Having spent last Sunday’s bulletin on remembering the past with gratitude, I now take up the second recommendation from Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Francis to consider what it means to live the present with passion.
Whenever a major transition is about to take place, it can be tempting to take the foot of the proverbial gas pedal and coast to the conclusion of our current circumstances. This happens in a variety of situations. Take for example in school as seniors are getting close to the end of their high school or college career. They get “infected” with senioritis, a condition in which they tend to take fewer difficult classes, not work so hard on assignments, etc. In seminary formation, we would call this deaconitis, as it affected the transitional deacons who had been in seminary for so many years and the goal of ordination to the priesthood was so close, thus becoming their primary focus with their seminary duties taking a less significant place. To that temptation, I would encourage our men as their vocation director to remember the words of St. Paul to St. Timothy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Tm 4:7)
Wherever we find ourselves in our lives, it is there where the Lord is calling us to love Him and serve Him. To the extent that we get stuck in the good or bad from the past, or daydream about what the future might be, we are depriving ourselves of the grace of living in the present moment. It is in this present moment where we can offer the Lord the best of ourselves, our love for Him, and our service to His Church. I tell the men in formation in their final months of formation that the people of God whom they will serve deserve their very best, and the best indicator of how well they will serve their future parishioners is by their commitment to serving faithfully and totally where they are right now. I invite them to see it as a sign of their love for the Lord here and now, and their love for whatever and whoever He will have them serve in the future.
In these final weeks of my time here at Cathedral, I need to heed that very advice in how I approach these days. On my holy card for my ordination to the priesthood, I used the following words from St. Paul: “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.” (2 Cor 12:15) I pray that I have the grace to live that out faithfully, all as an expression of my love for you, and in preparation for the men I will serve in my new assignment at the seminary.
In the past two months, two individuals whom I know quite well have lost their parents very suddenly. Those experiences have been a sobering reminder of what Jesus says in the Gospel regarding when He will return, which also applies to the uncertainty of when our earthly journey may end: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Mt 25:13) As Christians, we need to take these words seriously and not put off to later what needs to be done today. It may be granting forgiveness to somebody or asking it of somebody – including the Lord in confession. It might mean telling somebody you love them. There are countless things that we tell ourselves we will get around to, but let us heed to invitation to live the present with passion and to do what we need to do here and now to love the Lord and our neighbor, spending ourselves so that when that final moment comes, we can say that we have given our all to Him.