Deacon Mike Meyer / Friday, April 3, 2026 / Categories: Blog, Homilies Choose God Homily for Friday of the Passion of the Lord In the 1984 film Moscow on the Hudson, Vladimir Ivanov, played by the inimitable Robin Williams, is a Soviet circus musician who defects to the United States while visiting New York. On his first trip to a Manhattan grocery store to buy coffee, Vladmir becomes overwhelmed by the number of brands—Tasters Choice, Maxwell House, Sanka, Folgers—so much so that he falls to the ground in a fetal position, crying and unable to choose. We’re certainly blessed in this country with many choices, but they can be overwhelming. So I’ll let you in on a little secret: of the roughly 35,000 choices we make each day, only one matters—the choice between God or anything else. Good Friday reminds us to choose God. Today’s readings confront us with a stark and wildly countercultural proposition: rejection, humiliation, violence, and even death can be rewarded with exaltation, glory, and God’s eternal favor when they’re endured in obedience to God’s will. Jesus, who’s prefigured by the Suffering Servant in our first reading from Isaiah, chose self-sacrifice over self-preservation. He was “obedient even to death,” offering his suffering and even his life for the salvation of God’s people. And for that, God raised him from the dead and greatly exalted him. Jesus chose God, and he showed us, not just by word, but by his own example, what choosing God entails. Logically speaking, God’s the obvious choice. Why wouldn’t we want to put our faith in and entrust our lives to the one who promises us eternal life, love, joy, and justice, who gives us all we need to thrive and prosper, and who’s never stopped trying to save us from our sinful ways? Yes, God is the obvious choice when all’s well and good, when we’re content, fat, dumb, and happy. But that choice may not be so obvious when life gets tough, when we suffer. Believing in God becomes more challenging when God’s commandments interfere with what we’d prefer to do, when we or a loved one experiences serious illness, or when we’re trapped in a vicious cycle of seemingly endless persecution or injustice. Where’s our ever-present God in the tough times? Why hasn’t our all-powerful God spared us from suffering and death? How can an all-loving God let the innocent suffer and die while evil people thrive? Met with apparent silence in response to these questions, many people abandon God in favor of gurus, ideologies and philosophies, or worse yet, nothing at all. In our Gospel alone, we encounter 19 identifiable people or groups who abandoned God when they objected to God’s ways, feared for their lives, or didn’t care enough to give God a moment’s thought. That’s human history in a nutshell; we tend to run away when choosing God becomes inconvenient or uncomfortable. Yet, our Gospel proves that God remains intimately close to us, especially in our most difficult times, so much so that he freely chose to suffer and die with and for us. God allows suffering to continue for reasons we can’t understand, but God never lets us suffer alone. Jesus bore and embraced all human suffering on the Cross, and in doing so, he gave it infinite, redemptive meaning. Our suffering, then, is eternally linked to Jesus’ suffering on the Cross. Our suffering becomes an opportunity to transcend ourselves and share in the very suffering that redeemed the world.[1] Our suffering, then, becomes a loving service to God and neighbor. The way we face our suffering and all it entails—the way we take up our crosses—gives us ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances, to choose God and add deeper meaning to our lives. It can also make us walk away. Take the two criminals crucified with Jesus, for example. John’s Gospel, which we just heard, only briefly mentions the two men, but in Luke’s Gospel, we learn that the criminal on Jesus’ left, who demands that Jesus prove that he’s the Messiah, represents those for whom suffering has no meaning. He “began and ended his crucifixion with a curse,” never “correlat[ing] his sufferings with the man on the central cross.”[2] He chose to abandon God, and he perished. By contrast, the criminal on Jesus’ right, who asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his Kingdom, represents those who “see that . . . [i]f the Cross had no purpose, Jesus would not have climbed it.”[3] He chose God and found in God the way to paradise. We’re blessed with choices, for sure—regular or decaf, espresso or cappuccino, soy milk or half-and-half—so many that they can be overwhelming. Only one choice matters, though: whether we choose God or not. Choosing God isn’t always easy. Jesus never said it would be, and it certainly wasn’t for him, because suffering’s part of the deal. Human history proves that suffering tends to be the make-or-break point in our decision to choose God or not. As soon-to-be beatified Archbishop Fulton Sheen explains, all suffering stands either on the right side of the Cross or on the left. Where it rests is determined by whether, like the thief on the left, we ask to be taken down, or, like the thief on the right, we ask to be taken up.”[4] Choose wisely. Choose God. Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 31; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42 [1] John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Salvifici dolores (11 February 1984) 19. [2] Fulton J. Sheen, Go to Heaven: A Spiritual Roadmap to Eternity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017). 212. [3] Sheen, 214. [4] Sheen, 215. Ask Print 103 Please login or register to post comments.