The Rivals in our Lives

In a podcast of a homily I listened to a few days ago, the priest was discussing how there are two different relationships that cannot have any rivals, one being marriage and the other being a relationship with Jesus.  The way Fr. Mike defined rivals to demonstrate his point is “a person or a thing competing with another for the same objective.”  He made the point that these are both “all or nothing” kinds of relationships.  He went on to talk about how we often allow Christ to have rivals in our lives.  What rivals does Jesus have in our hearts and in our lives?  

We so often seek out our purpose, meaning, and fulfillment in material possessions, various tasks and responsibilities, our jobs, our hobbies, and our accomplishments.  In and of themselves, none of these are bad.  But these things can easily be the rivals of God in our lives; the things that are competing with Him for the number one place in our lives and hearts.  These rivals offer false promises to us that, over time, will only leave us empty and unsatisfied.  God is the only one who can give us the purpose, meaning, and fulfillment that we are longing for.  And the only way we can fully experience this is if we remove any competition for the number one spot in our lives and in our hearts.

As Catholics and Christians, at some point, we all have had to make the choice about our faith.  Either Jesus is everything or He is nothing.  And once we make that choice, we must live our lives accordingly.  When we have an encounter with Christ, that is when we usually recognize that our lives should be different because of Him.  We will mess up and we will never be perfect at putting Him first.  But what matters is that we don’t lose sight of the fact that Jesus is everything and that we continue to have the desire to put Him first, even when we sin and fall short.
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God wants to have our whole hearts.  But He will never force us to remove anything else that is taking up the space that is rightfully His.  God doesn’t want to compete for our hearts.  It is up to each one of us to remove the rivals in our hearts and lives, because our relationship with Him truly is all or nothing.