My fellow Catholic Christians, do you realize who you are? Did you catch those words from today's gospel reminding us of who we are? “You are the
light of the world! Let your light shine! Let your good works be seen so God
can be glorified!” The Scriptures tell us in other places that “from your
mother’s womb, God gave you your name!” “You are God’s servant through
whom God’s glory shines!” “From your mother’s womb God formed you for that task,
the task of letting God’s glory shine through you!” “You are made glorious in
his sight!” “He made you a light to the nations so that his salvation may
reach to the ends of the earth!” Jesus tells us in the gospel reading
today that “You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world! You
are a city built on a hill! Your light must shine before others! Your good
deeds must be out there to be noticed!” Yes, we are “the light of the
world!” However, we are like the moon and God is like the sun. The moon has no
light of its own, the moon merely reflects the light of the
sun. Just so, when people see our light and observe our good deeds,
we must make sure that God, the true source of our light,
indeed all light, gets the glory!
My fellow Catholic Christians may we want to be who we are!
May we want to be who we are! I am here to remind you who we are and what
our mission is in this life! We were sent to shine! We were
sent to shine so that God will look good in the eyes of the
world and receive its praise! We should never put ourselves down! We should
never underestimate our worth! We should never belittle ourselves nor play
small! We should never let others put us down! We were sent to
shine! To keep our lamps burning, we have to keep putting oil in
them! Therefore, we need to take care of ourselves – take care of
ourselves enough to do hard things for our own good so that our light will
shine as brightly as possible! We should always resist the temptation to give
into the biggest human temptation and that is to settle for too little! Our
families, indeed the world, need us to be who we are and all that we can be!
I came across a Bruce Barton quote recently that has been rolling
around inside my head for some time now. Others credit Benjamin
Franklin. It is not a new idea, but a life script that I adopted a
long time ago. It goes like this! “When we are through changing, we are
through.” We old people, when we were young, might remember Bob Dylan
singing another version of this same idea. “He not busy being born is busy
dying.” In other words, if you are not growing, you are not just standing
still, you are dying! If you are “sent to shine,” you
absolutely need to keep putting oil into your lamp! You must
keep stoking your own fire!
Winston Churchill said, “Nothing gets better by leaving it alone.”
In fact, when we “leave things alone” the natural process of entropy
sets in – we start coming unglued, we start declining, we begin to
rot! Entropy is that spontaneous and unremitting tendency in
the universe toward disorder unless there is an opposing force working against
it. People, like homes, when they are left alone fall into decay. Even fruits
and vegetables, unless something is done to “preserve” them, begin to
rot! When we “leave ourselves alone,” we commit what I call “personal and
spiritual suicide.” Personal and spiritual suicide is the result of constantly
saying “no” to opportunities to grow and change.”
As one who bought into this idea of “self-formation” a long time
ago, I have concluded that there are two secret ingredients to becoming all
that we can be as ‘the light of the world.” (1) The first ingredient in
really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to personal excellence
– to loving who we really are – loving ourselves enough to care about becoming
our best selves. Really loving oneself does not mean papering oneself. Rather,
it means doing hard things for one’s own good. One of the most critical needs
here is the need for a capacity for critical and constructive
self-awareness. We must be able to know and understand what makes us
tick. We must own my own personal histories and heal them if necessary. In
short, we must be dedicated to becoming our best as quality human persons
first. Let me put that another way. You cannot take a loser and ordain him and
expect to have an effective priest! If he is not a quality human being to begin
with, all you will end up with is a loser priest who can’t relate to people or
inspire them to hunger for holiness. You cannot take two losers and put them
through a wedding and expect to end up with a happy marriage and effective
parents! If they are not quality human beings to begin with, all you will end up
with is a miserable marriage and disastrous parents!
(2) After a passionate commitment to who one is, being the best version of ourselves, the second ingredient in really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to vocational excellence – a passionate commitment to what we do! In other words, if you are parents, commit yourself to being the very best parent you can be! If you are married, commit yourself to being the best husband or wife you can be! If you are a priest, commit yourself to be the best priest you can possibly be! Whatever you are, be good at it! If you strive to be the best at what you do, you will get better at it. If you choose the “good enough to get by” path, you will become known for your mediocrity. Tom Peters put it this way, “The idea of mediocrity scares the hell out of me!” Without a passionate commitment to vocational excellence, you will no doubt end up being a half-assed priest, a half-assed marriage partner or half-assed parent! The world is already overcrowded with mediocrity – people with no passion for personal or vocational excellence! My mother used to call them “people who merely go through the motions,” “people whose hearts are not in it.” God says to us in Revelations 3:15-16, “Would that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” May God spare you from such "half-assedness!” May you become the very best version of yourself! May you become who you are! You are the light of the world! Let your light shine! Yes, let it shine! Let it shine!
Brothers and sisters! One of my biggest fears as a priest is not
natural death, but spiritual and emotional death, being here and being not here
at the same time – “dead on my feet,” if you will! My biggest fear is gradually
turning into a priest whose heart is no longer in it! Chaucer’s Parson
described such a priest as “a man annoyed at his own life.”
The word used by fourth century monks for this state was acedia. Acedia is
not a disease, it’s a temptation – the temptation to disconnect, the temptation
to stop caring, the temptation to stop making an effort. It is a temptation
that can grow and harden into a persistent attitude of apathy and cynicism
which is deadly to any kind of personal or spiritual growth. I find it
fascinating that acedia, in its root, means negligence -
a negligence that leads to a state of listlessness, a lack of attention to
daily tasks and an overall dissatisfaction with life, of not caring or not
being concerned with one’s self-care or position or condition in the world. In
other words, unlike clinical depression, it can be resisted. The sooner it is
confronted the more success one has in turning it around.
We all know priests and married couples who woke up one day and
found themselves in precisely that spot – with feelings of being stuck, with
few options and little hope. Maybe we are, or have been, one of them! If we
were to be honest with ourselves we would have to admit that we didn’t get
there overnight. It happened because of extended neglect. We didn’t take the
time to nourish our individual selves. Many marriages and religious vocations do not die of "natural causes." Too often, they simply die of "starvation!" Too many of us do not take the time to nurture our
vocations. We just “let things go!”
Whether we are priests, marriage partners, parents, professionals, widows or widowers, we are all called to resist the temptation toward acedia, the neglect of our personal and spiritual growth. We are the light of the world and there is responsibility that goes with reflecting that light! As Mother Theresa put it. “To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.” Again, Bob Dylan put it this way. “If we are not busy being born, we are busy dying.”
No comments:
Post a Comment