ACT YOUR AGE?

All of us sometime in our life, probably many times, have been told "Act your age!" We were doing something silly, maybe downright immature, and an elder called us to task by reminding us that some­one of our years does not act in that sort of way. They were right – but they were also wrong, for the most part most of the time.

So, too, would someone be wrong if he told us to "Act like, a Christian" when catching us doing something unChristlike. You see, the problem we all have is not so much in acting our age or acting like a Christian. We do that all of the time. I act like an 80-year-old Christian almost all of the time. What I don't do is always react as a Christian should.

We all know what actions are demanded of us by both society and ourself according to our age. We don't expect a six-year-old to act like one who is sixteen or sixty, and vice versa. With age and maturity comes a knowledge of how to act, how to live. The same is true as for us acting like a Christian. Six-year-olds and sixty-year-olds act differently. The emphasis is not on acting, as in faking it. It is acting as in actions. Our actions, what we do, are done according to what our age and maturity would require.

Our reactions, often, are not. We tend to react not as Christians, not according to our age. Someone hurts us and we react quickly. And in that reaction, we turn, not the other cheek, but the back of our hand or the back side of our character. We do and say things that, given time, given thought, we would not say or do. Reactions, all too often, are passionate responses to a situation. Actions tend to be reflective responses to that situation.

We get hurt and we immediately react. We become defensive. We pout. We shout. We repay in kind or worse. Acting as Jesus would, responding as Jesus would have us, is not in the forefront of our thinking at that moment of real hurting, at that moment in our life. What we wind up doing then is something stupid...and paying for it for a long time because the person whom we are reacting to reacts to our immature, unChristlike reaction – and then the vicious cycle begins and goes on and on and on.

That has to stop. That has to change. That's basically what the Church is about: teaching us, helping us to make our reactions Christlike actions. It's not easy to spontaneously do the Christian thing, say loving words, especially when we've been hurt. That takes a lot of time and effort and very hard work.

There will probably never be a time when we always say and do what we know we should. We will never always react as a Christian. But that does not mean that we give up. We must keep working at it through prayer, through good works, through the Sacraments, through reading Scripture – through doing all those things we know are necessary in order to grow up into a Christian person. When we fail, we ask forgiveness and start over. When we succeed, we simply thank God for God is the one, through God’s Son and Spirit, who enables us to react as our age and faith demand.