As a Christian nothing is more important than our friendship with Christ. Why is that? The Catechism teaches us that we "were created to live in communion with God (#45), in whom we find happiness."
In other words, we simply cannot find the fulfillment we seek in life, except through living in communion with God. But how do we do that? Before original sin, communion with God was automatic. But original sin shattered that communion. Sin, suffering, conflict, death, and frustration invaded the human family. But God himself came to our rescue. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to rebuild the bridge that original sin had broken.
Through friendship with Jesus Christ, then, we can once again live in communion with God and achieve the happiness we were created for. That's why nothing is more important than our friendship with Christ.
But being Christ's friend means more than simply praying and receiving the sacraments - although those are essential. It also means FOLLOWING him.
It means daily listening for his call and obeying it when it comes. That's the tough part. Because obeying Christ means going against the grain of this fallen world. It brings us into conflict with social trends, other people's desires, and even of our own sin-struck nature.
We shouldn't go looking for these conflicts; we should look only to discover and carry out God's plan. But Christ doesn't want us to be naive either. Being true to him will not always be easy.
It can affect even our closest relationships - as Jesus makes clear in this Gospel passage. When he makes his will known, not even family ties should hold us back from following him. In Christ's mind, that's how much his friendship matters - it's worth sacrificing everything for.
Jeremiah's Story
As we heard in the First Reading, the Prophet Jeremiah learned this lesson well. He lived at a tumultuous time in Israel's history, right around 600 BC.
The northern half of Israel had recently been conquered by Assyria, but the small, southern part of the country, Judah, where Jerusalem was located and where Jeremiah lived, was still free when Jeremiah was born. But it was located right between two powerful empires that were trying to conquer the whole area: Egypt in the south and Babylon in the north.
Jeremiah's mission in life was to be prophet, to constantly remind the people and rulers of Judah to trust in God. If they obeyed God's commandments and instructions, God would protect them.
Unfortunately, neither the leaders nor the people wanted to hear that. Instead, they wanted to take matters into their own hands, fight their own battles, and arrange their own peace treaties. The one thing they didn't want to do was to depend on and obey God.
Every time the King of Judah asked Jeremiah for guidance, Jeremiah would pray, receive instructions, and inform the King - and then the King would do the exact opposite. And then God would ask Jeremiah to issue warnings, calling the people to repentance. But they wouldn't repent.
So eventually Judah was conquered by Babylon, Jerusalem was obliterated, and the Jews were taken into exile. Through it all, Jeremiah was the despised scapegoat.
They spread lies about him, mocked him, burned his writings, and finally put him prison. When even that didn't silence him, they threw him down a well so he would starve to death.
Why? Simply because he was being faithful to what God was asking of him. Yes, choosing to follow Christ in a fallen world has consequences, and God wants us to be ready for them.
Putting the Right Spin on Life's Struggles
Keeping this in mind is the only way we can avoid caving in to frustration and discouragement in the midst of life's tribulations. Frustration and discouragement are a function of expectations. If we expect life to go smoothly, we will become frustrated or discouraged when it doesn't.
This is what many advertisers are hoping will happen. They know that they can use our frustrations to sell their products. They do this through creating an illusion that those products, by solving a particular problem, will actually solve all our problems.
But Christ is reminding us today that life on earth is not meant to be smooth sailing all the time, that we will always have problems until we reach heaven. If we are faithful soldiers in Christ's army, the Church, then we will feel the heat of battle.
We should not be surprised when things don't work out as we planned. We should not be surprised when we run into difficulties that appear to be irrational. We should not be surprised that our Father in Heaven doesn't spoil us by surrounding us with a bubble of perfect comfort. We are not created to be God's collector's items, perfectly polished and preserved; we are created to be his friends. And friendship, in order to be real and in order to grow, has to weather storms. Keeping this in mind is the sure antidote to frustration and discouragement.
Jesus wants us to choose that friendship above all other things, making it our treasure and our strongest desire. Today, when Jesus comes to us again in Holy Communion, let's give him the pleasure of renewing that choice, and promising to live it out during the week to come.