What will you choose? Homily for Sunday, February 15, 2026

Today’s readings are not unlike the choice Moses set before the people. Death or Life? Sirach tells us we can choose to follow the commandments or not? Jesus helps us to see that we should not strive for the minimum. What will you choose? Readings for Today.

What will you choose?

There is an old saying that it all comes down to choices. When we think of a typical day, just how many choices do we make? What to wear? What to eat? Whether to read the paper or not? How to drive to work? And on and on and on.

Often the choices we make are not terribly consequential at the moment. We also know that other decisions can be more significant. Should I get married? What job should I take? Should I become a parent? What college should I go to? What type of parent should I be? And on and on and on.

We face so many choices each day it can be the case that we almost react when we should make choices. It can be the case that we do see what happens with the sum total of all these choices can be.

Today the readings present us with a choice about our ultimate choice. Will we follow the commands of God or not? Will we become the persons God has made us to be or not? Who is it we will become?

Sirach tells us in the first reading that everything comes down to our relationship with God. “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live.”

Sometimes it can be the case that we resent rules and commandments. We don’t like to be told what to do. Sometimes we feel like we need to go our own way without following others. This is often at the core of how we define what it means to be an American. Rugged individualism. Do things your own way.

It can be the case that when people consider Jesus they reduce everything to such an accepting Jesus that following Jesus becomes doing whatever it is we would choose to do anyway. We can believe in Jesus as we believe in a teddy bear. 

In today’s gospel Jesus reminds us he is not a teddy bear. Nor is it the case that Jesus represents a complete break from the Old Testament, from the Jewish law. Jesus is something new, but the newness comes from a fulfillment of what came before.

The spiritual life begins with the acknowledgement that God is God and we are not. While it is true that humans can know some things, it is not true that humans can know everything. We depend upon God for everything. 

Moreover, we know that God does not leave us on our own. God pours out grace upon each one of us. So God helps us in the most important choices in our life. Will we recognize the dignity each person has simply because they exist? Will we recognize our own dignity?

Faith in Jesus is not about doing just enough to get by. Our goal is not simply to sneak into heaven. We are called as beloved sons and daughters of Jesus to live with Jesus forever. We are not to be just most of what we can be, what Jesus made us to be, but to become fully what Jesus has made us to be. 

And so as we read the gospel, it is not enough to simply avoid murder. We are to avoid letting anger consume us. It is not enough to stay out of the way of those with whom we disagree; we need to work at reconciliation. It is not enough to simply avoid infidelity in marriage; we are called to always recognize the God given dignity of every other human being.

Put simply, we are to be who it is we say we are. Our faith is not to settle, but to strive. To strive for all that God desires for us. “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”

All of this depends upon faith. “If you trust in God, you too shall live.”God has revealed to us his desire for us. Imagine how it is your life, my life, would change if in every choice we were to consider the will of God?

Imagine what our life could be if we committed more of our life to God in prayer. Be cultivating silence, seeking the intercession of the saints, reading the bible. Imagine what our lives could be like if we committed more and more to a deep prayer life?

Consider how our lives would change if we thought more about sacrifice in our lives? Could we live more simply? Maybe be on our phone less? Perhaps hearing more deeply the recent challenge from Pope Leo. “I would like to invite you to a very practical and frequently unappreciated form of abstinence: that of refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor.”

Might we become more holy if we could serve our neighbor more authentically. Not merely giving money to those in need, as important as that is, but in other ways too. Calling the cashier by their name. 

What if we saw waiting in the checkout line not as something which takes too much time, but invites us to encounter Christ in those around us. 

Maybe our love of neighbor is taking the slow lane in our car, instead of trying to get wherever we are going as quickly as possible. Maybe we plan ahead so that we do not get angry and frustrated getting to where we need to be.

Every choice we make is a small brick in the building of who we will be. When we choose repeatedly to be generous, generosity defines us. When we seek to be kind and compassionate every time, we are kindness and compassion.Moses also provides a way to reflect on the meaning of the readings today. “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.”What will you choose?

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