You book a flight for an upcoming trip that you have been planning for a long time. When you get to the airport for your flight, you find out that you have been upgraded to first class at no extra charge. During the flight, you are served a delicious meal. The cabin crew helps make the flight pleasant. You even get to watch an inflight movie that you have been wanting to see for a long time and then have a great conversation with the person sitting next to you. As the plane is approaching the destination airport, you feel the plane sinking rapidly. Suddenly, the plane hits the ground hard and bursts into flames killing you and everyone on board. It was a great flight up until the end.
As an airline pilot, my primary objective is to get everyone to their destination safely. I would like everyone to have an enjoyable flight as well, but if I crash the plane and people die, then I failed. We all have the primary objective of making it to our final destination of heaven. Everything else in our life needs to be behind that main objective.
We need to be willing to do whatever it takes to get to our final destination. That will most likely require some sacrifices. Sometimes the easiest and quickest route will take us right through a thunderstorm and put us in danger of crashing. We might just need to take the long way around or stop along the way and refuel.
We all have our own sinful tendencies that can separate us from God. Focus on those tendencies that need our attention and work constantly to eliminate them from our life. If we keep falling and committing the same sin, keep getting right back up and never stop fighting. If something goes wrong in an airplane, the flight crew should keep working to solve the problem and continue to fly the plane until they do or die. The crew should never give up, because their life and the lives of everyone on board are on the line. Our eternal lives are on the line as well and we need to keep trying to fix our problems until we breathe our last breath.
Going to the sacrament of reconciliation and attending Mass are two ways to fix our problems and refuel our tanks. Reconciliation cleans the taint in our souls, but leaves behind the damage caused from our sin. The damage can be gradually repaired over time, by developing better habits. Going to Mass often is a great way to keep ourselves strong enough to say no to temptation. Praying daily and taking time to talk to God are other good ways to help find our way around the storms of life. Just as pilots need to continue to study and exercise their skills to stay safe, so do we need to continue to pray so we don’t get out of shape spiritually. We should also go through continuing education to learn more about what we believe and why we believe it. Go on a retreat, join a prayer group, or go to a seminar that is put on at your church or in your area.
We shouldn’t need to go down the road of physically maiming ourselves if our body is causing us to sin, but if our smartphone is causing us to sin, we need to toss it out and switch to a basic phone. If our credit card is causing us to sin, cut it up. If being around a certain person is causing us to sin, either work on fixing the relationship or cut them out of our life. If a video game, tv show, or magazine is causing us to sin, get it out of our life. We can’t let anything keep us from reaching our final destination.
