Choice - Venerable Fulton Sheen

losing mr. Liman brother priests and revered sisters and all friends in Christ do you realize that if you are consistent in this mission you will be exposed to 12 stalks and I should tell you that they will all be different I will not be like the professor who travelled around the country in a car and with chauffeur the chauffeur always sat in the audience one day the chauffeur said to him you know I think that I have heard that lecture of yours a thousand times and I could give it just as well as you do the professor said all right you give the lecture tonight I will dress up in your chauffeurs uniform and sit in the audience the chauffeur gave a perfect lecture but at the end hand wet up there's a question that I should like to ask you when you mix that h2so4 were then NaCl too and then compare it with the photographic plates of the Sun how do you get the equation equals M over C squared he said that's the most stupid question that I ever heard in my life and I'll show you how stupid it is I'm going to ask my chauffeur to answer it the subject of this evenings meditation will be choice I will try to bring home to you the supreme alternatives that are before us the alternatives of our eternal destiny and I will begin by giving you two examples of choice because after all our heaven or hell as before as every day but there come great moments too when we make decisions for much of our life one of these stories will be taken from Paris and the other from London and both of them were my own experiences I had gone down from Brussels to Paris to preach a sermon on the second Sunday of February and I stayed in a small hotel there was an Englishman playing the piano in an adjoining room and playing it well I complimented him and then I asked him if he would like to go out for dinner he said I've never talked to a priest before in my life well we're just like anyone else you stick me with a pin I will jump too so we sat down to table in this small restaurant and he said do you ever have questions to answer this is my problem I have never met in my life one good man or one good woman I thanked him for the compliment and then he went on he said now this coming 11th of February over there at that table there was a lady trying to break a lump of sugar in a cup of coffee she couldn't do it so I went over broke the lump for her and she told me how me and her husband was to her I asked her to come to live with me well she did and I get tired of them all after about 12 months so he said this morning I bundled up all of her clothes I left them with the concierge but she anticipated my move and she gave me this note dear puppy if you refuse to continue living with me until our anniversary of the 11th of February I shall commit suicide by throwing myself into the same now may I permit her to live with me to prevent suicide I said no you may not do evil that good may come from it and furthermore she will not commit suicide it got to be about 11 o'clock at night he said I will walk you back to the hotel I'm not going to the hotel I'm going to mow Mars he said I was just beginning to think that maybe you were alright and now you tell me you're going up to that hellhole well I said there's something else in the hilum Oh Mart besides dives there's a great basilica there the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and every night for over 50 years there are a thousand men in prayer all night long i induced him to come with me is it how long I said I will leave when you are ready to leave though I intend to stay all night he made no move to go until the Sun came up over Paris and I read Mass walking down the hill and Muammar he said will you stay in Paris and teach me to be good it's the first time in my life I've ever contacted goodness I agreed to meet him that night in his courtyard at 8 o clock he came in with a woman not the one that was involved in the story and he said we will go out to dinner the three of us and I said no this is not a social evening you must make a choice either you were going out with that woman or you were going out with me he walked up and down in the courtyard a couple of times and came back and said my father I think that I'll go out with her and that's the end of the story the choice was made after having received a great grace please God before he dies he will recall that night at momart that was the choice for evil another kind of choice I spent about seven or eight years of my life and all in a parish in London in the Soho Square district I opened the church door this particular morning there was a cold January morning heavy London fog and a limp figure fell in a young woman I said how did you happen to be here where are my father is the old father yeah she said I used to be a Catholic but not anymore you were drunk yes he said I was drunk well I said men drink because they like the stuff women drink because they don't like something else what were you running away from she said three men I was in love with each of them and they were beginning to find it out and so I got drunk what is your name in pointing to a billboard opposite the church on the walls of the cross and Blackwell jam office I said is that your picture over there yes I'm leading lady in that musical comedy made a cup of coffee for where she was frozen from the night exposure she said thanks I said no come back this afternoon and thank me she said I went on one condition that you do not ask me to go to confession I said very well I shall not ask you to go to confession she said I want you to promise me faithfully that you will not ask me to go to confession I said I promise you faithfully that I will not ask you to go to confession she came back that afternoon before matinee and I said we have two paintings in this church that are very notable would you like to see them as I took her down the side aisle of the church I pushed her into a confessional I always keep my promises two years later I gave her her veil as a nun in the convent of adoration where she is to this very hour so that cold January morning another choice had to be made and it was a choice for good and this is the choice that each of every each and every one of us is making now let me read you about the two choices one from the Old Testament and the other from the new incidentally I will always be reading from the new English Bible the new English Bible which is by all odds the most beautiful of the texts God speaks I offer you the choice of life or death blessing or curse choose life and then you and your descendants will live love the Lord your God obey Him and hold fast to him or else if you choose evil you will be cursed now from the New Testament from Matthew it is remotely possible that I have missed my reference but I know I have it here I get so nervous when I miss anything our Lord and Savior is speaking enter by the narrow gate the gate is wide that leads to perdition and there is plenty of room on the road and many go that way but the gate that leads to life is small and the road is narrow and those who find it are few this was much more intelligible in the days when the city was surrounded by walls there was the great gate that opened up into the highway and the very narrow gate the narrow road that led into separate houses so our Lord is saying as a broad Road wide gate and many travel that road there's a narrow road and a narrow gate and few there are who go in now suppose it'd be said but I will not make a choice I will live in differently not to make a choice is to choose no boy for example ever decides in life that he's going to be ignorant he just doesn't steady no one ever decides that he is going to be a dishonest criminal he just does not practice honesty white fences do not remain white fences they become black fences because we do not paint them and take care of them naturalist tell us at the mole which burrows in the ground once had eyes to see but he chose not to use those eyes and nature as if seated in judgment said take that talent away there is an animal and called the crustacean in one of the caves of Kentucky the seemingly has perfect eyes if you cut the eye with a scalpel you find all of the nerd desiccated it shows the darkness and the penalty was the loss of vision so everybody is making a choice even when they do not chew now what are some of these choices how are they pictured well first of all I think the choice that is offered us there's something like the choice that was offered on the sunlit portico a punches pilot the day that he brought Our Blessed Lord and Barabbas out before the mob now our Besant Lord had the bloody sweat the night before he was scourged he was made king for a day when I visited Jerusalem I noticed on the walls of the pre floor of the praetorium of Pilate for example a big letter B beta Greek letter than the Roman numeral 12 and then other numbers these carvings and the great rocks in the Praetorian of Pilate were a game the soldiers played King for a day the B meant Basilius and Greek King if the dice would fall in that B was king for a day you know when our Blessed Lord was brought down into that Praetorian they mocked him they put on a crown of thorns they gave him a reed he put on a purple robe and they bowed before him mockingly as their King in their Lord now Pilate brings him out on his sunlit portico and with him Barabbas a great popular ear hero let us remember that he was not just two robbers has been described he was rather a revolutionist and there was reason for revolution in Jerusalem because they Jews were under the servitude of the Romans he was anti-establishment he was popular because he was violent he tried to overthrow the Roman Authority and Pilate now brings out on the court these two figures there is even some evidence in the early manuscripts of Scripture that the name of Barabbas but Vera bar means an EVO son la bas is rabbi so he was the son of the father Pilate therefore was really saying which shall I release to you Jesus the son of the heavenly father or the son of the Father Barabbas they chose brother's release under us bruh I can writer with your wife crucify him now we have that choice we are in many important moments of our life making that decision we are opting for the hero or we are opting for the one who for the moment is quite unpopular or to put it in other scriptural language we are going to one of two cities see the Gustin deliverer of the fourth century wrote a book called the City of God in which he contrasted it with the city of evil now in the last book of Scripture which is the book of Revelation there are two cities that are described this is I think one of the most apropos books of modern times it's very very difficult to understand and there many things in it which we'll never understand until it's too late really but there are two cities one is the city of Babylon and the other is the city of Jerusalem not the Babylon the historical battle but the Babylon that is yet to come the corrupt city of evil and this is the way John describes it then one of the seven angels that held the seven bowls came and spoke to me and said dung and I will show you the judgment on the great horror enthroned above the ocean the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her and on the wine of her fornication men all over the world have made himself drunk in spirit he carried me away into the wild their eyes a woman mounted on a scarlet beast which was covered with blasphemous names the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and gold and huge and burrows in her hand she held a gold cup full of obscenities and the thousands of her fornication and written on her forehead was a name with a secret meaning Babylon the Great the mother of Horrors and every obscenity on the earth the woman I saw was drunk with the blood of God's people and with the blood of those who had borne their testimony to Jesus that is one city than the other city which will be at the end of time come and I will show you the bride the wife of the land whose the land our Blessed Lord who is the wife or the bride of the land the church all of us will be members in heaven one of another so when spirity carried me away to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down from out of heaven from God it shone with the glory of God it had the radiance of some priceless jewel by just clear as crystal it is a great wall with 12 gates at which were twelve angels and on the gates were inscribed the names of the 12 tribes of Israel so ultimately at the end of our choice after having chosen either Christ or gravis there will be two cities awaiting us the city of Babylon and the great marriage for in heaven there will be the marriage of the land and the bride which is the church now let us look at a few characters were made his choice cito Gaston cito Gaston was the hippie of early the early church it was a very learning man dissolute but he still had a yearning to be good and he often prayed your Lord I want to be good but not now a little later on we all say that prayer and one day he was with his friend Alypius in a garden and he was torn on the inside between following the way of the Spirit and following the way of the flesh and he heard a voice the voice of a child saying tol a lazy take up the book and read and he read from the Epistle of the Romans not in chambering Zanden impurities but in obedience to the spirit and Agustin chose that day to follow Christ and became one of the great saints of the church even pagans at this choice five or six centuries before Christ was the great teacher of antiquity Socrates and he was constantly telling the youth of Athens that there was an absolute in morality and there was one God not many that was a crime against the state Socrates was condemned to death and they offered him a chance to escape because of his influence and his prestige in His goodness and Socrates would not escape and they gave in the hum hemlock juice and he drank it and as he was losing consciousness he said oh yes I owe a rooster to a skill abuse refusing to escape you said I shall follow whatever way God leads me so even the pagans have the choice an interesting story from the Old Testament there was a famine in the city of Bethlehem and Ruth left the city of Bethlehem or the rather the town of Bethlehem and went into the Moab country now that was non-jewish and she should not have done it even during the famine and she took with her two sons they married two Moabite women the two sons died Naomi had two daughters laws in her hand one was Ruth and the other was arson and Naomi said I'm going back again to my own land now choose what you will do Ruth said your God shall be my god your country shall be my country your Lord my lord I shall go with you orphan went back to her billion people Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David who was the notable king who foretold the kingship of Argos of Lord so at the beginning therefore of this of these series of conferences think on the choice that you are making never be discouraged you have plenty of help we will develop that as time goes on and perhaps I can describe maybe some of the difficulties that we have and the hopes in terms of some of the great sculpture of Michelangelo Michelangelo was commissioned to do the tomb of julius ii this tomb was never finished what you see in florence today are four half horn figures coming out of the marble struggling striving to be released that is a picture of ourself we know this choices before us we're striving the flesh weighs upon us old habits weakness of will but like these characters we hope for an upsurge from all that is cold and alert the second statue the statue of King David a sculptor in Florence tried to make a statue and he ruined it but it was a beautiful piece of Carrara marble Monday Michelangelo passed by and saw that marble asked that it be brought to a studio applied of geniuses inspiration and his skill and brought out of it the immortal Statue of David and so though our lives have been spoiled though they may have been hacked and ruined by circumstances or other artists the great finger and hand of God can mold us into immortality and finally the Pieta here is a young woman having seen her divine son crucified and then taken down and put in her lap as a kind of a grain chalice and yet she's not broken with grief there's not sadness there is peace there was resignation to God's will and interior car for she sees that sacrifice was part of the divine message to her son and to herself and as we struggle to overcome all of the alien influences that there are in the world those we will talk about too as we struggle to overcome them we're never to be cast down by trials by discipline by modification we have God with us Christ is in our soul you're good people you would not be here if you were not good and even though you're not as good as you would want to be you'll come here because you want to be better there's a deep you're okay in the American soul your goodness and spirituality and you manifest it and if you bear with me during these talks I will lead you step by step to inner peace to inner joy and consolation thank you and God love you

Channel: CatholicClips

Views: 280,412

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Keywords: Fulton J. Sheen (Author)

Id: RBJQzWcDiKw

Length: 33min 14sec (1994 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2013