Homily

Last Saturday I pulled out the tropar sheets for the Fourth Sunday of the Fast. And there I found a bunch of sheets I composed five years ago, the first Sunday after the great Corona virus pandemic became a huge concern and we all learned a new term, “social distancing.” On the back of the tropar sheets are the instructions of how to sit in church to keep families 6 feet apart from each other. A copy of that tropar sheet is on the back wall near the hot water machine.

A few days after that the great shutdowns occurred. I had to go to Best Buy to pick up some equipment that had been ordered so we could livestream church services. I got in the car and started to drive down the road. It was a weekday but there was almost no traffic at all. And a very strange feeling came over me. I can’t accurately describe it. It was a feeling I had experienced a bit, off and on, for several days. A feeling of being lost, or perhaps like being on a different planet, living in another world, a strange world, a world that looked the same but was very, very different from the world I was living in just the week before. Then I realized I wasn’t paying close attention to how I was driving because I was caught up in this feeling of strangeness, hesitancy, and fogginess. I tried to force myself to focus on what I was doing. It was a very bizarre, and a very uncomfortable and disturbing frame of mind and attitude.

Thinking about that later, I began to realize a simple truth. Jesus Christ is not so much at the center of my life as I thought He was. Because if He were truly at the center of my life any place where I am can be my home, and in any world that I might live in, He is still present there. No matter what else may change in my life, He is still the Lord. No matter what may come to me today, whether good or bad or unexpected, Jesus is still my Savior and only my lasting hope is in Him Who will never fail. I had thought my life was more solidly based in Christ, but I realize it was more centered on a way of seeing the world the way I thought it should be. I was operating on what I was sure I understood. I was more focused on routines and normal circumstances, the way things ought to go—I was more focused on the way I thought the world should be than I was on the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and He is here with me. I had taken some comfort in believing that I pretty much knew today what would happen today and tomorrow, more than I did in trusting my today and my tomorrow to the Lord. Whatever may come.

If you remember, some weeks ago I was talking about finding more times to remember God and pray throughout the day, and as an example I mentioned the practice of praying every time you get into the car, before driving off. Well, I started to do that. But it didn’t last for more than a few attempts and then I completely forgot about it. Because when you get in the car and you start off thinking about where you are going, and what you need to do, and all those other items that are filling your mind and your life at the present time, and then for me, as so often happens, I ease into the practice of judging the driving skills of other people, and, my dear friends, it is not a pretty picture. But we’re all doing our business, we’re all following our routines. I began to think about how much better my “strange sensation” car trip would have been on that day if I had stopped to pray before I turned the key in the ignition, if I had stopped to remember that the Lord is with me. He has, in the past, helped me to practice charity toward other drivers, even though He still has a lot of work to do there yet. But I need to continue to struggle against so many of the old habits and routines I use to create my own world and change them into habits and routines where I more clearly see that Jesus Christ is Lord, and He is Lord for me, really and truly, in this world.

So I am glad to remember how easy it is for our own self-created worlds to be shaken up and turned around and even upside down. The whole Covid business is a great example of that. But if Jesus is truly at the center of my life, no world is foreign to me, and there is no place I cannot call home. We hear in the Gospel today, the apostles fighting and working to gain future honors, when the very Son of God is standing right in front of them. They didn’t see reality. And perhaps we can miss seeing it as well.

I remember going to the grocery store in those early Covid days. Passing by the canned soup section there was a huge space of empty shelving. All the soup was gone! Gone! Even “Cream of Leek.” Gone! This made me wonder if people were really reading the labels or just grabbing cans off the shelf in some kind of soup frenzy. The whole soup shelf area was empty, except, EXCEPT, for about 20 cans of my favorite Lenten soups, Progresso “Lentil Soup” and Progresso “Lentil Soup with roasted vegetables.” I kid you not! About 20 cans! The only soup cans left. Surely a sign from God. I only picked up one can, confident there would be more there the next time I went back. But even if they are all gone, the Lord is still with me. And that’s the truth I need to press more deeply into my thoughts, my actions and even my prayers. Remember how many people were fixated on toilet paper? But how many were fixated on the Lord?

So dear friends, I ask you today to think about what or who is at the center of your lives. What or who will keep you confident, hopeful, trusting, and charitable? What or who will guide your life in the days ahead? Will it be trusting that all will be well and things will remain as we expect them to remain and that will be good? Or should we not focus instead on living our lives truly centered on Christ as our hope? Let’s work during these last days of Lent to reshape our lives according to His grace and not be afraid for He is with us.