When the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth? This is a valid question, especially when we look at what’s going on in the world today. I would say that most people believe in God, but they are divided in regards to His teachings. Many Catholics tend to pick and choose what they want to believe. Some may believe in the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but refuse to believe in the necessity of going to the sacrament of reconciliation. Others may have a strong prayer life, but can’t trust that Jesus will protect and guide them. More profess to be good Catholics, but don’t see the need to go to church.
Jesus laid out a path to get to Heaven. If we follow His directions, our chance of getting there is 100%. We get into trouble when we stop following His directions and start flying by the seat of our pants. I admit that when I buy something that requires assembly, I don’t always read the directions completely. Sometimes, I just skim them and other times I think I can figure it out myself, so I discard them completely. However, the more complicated something is to assemble, the more I should read each instruction.
Getting to Heaven is much more difficult and important than assembling an item that is bought from the store. We should take our time and make sure we follow the instructions carefully. Sure, people get to Heaven by going off script, but our eternal life shouldn’t be something we take lightly. When I fly a plane, I follow a checklist that tells me what to do at a certain time. I could definitely fly a flight without using a checklist. However, if I continued to fly like that every day, eventually, I would miss something and risk the safety of the flight. Use the checklist Jesus gives us. There are many things on the checklist that Jesus gives us to get to Heaven, but it all boils down to loving God with all of our heart and loving our neighbor as ourself. When we mess up and fail to follow those directions, go to confession and continue from the top of the checklist.
We need to be persistent in our quest to follow Jesus. We are going to fail and deviate from His directions from time to time, but we should never give up and always return to Him when we do drift away. God wants us to succeed and will give us help if we ask Him. If we discard His guidance and do our own thing, we may not make it to where we want to go, but if we do our best to follow His checklist for success, we will find eternal happiness at our destination in Heaven.
