My Dad and I have many similarities. At the same time, we also have some
stark differences. A great example
of this comes in our love of nature as we love hunting, fishing and camping
together. Yet how we approach our
passions is very different. Dad has
a two-page checklist to prepare for camping trips. There are probably 150 items he checks off before heading
into the woods and I have told my parents they need to build a basement for
their tent. I have my own
unprinted list: clothes, camping gear, fishing gear and other.
Last
year Dad and I took a trip deep into the BWCA to Crooked Lake. I had been there before and knew how
good the fishing was. I told him
he needed to bring three things and he would easily limit out on walleye—a rod,
pink jig and leech. Yet when we
finally got into the canoe, he kept fiddling with his gps, fish locator, tackle
and rods. I kept joking with him:
get your jig in the water! (That
said, if something bad happened in the woods, he would have four different ways
to call for help and could build a house to live in if need be. I would die.)
In
everything we do, we must have an end goal in mind. Just as you can’t catch a fish if your line isn’t in the
water, we can’t live well if there is no destination to which we are traveling.
The
Psalmist reminds us: “Do not forget the
works of the Lord!” It is
fitting that during a stretch of five to six months of Ordinary Time, we
celebrate the exaltation of the cross—the greatest work in the history of the
world.
All
of our readings point to this sole redemptive act of humanity. From the book of Numbers, the
Israelites were saved by looking at the very object of their demise—a
serpent. The cause of their
calamity became the cure! Humans
caused our own fall and it was a representative of our race—Jesus Christ—that
became the cure. He “…emptied himself, taking
the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and
found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming
obedient to death, even death on a cross.”
Do
not forget the works of the Lord!
The
Gospel provides one verse to help us remember God’s works. Signs for John 3:16 are often seen in
crowds at sporting events, and rightly so. It is the kernel of the entire Bible and summarizes all
salvation history: “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in
him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
Remembering
God’s works should inspire us on two levels. First, the cross should be the destination to which we
travel. One way to think of comes
from a motivational speaker I once heard who asked, “Does my destination
determine my decisions, or do my decisions determine my destination?”
Does
your faith permeate your daily life?
Does it determine even mundane decisions—your personal budget, how you
discipline your children, what you watch on televison? Or do you fiddle around (like my Dad
fishing!) with distractions that don’t lead us to the cross?
The
second comes within our Catholic faith.
Here I love what Pope Francis said in an interview last year. He said that we cannot discuss only
controversial issues like abortion, contraception or same-sex marriage. While we must teach the truths of our
faith, such teachings can overshadow what we are all about—Jesus’ death and
resurrection. If our zeal is
misplaced Pope Francis said we would be like a house of cards falling to the
ground.
Do
not forget the works of the Lord!
As we rejoice in the cross, may we be strengthened to allow the cross be
the center of our lives and the destination to which we travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment