The Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time September 30, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
As a young boy scout, I enjoyed climbing, hiking, and building survival skills. My friends and I relished in having skills enabled us to survive in difficult terrain. We often listened to stories of men and women who had used similar skills to survive incredible ordeals and return home. One such story was that of Aron Ralston.
Aron Ralston was a mountaineer from Colorado. In 2003, he was hiking and climbing in Utah by himself when a boulder shifted and trapped his arm. At well over 800 pounds, this boulder could not be moved. He was stuck. After 5 days, Aron realized that he was going to die… unless… unless he was willing to make a serious sacrifice. So, he decided to cut off his arm using only a pocket knife. Talk about grit! And survival! Thanks to his willingness to sacrifice even his own arm to survive, Aron Ralston lives to this day. There’s even a movie about him.
Well, Jesus issues a similar challenge. Would you cut off your hand, or your foot, or pluck out your eye if that’s what it takes to save your life? Actually, it’s even more serious than saving your life. Though he postponed it, Aron Ralston will still face death eventually. The death Jesus warns of is far worse than dehydration in a desert. It is, literally, hell. Yes, hell is real. People do go there. And you should be afraid of it; So afraid that you are not only willing to cut off a limb, but to sacrifice literally everything else just to avoid it.
That isn’t just coming from me. It’s from Jesus himself. Ask someone on the street today about Hell, and they’ll probably say something like: “It’s a myth.” “An idea used to scare and control people.” “No one actually goes there.” “Jesus doesn’t really talk about it.” All False. In fact, Jesus talks about hell more than anyone else in the New Testament. He’s blunt about it right here; In other places he warns us that it’s actually easy to go there and that a lot of people do.
You can also look at the saints who have had visions of hell. There’s this popular idea that somehow no one actually ends up in that terrible place, but those people who have seen it say there are people there, especially people who didn’t believe it existed. The place where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Those words aren’t empty threats. They are dire warnings.
But why? Why are Catholics required to believe in Hell? Why would a God who is love create such a place? How could He possibly send people there? Well, we could point out that real justice demands punishment for evil. Or that the Good news of the Gospel doesn’t sound like good news if you don’t first know the bad news. Yes, Jesus saves us, but what does he save us from? Sin, death, and hell.
Perhaps most importantly, hell exists because God respects our free will. That means He allows us to reject Him and to do it permanently; He will not force us to love Him or to go to Heaven. Ultimately, hell is eternal separation from God. And it’s a separation that we choose by the way we live.
Each of us makes a journey through life, exercising our free will to choose the best path for ourselves. Each of those little choices ought to be connected to the main decision: the decision of where you want to go. You can’t decide to go to the moon, but then pretend you’ll get there by always digging into the ground. So it is with the spiritual life, but there are only two possible destinations
The story of Aron Ralston I started with can be an inspiring metaphor for your life journey. We set out but we get trapped under a boulder of sin, addiction, or attachment and it dooms us to death. Aron can inspire us because, once he recognized that this boulder would kill him, he was willing to sacrifice an arm to escape it. We should be equally ready to sacrifice our comfort, money, jobs, homes, relationships, and yes, even parts of our body if that’s what it takes to get away from deadly sin.
But there’s more to the story. You see, Aron’s first mistake was not being caught under the boulder, it was going on that trip alone. He knew it was dangerous territory, but he went alone. Even worse, he never told anyone where he was going or when he would be back, so no one could help him. Thanks be to God he had the courage to sacrifice his arm to recover from this mistake. But once he did, he still needed to return to community, to get help from other people to survive.
It’s the same way in our spiritual life. We are not meant to take it alone, nor should we go without confiding in someone else. Accountability and community are essential to holiness. In the first reading, Eldad and Medad made the mistake of not sticking with the group. Thanks to God’s excessive generosity, they still get a share in the holy spirit. In the Gospel, the exorcist doesn’t follow Jesus’s apostles, but because He is abundant, he grants him the power to cast out demons anyway. It’s a testament to God’s mercy and generosity.
But do not presume on God’s mercy! Do not presume you will be able to cut off your arm when the time comes! Even in both the examples from scripture, the idea is that these people will return to the group eventually.
You have free will, which means hell is a possibility, but so is heaven. When you stare death in the face, the fear of hell might be enough to convince you to cut off whatever is not of God. That’s why Jesus is so graphic here. Fear just might work. At the same time, he spends much more time trying to convince us of what we have to gain, to use love rather than fear. Truly, it is better to enter heaven maimed than to enter hell with all your limbs, but why let it come to that.
Stay with the 70 elders the first time. Stay with the Apostles, stay close to the Church now and you just might go to heaven and keep your limbs on the way! Moses cries out in exasperation, “Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets! Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!” Well, through baptism, we are all prophets. We do all receive his spirit. And if you stay with us, you can keep it.
So, yeah, Jesus and the Church want you to be afraid of hell. If the fear gets you back, then we rejoice to have you back, even at the last-minute crying, bleeding, and maybe missing a few limbs. But we’d much rather you never wander off in the first place. So, don’t. Stay close. Tell us where you are going and let us, let the Church, let God come with you so that it may be a journey made with love, not fear.