Lec # 112 – 18th Sun of OT- Aug 3, 2014- Fr.Bresowar
My brothers and sisters, recently I was reflecting with the youth of our church, and our Lord put an image in my heart that I would like to share with you. But before that, I’d make this observation.
The youth of our culture, of course, are so very distracted by the things and ideas of the world, and particularly in our western culture. This has, unfortunately, led to a lot of confusion, pain and frustration, lack of motivation and seeking of things which ultimately fail to fulfill. And yet throughout all of this, the intense desire to be fulfilled is there.
We all have that desire, it’s imbedded in our very being, and we will spend a lot of time and energy our whole lives seeking out ways to be fulfilled. In our work, in our possessions, in our hobbies, in our families, in our vacations, in our ideas, in our relationships. This is a pattern that every single one of us falls into. We want to feel complete and we generally want it now. And yet we don’t feel complete! Why is that?
Having experienced this much in my own life, and never really reflecting on it, but nevertheless living it, especially when I was in my teenage and young adult years, I wasted a lot of time seeking fulfillment in things and ideas of the world.
Luckily, it didn’t take too long to see that the things I thought were so awesome and fulfilling were not, and that the emptiness that I continued to feel, and theconstant always wanting more, and it never being enough, were not doing anything for my happiness.This includes ideas, like happiness is found in relationship with other people, a wife or kids, or happiness is a house, or happiness is hanging out with friends or possessing a car, or boat, or getting to that place where I can have parties at my own house.Even that idea that happiness is a long lasting marriage with kids who never give their parents anything but joy and grandchildren. Not that these things are bad in themselves, but they cannot be the basis for our joy.
Notice I just took the things that people seem to care about the most, that are the most important to them in this life, and said they cannot be the foundation for our joy. And truth be told, they fail us if they becomeour everything, and when they do, the crash can be hard and difficult, because those things can becomelike idols to us.
It’s a hard lesson that almost everyone has to go through, especially here in this materialistic self-determining culture. And, sadly, many refuse to go through this lesson, staying hardened to the idea thatall these ideas and things are where they are going to discover their worth and happiness. Even as adults! It may sound shocking, but eventually we have to learn to let it all go. Nothing is that important, except the one thing that matters.
So I told our youth, whom, like many are still stuck in this pattern of seeking fulfillment in things that cannot fulfill, that if they would just imagine for one moment this scenario.
I said, imagine that the Lord opened up the ceiling, and moved away the trees, and parted the clouds, and opened up the sky, and for 20 seconds let us just look at Heaven, and what it is that he has created us for, and then after that 20 seconds, he shut the heavens, closed the skies, returned the clouds back to theirs spot, moved the trees back, shut the ceiling, and we were all just sitting back in the spot we are now. Imagine that!
And I asked, of all the things that you find to be so important now in your lives, how would seeing Heaven for a brief glimpse change your paradigm, your perspective, your whole life?
All of a sudden, the things that are so important now, for the youth, relationships, electronics, sporting events, school ,etc, for adults, money, jobs, career, politics, making sure their kids are at those sporting events, all of that would seem kind of like straw. Useless, meaningless, not important, and we would definitely spend the rest of our lives talking and pondering only about what we just saw for those 20 seconds. Why? Because that Heaven is human fulfillment manifested right in front of us. When we go after those lesser things, really, what we want is Heaven.
This is not to say that this world is meaningless andwithout purpose, certainly God created us and ordained within his providence that we spend some amount of time here before we go there. And his created things and ideas here are meant to lead us to Heaven, not become Heaven themselves to us.
In the Gospel, Jesus takes what is good in this world, and makes it better. He shows us how He is the fulfillment of everything good in his creation. He uses fish and loaves to show us how he himself is the flesh and blood which gives eternal life, and how God will take his very flesh and multiply it to feed the world with food that never dies.
He says to us, come to me, all you who are thirsty. That’s all of us; do we realize it? Do we want to be fulfilled? Where are we going to have our thirst quenched? God says come to me! He doesn’t promise that outside of him, we will be fulfilled, but he invites to come and be fulfilled in Him.
And Paul reminds us that once we possess Him, nothing, absolutely nothing will separate us from the Love of Christ Jesus.
The lesson of letting everything go repeats itself many times in scripture.
Coming to God, seeking the Kingdom, abandonment to his loving embrace, trusting that everything else will be taking care of in its own time, and accepting that He is the only source of fulfillment. All of these are saying what is important and what is not. Where your treasure is, there will you find your heart.
Until we come to this conclusion and live it, we will continue to be shattered and surprised, angry and indignant, when those other ideas and things fall through.
Don’t settle here, we are pilgrims passing through, the parables of the Kingdom we have been walking through are there to remind us to seek first the Kingdom of God, keep coming back to God with a repentant heart, ask for the grace to detach from our attachments, which includes the idea that we were made for eternal happiness here in time and space on earth. When we do this, we discover what is true happiness and our hearts become set aflame with desire for God who fulfills in ways the world never could.
