“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” – CS Lewis

 
Who do you say that I am? Jesus asks this question in the Gospels and continues to ask it of all of us today. CS Lewis tells us that either Jesus is a madman, a liar, or who He says He is, that is, the Son of God. There are no other options. Those who try to claim to accept Jesus’ teaching but not His claim that He is God are wrong. It is that simple. The opposite is also true. We cannot accept that Jesus is God and ignore His teachings. We cannot choose to follow some Catholic teaching but not all. Jesus is either God, or He is not, there is no middle ground. And if He is God, we would be foolish not to listen to Him.
 
Lent begins this Thursday and with it, a time to examine this question in our own lives. Who do you say that Jesus is, not by your words, but by your actions? It is easy to claim that Jesus is God, but reject everything He asks of us. Sometimes we like to fit God into our own world, making ourselves God, rather than making God the center or our world. We are all sinners and we all fail at completely centering our lives around God, but the question still remains, do we want to be better? Do we want our actions to claim that Jesus is God?
 
We should not become discouraged by this difficult teaching of the Lord. Once again, Lent begins this Wednesday and with it, a special time of grace to reevaluate God in our lives. We MUST remember the words of Jesus and take them seriously. However, the words of God also give us hope and faith that better things are waiting for us. We cannot pick and chose which words of God to listen to. Jesus is not a madman. He is not a liar. He is the Son of God. Therefore, we must take seriously every word left to us in the Gospels. His words are spoken out of love, not out of punishment, but we accept this love and reciprocate it by listening to Him. What will you do? Every day we are called to make a choice. It is your life. Will you choose to accept Jesus as a madman, a liar, or the Son of God? Rest assured that either way, Jesus loves you. Either way, He will continue to guide you to Him, one day at a time.