A few years ago a Dominican priest friend of mine told me the
following story. He was based in Dublin, and because of renovations to
their church, they were using a make-shift chapel at the time, which was a bit
cramped. The chapel was jammed as they were celebrating the Easter Vigil
and he said that the reader was reading the account of creation in Genesis in a
rather posh accent. While he was reading this piece of Scripture a homeless
man came up to the top of the chapel and sat down right underneath where the
man was reading and listened to the reading. When he got to the part of
the reading that says ‘God saw all that He had made and indeed it was very
good,’ the homeless man said out loud, ‘You’re havin’ me on!’ (You’ve got to be
kiddin’). The reader continued to the next part and again when he got where it
says ‘...and indeed it was very good’, again the homeless man said out loud
‘You’re having me on!’ While it might have seemed very ignorant of the
man to interrupt the reading like this, what he was saying was that this might
be what the scriptures say, but it certainly wasn’t his experience of the
world.
How do we make sense of a reading like today’s Gospel which says
that Jesus, the anointed one of God, came to bring ‘good news’ to the poor, to
free prisoners, etc? For many people, such as that homeless man and
indeed many others too, their experience of the world is that it is a difficult
place where often things don’t work out. Think of the families who are
living in the middle of war at this time, or even those who are really
struggling to survive in our own country. What could possibly be ‘good
news’ for them?
The ‘good news’ that the Son of God came to tell us is that there
is a purpose to our lives. We are here for a reason. Our lives are
not meaningless and the meaning of our lives does not depend on how
‘successful’ or otherwise things seem to be for us in this world. How well
we do on the outside is not really that important. What is primary is what
happens inside us, in the heart. God has created us to love and to serve
and to blossom as people. Hopefully we will also do well on the outside
and be able to provide for our loved ones and enjoy this life too, but whether
or not everything works out well for us is really secondary. The only
thing that really matters is that we realize what the purpose of our life is
about—to love God and the people around us. This is something that everyone
can do, no matter what their circumstances.
I used to visit a man in prison for a couple of years while I was
studying to be a priest. He was in for a very serious crime and he was
doing a life sentence. As far as I know he is still in prison. Having got
to know him I also realized that he was basically a very good man himself. The
crime he committed, which was a murder, was one of these bizarre things that
happened, where 30 seconds either way and he would never have met the person he
killed. Now his life is apparently ruined and he will spend most of it in
prison.Does this mean that his life is meaningless, or a total failure? Not
necessarily so; it depends on what goes on inside him more than anything else,
because that is what God sees and that is what God will judge him by. That
is what God will judge all of us by: how we have loved. Whether we end up
living on the street or being the president of some huge company is really not
that important. Of course we should try to make the most of the opportunities
that we are given and strive to succeed and hopefully we will do well, but if
we can see that the purpose of our lives is much deeper than just what we
achieve on the outside, in the world’s eyes, then we will have an inner
strength that will help us keep going, no matter what happens.
This ‘good news’ that we often talk about, is that we are loved,
we are noticed, we are valued, and there is a purpose to our lives. We are
not just here by chance. God deliberately created us. God wants us
here at this particular time in history, in the particular family that we are
part of. If I cannot see this bigger picture then my life may appear to be
meaningless, pointless, especially if things haven’t worked out the way I think
they should have. But that is to limit my purpose to my own very limited
way of seeing the world. If I try to see it with the eyes of faith, then I
will see something quite different. To understand that is to give sight to
the blind and freedom to those who are imprisoned. It’s not just prisons
like ‘Mountjoy’ in Dublin where my friend was either, but the kind of prison of
the mind that tells me that my life is a waste of time. No one’s life is a
waste of time if we realize that God wants us here. Our job here is
primarily to love and serve God and the people around us. The key for us
is to see the bigger picture.
‘I came that you may have life and have it to the full’ (John
10:10)
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