There are days when faith feels like a grand decision, a line in the sand. There are other days when it is a quiet, stubborn choosing—again and again—amid deadlines, diapers, and the quiet ache of hopes deferred. Today’s Scriptures place both moments before us: Joshua’s public covenant and the hidden posture of a child before Jesus. Together they trace a path of fidelity that is courageous, tender, and within reach.
Decide Today: The Courage of Covenant
Joshua gathers the tribes and refuses vague religion. He demands a choice: “Decide today whom you will serve… As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). The people assent, and Joshua seals the moment with a “witness” stone under the oak in the Lord’s sanctuary (Joshua 24:26-27). Covenant is not a mood but a decision anchored in memory—“He brought us… out of a state of slavery” (Joshua 24:17)—and protected by practices that outlast feelings.
St. Polycarp of Smyrna, heir to the apostles’ teaching, spoke in this same key. He urged Christians to “stand firm” in the faith they had received and to avoid the subtle idols that bend the heart—especially avarice—because idols are never neutral; they hunger for worship and form our lives. His Epistle to the Philippians reads like a companion to Joshua: hold fast to sound doctrine, live virtuously, keep your word. Fidelity is not primarily dramatic; it is obedient love, tested in the ordinary, and proven when it would be easier to drift.
Our age has its own “gods,” often dressed in productivity, politics, and personal branding. The algorithm can become an altar; anxiety can become a liturgy. Joshua’s realism is bracing: “You may not be able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God… a jealous God” (Joshua 24:19). This is not divine pettiness but covenant clarity. The God who freed Israel is not a lifestyle accessory; He is Lord. Yet the very warning presumes grace: we are summoned because we are loved. St. Thomas Aquinas helps here: “To believe is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth at the command of the will moved by God through grace” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q.2, a.9). We choose, but we are also helped. The covenant rests ultimately on God’s fidelity.
A simple practice: place a “witness” in your home—a crucifix, a Bible enthroned, a small stone on a shelf with Joshua 24:15 beneath it. Let it silently ask, day after day: Whom will you serve—here, now?
The Inheritance We Cannot Lose
The psalm places our decision within a promise: “You are my inheritance, O Lord… my allotted portion and my cup” (Psalm 16:5). Many inheritances shrink with time; God does not. In His presence there is “fullness of joys” and a sure “path to life” (Psalm 16:11). Aquinas would call this our final end: the beatitude for which every lesser good is a signpost. When we absolutize any penultimate good—work, reputation, even noble causes—we ask of them what only God can give. The result is fatigue that no vacation cures.
Reordering desire is not repression; it is freedom. Setting the Lord “ever before me” (Psalm 16:8) liberates attention from its captivity to constant comparison. A practical step: choose one moment each day—commute, dishes, a short walk—to repeat, slowly, “You are my inheritance, O Lord” (Psalm 16:5). Let that sentence become a key that unlocks restless rooms in the heart.
“Let the Children Come”: The Way of Smallness
The Gospel closes in quiet beauty: hands placed on little ones, a rebuke silenced, and a proclamation—“for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14). Childlikeness is not naivete; it is a posture of trust and availability. It welcomes reality as gift.
St. Athanasius helps us see more: if Christ were not truly God, His touch could not sanctify. But because the Word who made us has taken our humanity, His blessing heals what it touches. “He became man so that we might become God” in Him—participants in divine life (On the Incarnation, 54). The smallness Jesus blesses is the doorway to that participation: “Blessed are you, Father… you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom” (Matthew 11:25).
In a world that prizes optimization, smallness looks like waste. But the Kingdom begins there. Parents and grandparents who bring fidgety children to prayer. Teachers who stoop to explain again. Friends who choose presence over polish. Anyone who unlearns cynicism and asks for help. Aquinas calls this docility—a teachable readiness to receive wisdom (Summa Theologiae II-II, q.49). It is not childishness; it is a mature humility that refuses to harden.
A practice for homes and communities: make space for blessing. Trace the sign of the cross on your child’s forehead before school. Ask a friend, “Would you pray over me for a minute?” Let Jesus’ hands, through ours, keep opening the door to the Kingdom (Matthew 19:13-15).
A King Who Chose the Lord: Optional Memorial of St. Stephen of Hungary
Today also offers an optional memorial of St. Stephen of Hungary (d. 1038), the first Christian king of his nation. His life mirrors Joshua’s household resolve. He received the crown not as a trophy but as a trust: he built churches, welcomed missionaries, protected the poor, and wrote counsels to his son St. Emeric on humility, hospitality, and justice. He wanted a Hungary whose strength was measured not only in borders but in mercy.
Stephen’s leadership shows how covenant fidelity can shape public life without triumphalism. Decisions about budgets, immigration, and education are not solved by piety alone, but they are purified by it. “As for me and my household” scales to “as for us and our city”—a people who serve the Lord by safeguarding the small, honoring marriage, and refusing corruption. In Stephen’s world and ours, holiness is never private.
Ordinary Time, Extraordinary Fidelity
Joshua’s stone, the psalmist’s inheritance, and Jesus’ hands converge into a way of living that is both bracing and gentle.
- Name your household’s idols. Where do time, money, and attention reveal a rival love? Renounce it aloud and replace it with a small, concrete act of worship or mercy.
- Establish a “witness” practice. A weekly Lord’s Day meal begun with Psalm 16; a family examen; a simple cross near the front door that you touch as you leave.
- Become smaller on purpose. Ask for help. Apologize promptly. Choose a hidden good over a visible win. Let someone else go first.
- Renew the covenant sacramentally. Confession breaks with strange gods; the Eucharist seals the New Covenant in Christ’s blood and trains desire toward our true inheritance (cf. Luke 22:20).
“As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). That sentence is a dare and a consolation. It dares us to choose—and to keep choosing when the glow fades. It consoles us with the truth that we do not choose alone. The God who calls us is the God who keeps us. With Him at our right hand, we shall not be disturbed; He will show us the path to life (Psalm 16:8, 11). And when our hands falter, the pierced hands that blessed the children will steady ours, making even our smallness a doorway into the Kingdom (Matthew 19:14).