Homily for
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 21, 2014
Time and Eternity
There’s
a group of hard-core Catholic monks called the Carthusians who live lives of
strict penance and prayer, and they have an interesting custom. They always
greet one another with the phrase, “Remember your death, brother.” I don’t know
about you, but that’s not a greeting I’d like to hear as I come down for coffee
in the morning. But it’s a very profound sentiment, because when we keep in
mind how short our time is here on earth and how long eternity is, we will
hopefully live a better life.
Have you
ever walked through a graveyard and meditated on time and eternity? It always
gives me pause to reflect – these people beneath the graves were once as alive
as you and I, with cares and anxieties, joys and pleasures…and now they are
dust. Someday I too will become like them – and how I live this life here on
earth will determine how I spend eternity.
Eternity
is long! It’s a hard concept to grasp – the concept of “forever”. An analogy
might help – let us say that a bird comes along once every thousand years and
takes one speck of dust from the top of Mount Everest. Once Mount Everest is
worn away and becomes as flat as sea level, then eternity…begins. Compared to
eternity, our lives are as quick as the snap of a finger. Where will we choose
to spend it? Will we respond to the Lord’s invitation, will we become holy and
seek after Him with all our hearts, and be ready for Heaven? Or will we waste
our time here in selfish pursuits and spend eternity separated from God in
Hell? Ultimately there are only two options. God has extended the invitation
for everyone to spend eternity with Him in heaven, but not everyone chooses to
accept this invitation.
I was
thinking about this because today’s first reading has a lot of urgency in it.
“Seek the Lord while He may be found,
call to Him while He is near.” In
other words, we don’t get a second chance at life – this is it, we must choose
God today! While we’re alive and breathing and on this side of the dirt, we
shouldn’t waste any time in choosing the Lord! I know it’s a temptation to
think, “Oh, I’ll get more into my faith when I’m older,” or, “When I retire, then I’ll have time to read the Bible.” But
don’t procrastinate! Tomorrow never comes! Choose Christ, choose a life of
holiness now! It’s not too late – and
it’s definitely not too early. We’ve only got this one life.
I hope none of you listened to
the rapper Drake who did the famous…and dirty…song back in 2011 called “The
Motto” which featured the popular catchphrase, ”YOLO” which means “You Only
Live Once.” Kind of an interesting motto, and it can go both ways – “You only
live once, so I might as well live it up and do crazy things and live for
today,” or it can mean, “You only live once, so you’d better make it count.” As
a friend of mine quipped right around the time this song became popular, “You
only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
We only
have this one life to determine eternity. Heck, we may only have this one DAY
to determine eternity. None of us is guaranteed to see tomorrow. There’s a sign
in the sacristy of St. Mary’s that reads, “Priest of God: celebrate this Mass
as if it were your first Mass, as if it were your last Mass, as if it were your
only Mass.” I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to say Mass tomorrow – I could
die tonight. Although that sounds morbid, it also helps me focus on THIS Mass,
because how I celebrate THIS Mass will impact my eternity. How YOU pray at this
Mass will impact where you spend eternity. How you act when you go home will
impact your eternity. How you act when you go to work or school tomorrow will
impact your eternity. A stunning thought! Eternity is coming, and every choice
we make in our ordinary, mundane lives will determine where we spend it!
When I
first moved into the rectory of St. Mary’s, I was…shall we say…shocked to find
my room covered in skeletons. There was a giant plastic skeleton on the wall, a
skeleton-shaped key, a skeleton candleholder. The first thing I did when I got
here was got rid of the skeletons! After asking around, it seemed like Fr.
Arthur liked to keep death always on his mind so that he would live his life in
such a way that he’d be prepared for eternity. Although creepy, it isn’t
without precedent – it was said that St. Jerome used to keep a human skull on
his desk so that he would always consider the shortness of this life and the
length of eternity. I think I could do without such a visual demonstration…a
stroll through a graveyard is usually enough for me.
So, I
suppose the point of this homily is to remind us that life is very short when
compared with eternity. Every choice we make impacts where we will spend
forever – in the loving embrace of God, or separated from Him in eternal agony.
TODAY is the day, NOW is the proper hour: turn from your sin and seek the Lord.
We may not get tomorrow…and eternity is only a breath away.
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