Choose you out.

"Choose you out." When I was growing up that is what one boy yelled at another boy when he wanted to challenge him to a fight. It meant literally, "I choose you out of all these people to fight." By the '60s it assumed its more abbreviated and menacing nomenclature: choose you out. Hearing those words almost always sent a chill down one's spine. The last time I used those words was on a May morning when I was in fifth grade. They were directed at Ricky Fagin, a scrawny, red-haired kid I had known since kindergarten and would endure for another seven years before our paths diverged after high school.

It was an unusually warm day; the sun beat down on the black playground asphalt with a mysterious heat that percolated the blood in our bodies and made even the most gentle among us surly and disagreeable. The nuns relaxed all rules of etiquette that day, allowing us to untuck our shirts, unfasten a few more buttons, construct paper fans, take regular trips to the drinking fountain down the hall. They were a tough flock of nuns, those Spanish Carmelites; under 30 layers of black wool beat anchoritic hearts, but they knew when they were beaten.

After lunch, the students of Our Lady of Grace School prayed, as we did every day in the traditional month of Mary, the five decades of the rosary: one long line weaving its way around the entire periphery of the expansive playground. The first graders went first, then the second graders, and so on, two by two. Five eighth graders stood in the middle of the playground, their backs to each other forming a circle, and they intoned the first half of the Hail Mary like marine drill sergeants, and the rest of us responded in kind.

It was an amazing sight to witness and hear. With the last ten Hail Marys dispatched to heaven, we found ourselves assembled in very neat, straight rows in front of the statue of Our Lady of Grace, perched behind the church. There we would sing a Marian hymn to end our afternoon devotion.

And it was there, in front of the statue of Our Lady of Grace at day's end, where I went to battle with Ricky Fagin. Our Lady, thank God, gave us a strategic advantage over the nuns. In her shadow one escaped the lighthouse sweep of the sisters' gaze from the classroom windows. Consequently all fights were fought there; my fight with Ricky would not break tradition.

"Your sister Julie is a cross-eyed tomboy," Ricky bellowed that morning. Right on both counts. Unfortunately, only older brothers are allowed to offer such observations. With those words still floating overhead, the rules of engagement dictated that we follow a well-worn script. "Choose you out," I yelled at Ricky. The Hannon family honor was at stake, after all. The rules allowed Ricky to back down and save face by punching me in the arm with feigned intensity and saying he was only kidding. But he chose to escalate by saying, "When?" To which I robotically responded, "After school." Then Ricky had to say, "Where?", even though everyone knew exactly where. I then said what hundreds before me said, "At the statue." And that was it. We were left to stew in our juices for the rest of the day, our stomachs roiling and broiling with Pepto-Bismol intensity. The school tended to mobilize quickly on such occasions so that before the clock struck three and the veil in the temple had a chance to split in two, a sizeable number of students were already at the statue waiting for the fight to begin. Bikes were well-positioned for swift getaways in the unlikely event of a nun-sighting.

We arrived together. nervous, bothered, resignation dripping from our foreheads, chins jutting out nonetheless, with an air of dignity commensurate with the occasion. Seeing the crowd, we both knew we had gone past the point of no return. To this day I can actually see in Ricky's eyes a sort of regret, almost sorrow, at what he had said earlier that day. And maybe he had seen in mine a cloud of desperation, as it was quickly dawning on me that my options were evaporating with each step. Events had taken on a life of their own, and Ricky and I were merely pawns in some cruel, cosmic chess game, bit actors in a human drama as tired and worn as a rainsoaked paperback stuffed in a denim back pocket.

Beneath the loving, outstretched arms of Mary, we faced each other. And then it happened. We just stood there, our arms dangling without life at our sides. We kept looking at each other, paralyzed not so much by fear but by nausea. We simply didn't want to fight. The crowd was not pleased by this; no doubt wagers had been placed, odds had been given, schedules had been rearranged. The fight would proceed whether we liked it or not. Kids started shouting, provoking, prodding. When that didn't work, two indignant eighth graders shoved us together; and just as two pieces of flint rock ignite sparks when struck together, Ricky and I combusted. Ricky hit me once in the stomach, which stung just a little. I knew what he was getting at. Let's give 'em a little show. You hit me a few times, I hit you. Fight over. We go home. The better angel of my nature did not prevail, however. I did something that I have only done once in my life. I took my fist, and when Ricky dropped his guard -- almost as a kind of peace offering -- I planted it into his nose with ferocity.

He fell to the ground, stunned, bloodied, seemingly beyond repair. Blood unleashes the beast in human beings sometimes. The approving roar encircling us indicated that schoolchildren are no exception. Ricky lay there, silenced by the din of the mob, hoping, I suppose, that if he kept absolutely still, he would disappear. When that didn't happen, he did the only thing he could do. He began to cry softly. Three hours earlier, Ricky and I had been singing "Immaculate Mary" side by side in the very spot where he now sobbed in complete humiliation.

Word spread like brushfire that the nuns were coming, and I quickly hopped on the back of a bike and escaped with the rest of the rats off of the sinking ship. As I was riding off, I remember looking back at Ricky still slumped and sobbing and knowing in my heart that I failed, completely and totally failed. I had failed him. I had failed myself.

Prompted to fight by some unspoken code of family honor, in the end, I felt no honor. Only shame. I knew I had in fact brought dishonor to my family name and my Christian name by choosing to fight rather than choosing another course. Choose you out. It was a choice all right. A clear one. And I had chosen wrongly.

It seems to be clear that in the course of human relations, Jesus expects us, if we take him seriously, to live by a standard far different from the one prevalent on playgrounds and battlegrounds. The active love he calls us to is unlike anything anyone had ever imagined before. It is a kind of ferocious love that dares to stand up to every dark power that seeks only to divide and conquer. It is a ferocious love that never reflects the evil that looms directly ahead with menacing claws. It is a love that absorbs every evil and radiates goodness back. It takes the heat of hatred, absorbs it, and radiates peace and tranquility. It takes the heat of ignorance and prejudice, absorbs it, and radiates understanding and acceptance. It takes the heat of indifference, absorbs it, and radiates action. It is a ferocious love that is activated by human choice. It has to take on flesh and blood and bone for it to become visible. On a hot, muggy May afternoon, with his dukes up, a frightened boy was absorbed by heat. And he didn't radiate anything back. He was on fire as surely as that black asphalt was on fire, but it wasn't the fire of ferocious love. He didn't have to fight. He chose to fight. He wasn't a pawn, a bit actor. If anything, he learned what we all eventually had better learn: no one forces us to do anything. We choose.

And so Jesus lays out the blueprint of the kingdom before us. He tells us we have to choose whether or not we want to be builders of that kingdom. He is very clear about his expectations. It means trusting in a love that is mysterious and awesome, truly beyond the scope of human understanding, but not beyond the scope of human action. It means blessing and not cursing our enemies; it means forgiving without strings attached, no matter how long it takes; it means choosing not to hurt someone else even when you have every right to; it means believing in a radical, ferocious love that can and does transform our world. It is tough, backbreaking work. And it is also the Christian thing to do.

If we love the way Jesus calls us to love, we will have done our part to advance, if only by a little, the species beyond the spear, beyond the words that wound, beyond the blood and tears shed on battlegrounds and playgrounds. That is the Christian task. It begins and ends with choices we make every day, whether under the watchful eye of Our Lady on a sunsoaked playground or in the secret recesses of our hearts.

Ironically, it is this ferocious love that beckons us with those very words that send now a tingle and not a chill down our spines. Choose you out, Jesus says. This time we know he is choosing us for something completely different. This time we don't have to fight.