Although religion will always have our attention, some people still say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” It’s an old expression, but it remains very much in vogue. For those unfamiliar, it describes someone whose spiritual life is divorced from organized religion, with the implication that the two are mutually exclusive, or at least should be. And people who say it usually assume God is just fine with that.

Growing up, my mother often reminded me of how I would sing the “Hosannas” very loudly at Mass as a little boy. “You would belt it out,” she would say. “It was very cute.” I must have been very little because my memories of growing up in the church are all shrouded in shyness. How short lived is that first fearlessness of childhood.

I was in Amsterdam with a friend back in 1996. The highlight of that trip for me was visiting the Van Gogh museum. It displays the world’s largest collection of his artwork. One particular painting that struck me was Vincent’s The Raising of Lazarus.

For the first 10 years or so of my priesthood I would ask to con-celebrate Mass (to vest for Mass with the other priests) when visiting a parish while traveling. If I were going to Daily Mass with family out-of-state, for example, I would arrive 15 minutes early with an alb, knock on the sacristy door before Mass, introduce myself to the priest, and ask if I could join him on the altar. It was nice. But here’s why I stopped doing that.

We all know people who “drain us,” as we say. Not only the tedious. Those we’re happy to serve (like children or spouses) also need us to pour ourselves out for them, and in that sense, “drain us.” But there are also those from whom we can drink – those who “fill us up.” These are the people we sometimes refer to as, “life-giving.”

The natural world is made up of patterns and laws, which make all of the sciences possible. There is intelligibility and consistency written into the very fabric of creation. This is why we can plan trips to the moon, and even to Mars, and why it is not unreasonable to fly in an airplane.

I don’t like to talk about the devil - not with friends, not with family, and not even with you here. It’s not that I intentionally ignore his tricks or pretend they don’t exist. I simply don’t enjoy giving my attention to what is evil.

The word “choose” appears three times in the First Reading in the form of an an invitation to us, that we would choose to follow the Commandments and stretch forth our hand, not to what is evil, but to what is good. The word, “choice,” however, is used by the world very often these days to promote the idea that the human person is ultimately self-defining choice; that life is not a gift from God. Maybe that’s why the devil goes after the word, since choosing to love is a profound way of becoming more like the God who chose to create us, and then chose to call us, and now chooses to bless us.