Today is Pentecost Sunday. My "First Mass" fell on Pentecost Sunday 52 years ago. When I was about
to be ordained back in 1970, 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 and calm in a fast-changing church and in a world becoming more
unglued? How will I be able to stay focused on my work when one problem after
another is going to be hurled in my face from both inside and outside the
church? How will I be able to calm others when it’s possible that I will be
torn up all the time myself?”
I have spent most of 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 needed to find a way to control what happens “in here.” As one spiritual teacher said, “It is easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world.” (It’s easier to change myself than everybody else!) I knew I was going to need, and certainly wanted to have, that peace that only a close relationship with Jesus could give me, that peace that he offers us twice in today’s gospel.
I spent most of my young adult life looking for that 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 that I can always find my way back to it even when I drift away or forget it sometimes.
How can one have
that peace of mind and heart in the midst of chaos That Jesus mentioned twice
today? A relationship of trust with Jesus is what brings you that peace. If you
truly believe that you are loved by God without condition, if you truly
believe that God is on your side and holds no grudges, if you truly
believe 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 end up having to
handle, no matter how great your losses are, 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 comforting peace will
stand guard over your heart and mind!
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 actually never happened!
Statistics even tell us that fully 90% of the things we worry about never
happen! Most of my imagined tragedies were actually followed by some of the great
blessings! It has happened too many times to dismiss it as a fluke.
I went through
one of those anxious periods 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 worked out the way I planned, I would have gotten on an airplane
for a trip to France, not knowing about the blood clot, and probably would have
died on that plane either on the way over or on the way back! I recovered from
the clot, thank God, but as it turned out God spared me from what I thought I
wanted (a trip to France) and gave me something even better (my life) !
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 for retirement did not work out because something much better happened. I made twelve missionary trips to the Caribbean islands! Even when those trips ended, because of COVID and a volcano eruption, I found myself again with another wonderful opportunity. It’s was like “when that door closed another door opened.” That was when my idea of turning the old Cross Roads School into a new St. Theresa Family Life Center for St. Theresa and St. Mary’s came to me one night when I was worried about what to do next and trying to go to sleep! Now, I am at peace about not going to the island missions any more. Now I get to go to Rhodelia more often instead!
Peace, my
friends, 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 have very little control over 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 might 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 was Jesus’ last gift to us before he left this earth.
Let me end with one of my very favorite prayers by St. Francis DeSales.
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