"Choose This Day"--Whom Do You Serve?

Elizabeth Scalia is awesome.  Excerpts:

...Pope Francis said: “Everyone must make his choice.”

Chesterton said: “When you chose one thing, you reject everything else.”

That’s quite a challenge these two men are bringing us, isn’t it? Everyone must choose; everyone must, having chosen, understand that their choice means a rejection of everything else.

We know the one thing Francis has chosen: the life in Christ. And for that, he has rejected everything else, going so far as to leave behind mother, father, sister, brother, wife, children, excessive creature comforts.

Jesus, in one of those phrases that makes us squirm, said:

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37)

We none of us are “worthy”, of course, and it all sounds harsh, and certainly absolute, but I think what he is saying is that our lives are our own — that we alone make our own choice for him, or for something else. That if we are not choosing him, then we are neglecting him for something that we are willing to erect as a barrier between him and us. In which case, yeah, we’re not behaving in a worthy manner; we’re making him harder to see — making ourselves vulnerable to something other than him, and increasing our chances of getting lost...