Do we live for Christ or for the world?

In the passage that we proclaim this Sunday from the Gospel according to the Evangelist Luke, the Lord Jesus speaks some words that can cut us to the quick: 

 “No servant can serve two ­masters.? 
He will either hate one and love the other, 
or be devoted to one and ­despise the other.? 
You cannot serve both God and mammon.” 

Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (more commonly known as the Jesuits) in his Spiritual Exercises speaks of “The Two Standards:” The way of the Lord Jesus or the way of the world. And we as Christians have to make a choice! 

As women and men who are fully initiated members of the Church, we are called to be in the world and yet not of the world. We are incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, and, as such, we have to make decisions, ones either for Christ and his Church or against Christ and his Church.

When we choose to live as a standard bearer for Christ, we recognize who Christ is and who we are. We recognize, in utter, complete, total humility, that God is God and that we are not. We are creatures and God is creator, and that everything we have and possess is a gift, freely given, of God to us. As Georges Bernanos, the French Catholic author wrote in his famous novel, “Diary of a Country Priest,” “All is grace!” Indeed, all is grace! 

Once we choose God over mammon, once we pick the things of the Lord over the things of his world, the haze of self-deception is lifted. And as Christ did, we recognize that we live not for ourselves, but for Christ and for others. Our response to the gratuitous gift of God that is our very existence is not a concern for “What’s in it for me?” But a call to see God in all things, as the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (I know that I quoted this poem in this column two weeks ago, but it’s just so great and appropriate!): 

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;? 
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells? 
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s? 
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;? 
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:? 
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;? 
Selves – goes itself; myself?it speaks and spells,? 
Crying?What I do is me: for that I came.? 
I say more: the just man justices;? 
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;? 
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –? 
Christ – for Christ plays in ten thousand places,? 
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his? 
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Having become able to see Christ in all things, we then recognize that we are to be the heart, the hands, and the voice of Christ in the world, especially to the poor, the weak, the forgotten and the oppressed. We are commissioned as the standard bearers of Christ Jesus to become men and women for others, which is the purpose of a Jesuit education. Fr. Pedro Arrupe, a former Father General of the Jesuits, who is coming closer and closer to canonization, wrote in 1973: 

“Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-and-women-for-others; men and women who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ — for the God-man who lived and died for all the world; men and women who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men and women completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.”

This week, each of us needs to ask ourselves a question: Do we live for Christ or for the world?  This week, consider praying Saint Ignatius’ meditation on the Two Standards.