Do remember these words by Robert Frost?
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.”
"Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Has worn them really about the same."
These lines from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken?” were a common part of English class when I was in high school in the 1960s. The poem spoke a cultural message our parents and teachers wanted us to have: “you can choose what you believe, where you go, and how you get there. Do your own thing…your way. Your internal intuition will guide you right.”
I took that message and ran with it. I have tended all my life to choose paths that are “grassy and wanted wear.” In retrospect, sometimes those grassy paths were exactly where I needed to go…and sometimes they eventually led to unintended or even dangerous places. I couldn’t tell where the road would end from the romance of the yellow wood.
Today’s Readings: A Different Perspective
Today’s readings give a different view. We’ve been reading 1 John since Christmas. I’ve been paying attention to the “love lines” in it. “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.” “For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another.”
I did not know the context for 1 John until a homilist pointed it out yesterday. 1 John was written at the end of the 1st century to a church ravaged by controversy.
The issue was the Incarnation. The infant church had not yet come firmly to the conclusion that Jesus, the Christ, was 100% God AND 100% human. That conclusion didn’t become official until the Council of Nicea in 325. However, enough time had passed since Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that eyewitnesses had died off.
As 1 John is written, people are questioning the reality of the historical Jesus. Was he real? In some other places people believed in the historical Jesus—but not the divine Christ; that was the Arian heresy. But in this community (likely Ephesus) the dividing sentiment is in the other direction: people are saying Jesus was God, but not God “in the flesh.” He appeared to be human, but was just God in human disguise.
The author, possibly John the apostle, is dealing with the controversy. He is clear: Jesus Christ was a real, human person….and Christians are called to both believe in him and follow what he commanded: love one another. Jesus was God in the flesh and his followers are called to imitate him in the flesh. They are called to love in deed and in truth as Jesus loved and did.
It is this controversy and the author’s protective anger about it that put those less than sweet words in our first readings this week: “Now many anti-Christs have appeared.” “Who is the liar?” “No one who sins has seen him or known him.” “Whoever sins belongs to the devil.”
If you go back and read the whole letter with this controversy in mind, you get a very different view of the letter—one that makes today’s readings especially informative and applicable to us in the Church today.
Testing Spirits—Then and Now
In today’s reading John speaks of “testing spirits.” He says,
Beloved, do not trust every spirit
but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God,
because many false prophets have gone out into the world
This is how you can know the Spirit of God:
every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh
belongs to God,
and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus
does not belong to God.
Look down a grassy road of what various people in the Church say today. Test it out. Where does it lead? Does that road conform with the reality of Jesus, true God AND true man?
Last Monday our Gospel was the exquisite Prologue to the Gospel of John. It told of Jesus Christ, true God, and how “all things were created through him.” It told us this second person of the Holy Trinity was the “logos,” the Design. In the human person Jesus, God designed what he would look like and act like when he came to live on earth. What clearer, safer path to holiness and union with God could there be?
1 John today goes on to give a pretty clear picture of a path (grassy or well-worn) that is of God:
We receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
We have guidelines for judging paths. Do they lead us to…
- Believe in what the Church teaches—as in the objective standards of creeds and catechism?
- Love one another—treat each other with honesty, compassion, and respect—give of ourselves for another’s good?
The Measure of God in the Flesh
Even Jesus, God in the flesh, measured himself against objective standards. In today’s Gospel we learn that he left Nazareth to live in Capernaum in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali so that “what had been said through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled.”
He began to do what had been predicted the Messiah would do: He preached repentance, taught in synagogues, cured the sick, and cast out demons.
He was God in the flesh matching the design he had designed and caused the prophets to predict. He demonstrated in life-in-the-flesh terms:
the people who sit in darkness
have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by
death
light has arisen.
In 2019
Frost’s poem ends:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I hope the road of looking carefully at solutions to Church and moral issues will not be a “road less traveled by” for us faithful Catholics. I hope looking carefully will help us all to make a difference—in our own lives and in the life of the Church. Join me through 2019 as I seek to do that in these meditations.
Prayer:
Lord, lead me and guide me as I seek out, “What did Jesus do?” “What does that lead me to believe about what God asks of me?” Lord, help me to follow your path—well-worn or grassy as I put my feet on it. Then take me where you want me to go.
