I’m the one who usually has to
pack the car whenever we go away from home.
And that was the case a few weeks ago when we were packing up to return
home from the Adirondacks. You see, friends
had generously offered my wife and me the use of their Fourth Lake cabin for
our anniversary weekend, and it was now Sunday afternoon and time to come
home. I was making trips out to our
minivan to pack up our belongings, and thought I was just about done when I
went back into the cabin and my wife pointed to the full-size futon mattress we
were taking with us. Six feet by five
feet and a foot thick.
You see, a couple days earlier our dog had
climbed up onto this beautiful rustic cabin futon while my wife and I were away
climbing a mountain, and there she had an accident, soaking the cover and the
mattress. We figured we could get the
cover dry-cleaned, but we knew that we had to buy them a new mattress and so we
decided that we’d take the old one home with us.
So flash forward to Sunday
afternoon. I thought the van was all
packed and now seeing the massive mattress, my shoulders slumped because I
immediately knew I was gonna have to empty out the minivan of everything I had
packed into it, and start over, this time with the mattress in first. I really had no choice – it was the only way
I could fit everything into the van. So
I did, I took everything out and started over.
As anyone experienced at packing up cars knows, the biggest things have
to go in first.
This story came to mind as I was
reading and praying on today’s Gospel.
For it seems to me that Jesus is calling us to something very similar
in our lives. The message of this Gospel, I think, is a call
for us to re-order our lives, to re-pack our lives, assuming they are in need
of re-ordering, and I think for most of us, for me at least, we’re in need of
some re-ordering, re-prioritizing.
The Lord is calling us to empty out
our lives of all the attachments that get in the way of our following as a true
disciple of Jesus, in the way of Jesus being first in our lives. If we are really to be disciples of the Lord,
it won’t work to treat Him as an add-on, or shoehorn Him in someplace, maybe
between cutting the grass and watching the game.
No, rather we have to place Him
first. Before all else in our
lives. This is the radical discipleship
that Our Lord is lovingly calling us to.
And it’s radical particularly in our materialistic culture, in our
crazy, busy lives.
The rich man in the Gospel, we
learn, has figuratively filled the van of his life by carefully following all
the commandments, but to his credit, he recognizes that he’s missing something,
something big, that something more is necessary - necessary to gain eternal
life, and necessary to gain fulfillment in this life.
And what is that? Jesus tells him that it’s Jesus he’s missing
- the Lord Himself. Sell all you have
and give it to the poor and come follow me, He says. Jesus is the biggest thing, Jesus is what
must come first in the man’s life, it won’t work if He’s just an add-on. To really be a disciple of the Lord, Jesus
tells the man, and He tells us, he must empty out the van and put Jesus in
first. Now Jesus did not require every
disciple, nor us, to sell all they had.
But He saw the man’s heart, how attached he was to his possessions. It’s this attachment that crowded out
everything else – it’s this attachment to things that had to be severed.
Now you and I may or may not
have many possessions – we may not be the richest person in town, but I suspect
that each of us has our own attachments that get in the way of our fully
following the Lord. Maybe attachments
that we’re simply unwilling to turn over to the Lord.
This week’s reflection on the
parish web site puts it this way – each of us, even if we don’t have many
possessions, has our own “camels” – our own barriers to the fullness of the
spiritual life Christ promises us. The
camels that get in the way of our giving time to the Lord in prayer perhaps, or
maybe that cause us to ignore the needs of the poor, the homeless, those whom
we should be serving, or even that cause us to turn away from the Lord in
sin.
What is your camel? What are your attachments? What is it that you and I need to clear out
of the minivans of our lives in order for the Lord to climb in to be the center
of each of our lives?
The TV perhaps? Or the internet? Maybe it’s the refrigerator. Maybe it’s your job, keeping you at work for
more hours than are necessary. Or
relationships that you know you need to give over to the Lord. There are all kinds of things to which we can
become attached. Not bad things in and
of themselves, but those things that crowd out Jesus. That don’t give Him space in our lives.
With me it’s Notre Dame football,
and spending too much time on the internet, and obsessing about this upcoming
election. And as an aside, I’ve found
that even if I’ve emptied out my life and put Jesus first, I’ll often pile
other things into my life that tend to crowd out the Lord, so I must
periodically re-evaluate and start all over again.
But back to the Gospel, make no
mistake, this is your choice, this is my choice. Like with
the rich man in today’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t force the man to sell all he has
and give to the poor – He leaves that up to the man. And He
leaves it up to me and to you, too. We
see the man’s response - he can’t do it – he can’t bear to give up his many
possessions to which he’s attached, and he walks away.
But this I can assure you – Jesus
gives us the grace to make that choice. That
grace comes especially in our gathering around this altar and partaking of His
Body and Blood. Here we are strengthened
and here we invite Jesus into our hearts, into our bodies, into our very lives.
So nourished with the Sacred
Body and Blood of Our Lord, let us take time this week to examine ourselves. And invite the Lord to show us what it is
that we need to empty out of our lives so that we can welcome Jesus in. So that Jesus Christ can truly be the Lord of
our lives.
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