’t think of you, without him.

Your relationship with Jesus is a choice; it is not a single choice as though it were yours alone. Like marriage, it involves two choices: each must choose the other. God chose you a long time ago.

Jesus asks his disciples if they are going to stay with him or leave.

“Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the holy one of God.”

Their lives are so wrapped up in Jesus they can’t see themselves as apart from him.

What becomes clear is that what Jesus is saying is hard ... not just hard to understand, but hard to accept.

Even so, Jesus assures them that it is his heavenly Father who gives them the grace to follow, even in the hard sayings. Jesus knew that some would not only reject him and his word but also do it with hostility, eventually betraying him.

Many moral issues have become political issues, pushing religion out. Critical thinking about these issues has no place in two-sided arguments, “on the one hand ... but on the other hand.”

In matters of faith and morals, you come to the point where there is no other hand, no option to consider, no other way. There is simply the right way and the wrong way. Who can accept this teaching?

“... Many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.”

Do you also want to leave?

On Oct. 11, Pope Benedict will call us to a Year of Faith. It is a “summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world.” (Porta Fidei [Door of Faith] 6)

The year of faith is an opportunity for Catholics to experience a conversion — to turn back to Jesus and enter into a deeper relationship with him. The “door of faith” was opened at your baptism and now you are called to open it again, walk through it and rediscover and renew your relationship with Jesus.