Loving God in This Present Moment
Pastor’s Column
15th Sunday Ordinary Time
July 14, 2019
“For this commandment which I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you. It is not up in the sky that you should say, ‘Who will go up in the sky to get it for us and tell us of it so that we might carry it out?’ Nor is it across the sea …. No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out.”
Deuteronomy 30:10-14 (1st reading at Mass)
When I was discerning the priesthood, I used my travel benefits with the airline I worked for at the time to go all over the country on retreats at various religious houses and monasteries, and I did this for several years. One day, while in Massachusetts on a vocation discernment week with a religious community, I called my father (who was an agnostic, not religious), and told him where I was this time in the pursuit of my illusive vocation, and he said to me, “So, tell me, why do you have to fly 3000 miles to find the will of God?” Well, that comment really opened my eyes! In fact, I did find my vocation - nearby - in the parish church across the street from my house.
God really does not ask extraordinary things of us. If that were so, very few of us would ever get into heaven. He asks us to make use of what is available to us in the here and now. St. Theresa of Lisieux, (in her autobiography The Story of a Soul), at the beginning of her spiritual life, was put off by some of the stories of the saints and the rigorous penances and austerities they went through. She asked God to show her an “elevator” to live a life pleasing to God.
What is that elevator? We show our love for God by doing well the simple tasks we have to do each day. We do not need to seek God by striking out on long and arduous pilgrimages, climbing the heavens on our own or getting a doctorate in theology. God’s will for us is expressed in the circumstances we now live in, the people in our lives, the situations in which we find ourselves. The present moment is the only place where we can actually show God that we really love him; by showing love to the person we meet in the here and now; by being faithful to God in this concrete situation right here.
Actually, everything we need is in the scriptures and in the faith community we have here at St. Edward, and by making use of the opportunities presented to us each day by the people we live, work and go to school with, however flawed they or we might be. He is in our mouths in the prayers we say at Mass and in our hearts when we get home: our task is to carry it out.
