IT’S TIME

As the Wisdom writer constantly reminds us, there is a time for every purpose under the sun. For all of my ministry I have been writing reflections to share with the people I was serving in the various parishes in the several dioceses I was privileged to serve. For the past fifteen years I have widened the audience, if you will, by putting them on Facebook. It has been an enjoyable ministry. But now is the time to  close down the keyboard and fully enjoy retirement -- not that writing these reflections was not a joy: it was!

The truth is that I have said what I said many times over if only in different words. The further truth is that living out our faith, which my reflections tried to help to better understand what that means for you and me today, really is not that difficult or theologically deep. Jesus always said it in very simple but profound words, mostly in short parables that prodded his hearers to deeply ponder his words. My hope is that mine did the same.

When I reflect back on what I wrote and what I continue to believe (and preach on when the occasions arise) is that following Jesus means that we are to be always ready to use whatever gifts with which we have been blessed – and we all have them – to the very best of our ability, with God’s always offered grace and strength, to seek and serve the Jesus we meet in every person we meet, especially those whom Jesus cared for the most: the last, the lost, the lonely and the least among us.

Jesus’ constant message was/is that what God expects of us and what we should expect and demand of ourselves is that we love God above all else and love everyone else as we love ourselves. If one of those loves – God, self, other – is out of skew, we fail. And the truth is that we fail every day in one way or another. But every day we pick ourselves up and start all over again. We’ll never get it perfectly, but all God expects of us and all we should expect of ourselves is that we never give up.

In many ways I will miss sitting down at the keyboard and thinking and reflecting and writing and sharing. Again, it’s been a joy. But there are countless others out there in cyberspace who have reflections to share and in better ways than I could or can. Search them out. I have my favorites. Find yours.

We can only become a better person, a better follower of Jesus, when we examine our faith, our daily words and actions. What we will discover, thankfully, is that we are really not as bad as we sometimes think we are or as good as we know we can be. That’s the challenge in being a Christian.

I know some of you but certainly not all of you but I pray for you daily. Please do the same for me. Until we meet again someday, God Bless you.