Today: Daily Mass Homily--Thursday, January 16th, 2015

(Listen to this homily here).

            One of the human accomplishments I am most proud of is completing an Ironman triathlon.  I have always loved challenging distance events, but this is the one that was the most difficult to complete.

            What I found was that training my mind was as important the physical training for this race.  I couldn’t worry about the twenty-mile run on Thursday, or the long swim I had to do tomorrow.  I could only think about the job at hand today.  Sometimes when training became overwhelming I had to take things minute by minute or mile by mile.

            We have all heard the cliché—take things day by day.  Any new parent, recovering addict, athlete or someone who has moved through grief knows the truth of this quip.  When life gets rough we have to focus on meeting God today—this hour—this minute.

            The letter to the Hebrews has a cool line: “Encourage yourselves daily while it is still ‘today,’ so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin.”  The point of this line is that we only have today.  We have neither yesterday nor tomorrow.  And if we are faithful today, the author continues, “We have become partners of Christ if only we hold the beginning of the reality firm until the end.”

            The fact is, one of our todays will be the last.  We will each die.  Yet if we are faithful to Christ today we will have nothing to fear when that today comes.