Recently I was stopped at traffic lights and I saw a Scripture verse on the back of a car windshield. I didn't know the verse, so I looked it up when I got home. The verse was 2 Chronicles 7:14 and I think it is so apt for our times:
'If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways; then I shall hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.' (2 Chron 7:14).
Something that I have seen more and more of in recent months and years, is a surprising number of people coming back to the practice of their faith. Many people have come to confession who haven’t been in 30, 40, 50 years. I usually ask them what has prompted them to come back now and often people aren’t quite sure, but feel that they needed to put their life in order. That is the work of the Spirit, gently prompting us in the right direction. It is never too late to come back, but often our pride gets in the way.
God speaks to us in many different ways, ways that we wouldn’t even think were from him. When people we love become sick, or die, or when we go through times of suffering, when our life seems to go all wrong, we usually listen to God more during those times. Sometimes the chaos of the world around us also makes people think about what is really important. I often saw this while working as a hospital chaplain. People would be far more open to me as a priest in the hospital than they would be outside.
When we are faced with sickness and death, we begin to think differently. We start to see what is important. Think of a time in your live when someone close to you died, or became very ill, especially if it was unexpected. Suddenly all the things that were important up to that point become insignificant, even meaningless. The pain of what has happened makes us see everything differently. The writer C. S. Lewis says, ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’ (The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis). When we are in pain, we listen.
I remember visiting a man in hospital who was dying. I asked him if he would like to receive the sacrament of the sick, also known as anointing and last rites. He said it wouldn’t be right as he hadn’t practiced his faith in years. He felt he would be a hypocrite, although I knew he wanted to. I tried to convince him that the Lord didn’t care if he had been away for years, but his pride stopped him and he couldn’t.
There is a famous book called Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankyl, a psychiatrist, who ended up in one of the concentration camps during the Second World War. He noticed that the people who survived the longest were not necessarily those who were physically the strongest. It was the people who had a purpose, a reason to live, such as a wife, or husband they wanted to see again, or if they had faith. Those who survived were often the ones who had what you might call a spiritual purpose.
I think we often underestimate how important our faith is. It is the only thing that makes sense of why we exist. If you take God out of the picture, there is no apparent reason for us to be here. Without God we would be just like the animals, doing nothing except surviving for as along as we can and then gone. But once we realize God is at the center, then everything changes. We realize we were created deliberately and not by chance and that we have a specific purpose. We were created to be happy in God’s presence, to enjoy his happiness. That’s why He created us, for happiness. Initially we were given paradise, everything we could have asked for, but through our own arrogance we lost it, because we did not listen to God. All we had to do was listen. Today it is the same: we must listen to what the Lord is telling us. The main thing that God is telling us is that we cannot exist without him. We must listen to what He tells us if we want our world to blossom, if we want our lives to blossom. All of God’s Commandments and teachings are there to help us blossom and find happiness in this world.
People often ask what is their purpose in life. I want to know that my life has a purpose. It does have a purpose. We are created to worship God and to love and serve each other. One of the ways we give glory to God is by becoming the best version of ourselves that we can be, by developing the gifts and talents that we have. Your life may not seem to be very exciting, or to have a definite purpose, but it does. Your purpose is to blossom where you are planted; to love the people around you.
One of the early Christian writers called St. Irenaeus wrote: ‘The glory of God is man fully alive.’ The more we develop our gifts and talents as people, the more glory we give to God. If you think of an athlete. They give the greatest glory to God by reaching their full potential. It is the same for all of us. The more we develop our gifts and talents and use them for good, the more we give glory to God, since all those gifts have come from him in the first place.
In the second reading Paul talks about this. He longs to die and be with God. Remember, he was shown heaven, which is why he longed to be gone. But he also realized that God had work for him to do. His preference was to go, but he knew that God had entrusted him with a task. This is the same for us. We have a task, a mission with which we have been entrusted. When our task is complete then the Lord will bring us home, but until then we must do our best to fulfill that task and that task is to blossom wherever we find ourselves and to live for God.
When someone lives by God’s Commandments, it affects the world. Imagine if everyone in the world kept just these Commandments, ‘You shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery.’ The world would be changed instantly. It would become a totally different place. Whatever you do, where you are, will affect the world one way or the other.
In this Gospel parable the Lord is teaching us that even those who come back to him at the last moment, will still be rewarded. That may seem unfair. They have been able to do whatever they wanted and ignore God and now they will be rewarded. The truth is that not doing what God asks us doesn’t bring fulfillment. Living by God’s teachings is what brings more fulfillment than anything else. So while it might seem that those who have ignored God have had more fun, it is not so.
'If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways; then I shall hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.' (2 Chron 7:14).
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