Saturday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Yr 2 2024

Title

Remember your Creator . . . before

Outline

Rejoicing in strength and enjoyment is good

That was the message of Pope St John Paul II. He enjoyed good meals with his friends from early in his priesthood, he enjoyed kayaking with them, he enjoyed ski trips. He rejoiced in friends, food and God’s creation ever mindful of he from whom those goods came. And he never enjoyed them to excess. Late in his pontificate when he could no longer make such trips his friends brought a kayak into the Vatican and sang the old songs of their holidays in celebration of their annual get-together.

We often forget this aspect of God’s goodness and do so to our peril.

But like Jesus we must also keep in mind that “the evil days [will] come”

Jesus had just gone mano a mano with a demon and the demon had lost and a boy had been healed. That was something to rejoice about. But he also keeps something else in mind: “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” This was his ultimate purpose, the goal of his humbling himself to become human. The conquest of demons was a victory, but it faded when compared with his final dark battle and his decisive victory on the other side of death. We weighed all he did in the light of God’s ultimate purpose that included his death.

This is a parable for us, a sign

The disciples could rejoice in the signs and wonders, but they could not even understand this darker saying, so in the crucial battle they would desert him. Happily, he did not desert them in his resurrection.

They church today is often caught up with signs and wonders, with seeming breakthroughs in reforming this or that nation, with invitations by men and women of influence, with great gatherings and crowds. But Christians often forget about taking up a cross and joining Christ in death, about their ultimate goal being union with Jesus, and about their hopes being beyond their own deaths. The disciples would learn all of this later.

So we should enjoy the pleasures God gives us in life in this world, but always remember that they are fleeting, that we end every Hail Mary with “now and in the hour of our death,” that we pray for a good death, and that the test of suffering is whether we use it to identify more with Jesus, not whether we are healed of it.

The older I get the more I realize how true that is and the more that I grasp that my ultimate goal is beyond death, not in avoiding death and suffering.

Blessed are you if you can grasp the goods of the present and can also reach out to welcome your identification with Christ’s death so as to arrive at your ultimate purpose.