21st Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Today’s Gospel (John 6:60-69) tells us about Jesus’ disciples who murmured about how difficult it was to do what He asks of them: to abandon themselves and choose to do good, always showing love for everyone. Since they could not follow earthly commands, they decided to stop following Jesus and returned to their old ways of living. Jesus asks the apostles, “Do you also want to leave me?” Simon Peter said to him, “Who shall we go to? You alone have the words of eternal life.”
Everyday we wake up we think, “Today is going to be a great day.” We condition ourselves to expect the best of the day. But, when we leave the house there's heavy traffic; we meet people who give us a bad attitude; we hear some bad news; maybe we experience a tragedy (robbery, assault, whatever). When this happens we say, “I would have been better off staying at home and none of these would've happened.” But the problem is that if we limit ourselves to living life safely and avoid danger. We are not living with a purpose because we are only creating a bubble around us and we don't let things in. And,our gifts, our talents, our charisma, our laughter, our love is kept within and not shared with the world -which is where God needs us to be!
We will one day die and when we do, we will see God face to face. He will ask one simple question: “What did you do with the years I gave you on earth?” What shall our answer be? “Lord, I hid because the world is evil. Lord, there were way too many people who gossiped about me and others. Lord, I was too afraid of offending you, so I limited myself to living in seclusion.” Those are not answers, but excuses because God already knows life WILL be hard. Especially because we will always be saying goodbye on earth to those we love. We will always encounter a moment of despair. We will always be ending something to start anew. In each of those moments we consider 'bad' there is also be God -always in a smile, in a hug, in kind gestures and words, in nature, in each other.
It is difficult to follow a life with Christ at the center. When we try to live according to what God wants, it is like a magnet of calamities. Bad things begin to happen not because God is not with us, but because HE IS by our side. We need to rely on Him in everything that happens to us. He will see us through because He helps us trust in His Will, in His Promise of Strength and above all in His Mercy. In the midst of adversity is when we see His Glory and we know that every test prepares us to be with Him in eternal life.
Life must be lived: trusting at every step; loving when we are broken; and above all stop repeating: take away from me all pain, slander, gossip, resentment, hatred, injury, fall, illness, and everything that is bad, I do not want to live it - BUT LET YOUR WILL BE DONE, and not mine. AMEN.