CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION
Homily for October 8, 2017
"Reasons to Keep Your Cool"
Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God
gives, guard your hearts and minds.
Philippians 4
He’s got to be kidding! No anxiety at all? With a war
on ISIS still going on, a political minefield in Washington, a stand-off with North
Korea, hurricanes one after the other, the funeral of my brother-in-law’s
brother who died of an aneurism, two friends battling aggressive cancers and
God-knows-what else, how can Saint Paul’s words possibly fit those of us living
in today’s Church and world? How can we possibly remain anxiety-free in the
middle of all these situations?
“Anxiety” is a state of intense, often disabling
apprehension, uncertainty, and fear caused by the anticipation of something
threatening. It is often not so much about what is happening or even what
has happened, but about what might happen.
Have no anxiety at
all. Let the peace that God
gives, guard your
hearts and mind.
My dear mother comes to mind when I think of anxiety.
It seems that she always had a thin stream of anxiety trickling through her
veins. Even though she has been dead for forty-one years now, I can still
see her in my minds eye picking at her lower lip, a nervous habit that always
accompanied intense moments of anxiety. I can still remember one time when we
laughed at her for being so anxious. She snapped back, “Well, somebody around
here needs to worry!” Looking back, she had a lot to be anxious about: seven
kids, a demanding husband and breast cancer, to name only a few!
When I was about to be ordained, anxiety was very much
on my mind. The church was undergoing a great upheaval and priests were
beginning to leave in significant numbers. I asked myself many times, in that
year leading up to ordination, “How am I going to keep my cool in a
fast-changing church and in a world coming unglued? How will I be able to stay
focused when one problem after another is going to be hurled into my face from
both inside and outside the church? How will I be able to calm others when I seem
to be torn up all the time myself?”
I have spent my life as a priest searching for an
inmost calm that no storm can shake. When I discovered and admitted to myself
that I cannot control what happens out there, I knew I must find a way to
control my reaction to what happens out there. As one spiritual teacher said,
“It is easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world.” I knew I was
going to need, and certainly wanted to have, the peace that only a close relationship
with Jesus could give me, that peace that Saint Paul invites us to embrace in
our second reading today.
Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God
Gives, guard your hearts and minds.
I have spent most of my young adult life looking for
an inmost calm that no storm could shake, an inner peace that would remain rock
solid no matter what! I am, happy to say that I have found it. Sometimes I
panic and forget, but I always come back to it sooner or later. Once I
discovered that a peaceful center is available to me, I know I can always come
back to it.
How can one have that peace? A close relationship with
Jesus brings that peace. If you truly believe that you are loved without
condition, that God is on your side and holds no grudges, that in the end
things are going to turn out OK because God has promised us so, then a great
peace will come over you. You will know that no matter how bad things get
sometimes, no matter how much you have to handle, no matter how great your
losses, you will know in your heart of hearts that you are in good hands
because you are in God’s hands. When you know
these things to be true, a great peace begins to stand guard over your heart
and mind! That is what St. Paul is talking about today when he tells us to “let
the peace that God gives guard you hearts and minds.”
Once I began to live in the knowledge that, in spite
of it all, things will ultimately be OK, I began to realize that many of my
life’s greatest blessings have come out of what long ago seemed like an unbearable
disaster. Looking back at the times in
my life when God seemed absent, at the times when I was overwhelmed with anxiety,
worry and panic, in hindsight I can see that the hand of God was actually
bringing me to where I needed to go and teaching me what I needed to learn.
Most of the things I have most worried about never happened! Statistics even
tell us that fully 90% of the things we worry about never happen! Most of my
imagined tragedies have actually contained great blessings! It has happened too
many times to dismiss as a fluke.
I went through one of those anxious periods
again as I was going into retirement. The plans I had worked on for three years fell
apart in three days. It may not be connected, but I ended up in the hospital a couple of days later
with a blood clot in my left leg. I was grieving the loss of some of the
things I expected to happen. If things had gone as I had planned, I would have gotten on an airplane for France, without knowing about the clot, and probably died on the way over or on the way home. I have recovered from the clot, but as it turned out that that upheaval was clearing the way for something even better. Today I am glad that God spared me from what I thought I wanted.
For me, this seems to be the way it always happens - a big breakdown before a big break through! I look back now and I am happy that my original plans did not work out because something much better has happened - my missionary work in the islands! Trip eight is coming up in December! I can't wait!
Peace, however, is not a time when there are no
problems. Peace is a calm state of mind in the midst of problems and in spite
of problems. Peace is a trusting state of mind that comes from a close
relationship with Jesus whose name is Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.”
Brothers and sisters, we cannot control most of what is going to
happen, so let us finish each day and be done with it. Let us do our best and
let go of it. Let us not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never
happen. Our fretting anxiety has no
power to affect tomorrow, but it can certainly ruin today. Let us thank God for how far we have come and
trust God with how far we can go. This
peace of mind is Jesus’ last gift to us.
Let me end with one of my very favorite prayers by St. Francis DeSales.
“Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations."
Friends, we will never
be problem free, but we can be free
of anxiety and needless worry!
