St. Maria Goretti

Maybe you have seen the ads, the commercials, on TV for “V-8”, that vegetable drink that looks, smells, and tastes like tomato juice. In the commercials, they have some person make a choice NOT to eat their vegetables, and then the waiter, or their spouse, or in the latest one, their dog, hits them on the forehead and they say, “I coulda had a V-8”. Now, in reality, I don’t think that this happens much. Unfortunately, most of us don’t regret NOT eating our vegetables. But we do all have our regrets. Sometimes they are little regrets. “Man, I sure with I would have bought the blue sweater instead of the red.” Or “I wish that I had had the chicken instead of the fish.” Or “I wish that I would have read that book instead of this one.” Little regrets are no big deal. But other times in life, there are bigger regrets like “Man, I sure wish I would have stayed in school.” Or “I wish that I would have tired harder to make my marriage work out.” Or “I sure wish I would have spent more time with them before they died.” There are some regrets that are bigger and that stick with us for the rest of our lives. We might not hit our fist against our forehead, but there are times for all of us when we just wish that we had chosen differently. “I wish I hadn’t said that.” Or “I wish that I hadn’t done that.” Or “I never should have passed up that opportunity.”

Today as we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, we hear a story that is from Jesus’ final moments on the cross. On the surface, it doesn’t sound very “kingly” or “royal”. And yet, this is a perfect Gospel reading for this Feast Day. The Gospel starts out with just about everybody mocking Jesus while He is dying on the cross. The rulers, the Jewish leaders, and even the Roman soldiers get in on the act. They all think that it is hilarious that Jesus called Himself a King, and so they blaspheme Him. They even go so far to put an inscription at the top of the crucifix that says, “Jesus Christ King of the Jews”. The Latin is abbreviated “INRI”, They didn’t have “J”s, and so “I” stands for Jesus, “N” stands for Nazareth, “R” stands for Rex, or King, and the last “I”, like the first one, stands for “J”, for Jews. And everybody thinks that this hilarious, crown of thorns and all. One of the thieves crucified with Jesus even gets into the act. He mocks Jesus. He teases Him about being a King. He taunts Him with the temptation to get Himself and the thief down from their punishment. The “other” thief isn’t buying into the cruel mockery. He chastises his fellow criminal, and then he asks Jesus to remember him when He comes into His Kingdom. Two thieves, two different choices. Don’t you wonder, is that bad thief now and forever in Hell, hitting his fist against his forehead, saying, “I coulda had Heaven. I coulda had Heaven!”? He was that close. Jesus was right there next to him. All he had to do was shut his mouth, and believe in the Crucified Carpenter, like his fellow thief, and he could have been on his way to Heaven. But NO! The bad thief joins in with the crowd, he’s laughing with the rest of them, and he condemns himself to Hell. You want to talk about regrets and remorse! Hell is full of regrets and remorse. It’s just too late then.

My brothers and sisters, as we come to the end of our liturgical year, our readings are sending us out with an intense set of scripture passages. Today, we are being asked to choose whether or not Jesus is our King. Just like those people two thousand years ago, at Golgatha, we too can reject Jesus. We can make fun of Him. We can go our own way and pretend that He never existed. Or… We can believe in Him. We can live with Him forever in His Kingdom. We can be, by adoption, the chosen sons and daughters of God, just as St. Paul describes in our second reading today, “God has made us fit to share in the inheritance of the Holy ones in light”. The choice is ours. We are given that choice thousands of times every day. We must constantly be choosing Christ and His way. But this Gospel and today’s Feast are reminding us that an awful lot of people are sitting in Hell, hitting their fists on their foreheads, and saying, “I coulda gone to Heaven. I coulda gone to Heaven.” We are ALL invited to be children of the King, King’s Kids, with an inheritance that is beyond our wildest imagining! Do we really want to throw that away, throw our inheritance away, for our sins? We need to think about what we are doing. The bad thief wasn’t thinking. He was just going along. He was just doing what everybody else was doing. He really didn’t believe in all that stuff about a Kingdom. He was wrong. Dead wrong. Wrong forever!

Guys, we get ONE chance, ONE life! We don’t want to have any regrets or remorse. Make Jesus your King. Make Jesus the Lord and God of your life. You’ll never wish that you coulda chosen differently again.

May God bless us during this last week of our Church year, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… AMEN !

St. Maria Goretti…Pray for us !!!