Homily

There are times when we are very happy to have something new and different and hopefully better. I think of all the people who stand in line for many hours to get the newest model of the iPhone, or how great it is to be driving a new car. We can enjoy wearing new clothes, visiting places we have never been before or trying out different types of food. Nobody would buy an "oldpaper." No, we want the newspaper which contains all the new news of what has changed in the world since yesterday. We can embrace and enjoy many things in life that are new and different and mark a change in the world we live in.

At the same time we do not think that all change is good just because it is different. Politicians we don't like may be elected to office, today's weather may not be pleasant, your favorite TV program is cancelled and your Comcast bill is $5.00 more than it was last month. You may find that you are ten pounds heavier, 200 hairs lighter, needing a new prescription for your eyeglasses which will only help you to see all the more clearly the new wrinkles that have made a home on your face. Just as we can love things that are new and fresh and different, we can also dislike things that are new and fresh and different.

This past week I went to our priests' retreat in the Chicago area, but before that I spent a few days in Ohio visiting my mother. For more than 30 years she has suffered from arthritis, which has gradually deformed her hands and her feet and destroyed most of the cartilage that keeps the bones working smoothly. In recent years it would take her up to five minutes to get out of a chair and into a wheelchair, carefully making small movements to turn around so that she could sit in the other chair. And you could hear the popping noises made by the bones rubbing against each other in so many places in her body and it made you grit your teeth just to imagine the damage and the pain those crackling sounds represented. Many years ago she wanted to be able to attend my brother's wedding in Indiana and get around without too much trouble so she asked the doctor to help her with the pain. He put her on a course of steroids for that week. On the day of the wedding she woke up in their motel room, sat up in bed and started crying. My dad asked her why she was crying and she said, "I'm crying because nothing hurts."

About eight months ago my mother was no longer able to get up on her own or even to walk a single step. She needed someone available to help around the clock and with the equipment and facilities to be able to handle her in her present condition. So she moved into a nursing home and that's where I visited with her last week.

My sister and two of my brothers live in town and they visit her regularly. From their perspective, although they have experienced these changes and new situations, because they are right there these circumstances are not so shocking or strange, but just a natural progression of events they see before them everyday. But of course it's quite different for me, living so far away. I stayed in the family house, which was strange in the sense that my dad has gone to his eternal reward, and I knew that my mother would never again set foot within that home. She would never again see this furniture or the view outside these windows, or use this stove to cook a meal, or welcome her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren into her home. This was the tiny house that she and my dad built 60 years ago and now they have both been forced to leave it behind.

All the old neighbors on the street from the days of my childhood are gone, all the relatives who lived on streets nearby, they too were all gone, all those houses now occupied by other people, other families. And of course, even in my hometown in general, many, many things have changed over the years and they will continue to change as time goes on.

This time, going home was different. I was struck with a new awareness of how dramatically, how radically things can change, or do change, and will change—and it impressed me in different ways than the changes I see in my life here, I guess because I saw life from a different perspective as I moved around, all by myself in that childhood home where five kids were raised. All things change. All things change. Nothing lasts. So what can you count on, what can you tie yourself to, how can we face up to the fact that many loved ones will die and you yourself will follow them? What can you count on in this whirling storm of change that we often like to think we can control but that is usually very much beyond our power?

Only Jesus Christ—He alone is our anchor, our source of stability, our place of refuge and the provider of our true and eternal life. As scripture says, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. That is why St. Paul says today that he is crucified to the world. He is not dead to the world, but dead to the idea of trying to find his life within the every-changing ups and downs of worldly existence, Christ alone is his boast. Christ alone is his life. All things may change, all time moves on and the face of the world is in constant motion between life and death, good and evil, hope and despair, love and hatred. We can try to surf those waves by ourselves or we can get in the boat with Jesus and do our best to live as He has taught us. What we cannot do, He can do if we let Him; to make the one change we truly need—that His life becomes our life.