When you’re on vacation, sometimes, you can’t completely get away from the world.

Last week, I watched the news down in Florida, and saw the tragic pictures of that plane crashing into a helicopter over the Hudson. It was truly horrific.

In the Wall Street Journal this past week, a priest who ministered to the family of the helicopter pilot wrote powerfully about their faith, in the middle of that nightmare.

But what was particularly impressive to me was the faith of the young helicopter pilot himself, Captain Jeremy Clarke.

He had been born and baptized a Catholic, but was never confirmed. As a lot of us do, he drifted from the faith. But his mother prayed for years that he would come back to the Church. And a few months ago, he did. He decided to complete his sacraments of initiation, and was confirmed. His fiancé kept a letter that Jeremy had written to God, at the time of his confirmation. He expressed his joy at that moment:

Dear God,
None of this could have happened without your intervention. The timing could not have been more perfect. The improbable has become a reality. I pray to keep improving myself and getting better with your help. Thank you for all that I have in my life, I am blessed.
With love,
Jeremy Clarke

It’s a beautiful letter – heartfelt and hope-filled. And it’s all the more poignant in light of the event that we all saw on television – the terrible crash that cost Jeremy Clarke his young life.

But when you think about Captain Clarke’s choice to complete his journey in the church, you realize that at some point in his life, Captain Clarke probably heard the same question that Peter heard in today’s gospel.

“Do you also want to leave?”

And – like Peter – Captain Clarke had only one answer.

“Master,” the reply comes back, “to whom shall we go?”

Looking at this episode in John’s gospel, you can’t help but realize how deeply it resonates with all of us.

This is a question that wasn’t just asked two thousand years ago on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to a group of restless fishermen.

This is the great question of our time.

It is the great question of our lives – yours and mine.

It is the question Christ asks today — his challenge to a broken and sinful world that strains against the gospel again and again. A world that questions and even defies it. A world that keeps saying:

“This is too hard. Who can accept it?”

All you have to do is scan the headlines and you know what I’m talking about. It’s there in a host of social issues – from health care to abortion to marriage. We live in a time when so much of what the Church teaches – much of what we have held true for two millennia – is greeted with hostility, scorn or, at times, even derision. The world so often takes the gospel as being too hard. G.K. Chesterton put it so well: it’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It’s that it has been tried and found to be difficult. And so people walk away.

And every day, God asks us:

“Do you also want to leave?”

And every day, we answer Him. With our lives. With our choices. With the way we go into the world.

Every day is a choice between what is right…and what feels right at the time.

Between our will…and God’s.

Between timeless truth…and attractive illusion.

The choice is ours.

I’m sure all of us here can tell stories of people we know who have left. They’ve quit the Church or — for one reason or another — just drifted away from God. In fact, some who are here this morning might prefer to be somewhere else. Maybe your husband or wife or parent or child twisted your arm to get you to mass.

Well, I feel your pain: I used to be one of you. See what a little arm-twisting can do? I am blessed with a wife who is very prayerful and persistent – and patient!

But I’ve also been blessed with a God who never gave up on me.

He never gives up, in fact, on any of us.

The gospel today doesn’t tell us if any of the people who drifted away from Christ eventually returned – if they had second thoughts.

I imagine a few of them probably did – and some probably did return.

As the Prodigal Son discovered, the road that leads away from the Father…also leads back.

And leaving, after all, is only one pivot step from returning.

Maybe you or someone you love has been away from the faith. Maybe you’re coming back for another look.

Come. Look. Stay. The door is always open.

Be assured, and hold onto this truth: even though we may walk away from God, He never walks away from us.

He is here, waiting.

Captain Jeremy Clarke understood that.

And, of course, so did Peter. Peter himself turned away from Christ during his darkest hour – out of fear, or confusion, or simple human cowardice.

And look at what happened.

Peter remembered Christ’s own prediction of that hour.

Maybe he also recalled his own words to his teacher on that afternoon in Galilee — his great answer to the great question facing each of us here and now, in this time of choosing.

“Do you also want to leave?”

We can only reply, as Peter did, with wonder and humility and hope:

“To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”