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For a
couple of years now, there’s been a wonderful “guys” tool on the market.
At first, this
tool was available only on rental cars (for an extra fee, of course). I
believe this was a ploy on the part of some clever marketing people
because, as more and more guys became familiar with this tool, it was
suddenly available as one of those “extra add ons” a guy could order
when purchasing a new car. And, just recently, I saw a television
commercial advertising a hand-held version of this tool (endorsed by the
American Automobile Association) for something like “three easy
installments of $39.95.” (I guess that saying this tool would cost $120
plus shipping and handling might to be a turn-off for those real macho
guys.)
What’s this guy’s
tool?
It’s called the
“personal Global Positioning System” (or, “GPS”). This incredible
device not only enables guys to locate exactly where they are
anywhere on the entire planet but it also provides directions to
practically any destination in the United States. You name it…input
your place of destination and the GPS will tell you how to get there.
The beauty of
this tool is that no guy will ever again have to demean himself by having
to ask anyone for directions. Think about it: having a GPS device means
that a guy won’t ever have to keep driving around town or the
countryside in the vain hope that he will stumble upon his destination
when the person seated beside him is giving what he is absolutely
convinced are “wrong” directions. There’ll no longer be any need for a
guy to lie by telling the person seated beside him that he knows
absolutely for sure where he’s headed. And, there’ll no longer be any
need for a guy to have to pull into a gas station and belittle himself
by having to ask a cashier who barely half his age for directions while the person
seated beside him smirks while thinking to herself “I told you so.”
If the truth be
told, the GPS promises to give guys certainty about where they are and
where they are headed. Now, when they’re driving their cars, they won’t
ever again appear to be fallible, lost, or out of control…especially to
the person seated beside them.
What a tool!
Isn’t technology wonderful?
When it comes to
our spiritual lives, it is pretty easy for any of us to believe that we
know better than everyone else where we’re going and how we’re taking
the best route to get there. Sure, we may find ourselves meandering
around a bit and lost in the wasteland we’ve created, but we remain
confident—and, if challenged, are adamant—that we’re headed in
absolutely the right direction. Perhaps somewhere along the way,
someone may have the chutzpah to opine about a better way to get to
where we want to go. But, have no fear: we don’t let that deter us.
No, we allow pride to so infect our decision-making process that we
stubbornly refuse to accept what we are convinced is nothing more than
self-serving advice from all of those indubitable know-it-alls. And,
judging solely from the number of people who frequent the Sacrament of
Penance, most of us would rather do just about anything rather than
drive to the “spiritual service station” of the confessional to seek
religious counsel from a priest about how to get to where we need to go.
Spiritually
speaking, if we are to get back on track and headed in the right
direction (meaning “toward our eternal destiny”), a Spiritual
Positioning System (or “SPS”) would prove to be a Godsend. This device
would make it possible for each of us to determine our soul’s precise
location in relationship to God and one another so that, at any time we
find ourselves meandering about in any area of our lives, we would
receive the objective, fair, and balanced spiritual guidance we need to
get back on track and pronto.
Think about it:
when we find ourselves spiritually in a place where we’re not quite sure
where we are, our SPS would tell us immediately what we need to do in
order to improve our relationships with God and others. It would also
tell us what our faith requires of us. And, perhaps most importantly,
our SPS would help us to know with certitude what is truly important.
Then, armed with all of this information, all we’d have to do is to make
the necessary adjustments in direction and we’d end up precisely where
we need to be. It’s as simple as that.
Like the guy in
the car who is meandering about somewhere in the middle of some nowhere
trying to find his destination, the problem we face each day has nothing
to do with the destination. In fact, today’s gospel reminds us
precisely where we need to be headed. When Jesus emerged from the water
following his baptism, Luke tells us that God said: “This is my beloved,
with whom I am well pleased.”
Our entire
purpose in life as God’s children, what will give us the greatest
happiness and satisfaction we could ever imagine, is for God to say of
each and every one of us: “This is my beloved, with whom I am well
pleased.” That’s our destination.
No, the destination
isn’t the problem. Like the guy in the car who is meandering somewhere
out in the middle some Godforsaken nowhere, the problem more oftentimes
than not comes when we select the route we think is best and, then, find
ourselves meandering about in the middle of some nowhere and clueless
about where to turn.
Seeking the
greatest happiness and satisfaction we could ever imagine, it is not
infrequently that we choose what we believe to be a good route to that
end but it is, in reality, nothing but a detour leading us to a dead
end. How is this possible? It might well be that we’re seeking
fulfillment everywhere other than along the only route capable of
bringing us swiftly and safely to our destination.
For example,
rather than focus upon the essentials that are necessary for couples to
build strong marriages, husbands and wives oftentimes take detours as
they choose to meander along a pathway where the non-essentials and
what’s peripheral become essential and all-consuming. In place of
building one another up through loving and affirming acts that serve to
strengthen one another in their human weaknesses and to advance one
another in virtue, it’s easier for spouses to focus upon their own petty
self-interests and, then, to resort to selfish and demeaning behaviors
which tear the other down. To no one’s surprise, sniping replaces
laughing. Alienation breeds contempt.
Combine this with
all of the truly bad advice others in this situation offer, all this
detour leads to is contemplating the divorce that neither spouse really
wants, especially if each of them would just consider the direction they
chose on their wedding day when each promised to “love, honor, and obey”
the other. Yet, when someone—be it a spouse, relative, friend,
neighbor, or even a priest—suggests the correct direction, don’t spouses
find themselves feeling just like that guy in the car who hears what’s
being said but stubbornly refuses to heed the advice? Doesn’t one
spouse point the finger of blame at the other spouse rather than at
themselves for the wasteland they’ve created of their marriage?
If couples are to
get their marriages back on track, isn’t it the truth that spouses need
to say—and to really mean it—“This is my beloved, with whom I am well
pleased”? To get there, however, spouses need a SPS and the willingness
to listen to it.
How about kids?
We all know that
God has commanded us to “Honor your mother and your father.” But,
rather than follow that pathway—one which will always and absolutely
lead happiness and fulfillment in our families—don’t we oftentimes take
a detour by asserting our individual “rights”? Instead of first asking
ourselves the direction obedience requires us to move, don’t kids first
look everywhere else but to God’s commandment so that they can justify
taking a detour from the pathway of obedience?
To no one’
surprise, many kids who choose this detour feel alienated from their
parents. Then, these kids don’t like coming home, preferring
instead to be with “friends” who’ve chosen the same detour. These kids
also insulate themselves from anyone who might challenge them to pursue
the pathway demanded by obedience. And, to top it off, these kids are
like that guy in the car. They know how unhappy they are as they
meander about in the wasteland where this detour has led. But, their
pride won’t let them admit the truth.
Isn’t it the
simple truth that kids desperately want to hear their parents say—and to
really mean it—“This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” But,
how can parents utter these words if their kids stubbornly assert their
rights and deny their obligations? To get back on the pathway, kids
need a SPS and the willingness to listen to it.
Furthermore, what
about strident feminism which asserts that males and females are equal?
I recently
attended a dinner party where a married couple was seated on my left.
Both spouses are very successful neurosurgeons. The wife was seated
immediately to my left; her husband was seated immediately to her left.
The couple has two children, a girl and a boy, aged seven and four
years.
In the course of
our conversation, I discovered that the wife had left her neurosurgical
practice a short while back so that she would be with her children as
they grew up. The cost of malpractice insurance helped ease her
decision. But, nonetheless, it was a very difficult and painful
decision for this woman to arrive at for a couple of reasons.
First, the field
of neurosurgery changes so rapidly that, in order to keep abreast of
everything, a neurosurgeon must spend a great deal of time continuously
updating one’s knowledge base by attending professional meetings and
conferences. Leaving her practice to attend to her children would
mean not attending to her professional development. And, the
longer she did not attend to her professional development, the more she
would have to learn just to “catch up with the learning curve.”
Second,
performing neurosurgery is a learned skill that requires hours upon
hours of practice that gradually becomes refined only as one performs
this very delicate surgery. Walking away from the operating room is,
for a neurosurgeon, the equivalent of a “death sentence” because the
highly-refined relationship between the surgeon’s eyes, brain, arms,
hands, and fingers quickly erodes. The longer a neurosurgeon is absent
from the operating room, this manual dexterity becomes so weakened that
it is not only extremely difficult to recapture but it would also take
an extraordinary amount of time to recapture.
Third, and I
believe most importantly in this case, this woman has believed her
entire life that she “could have it all.” Throughout all of her years
of schooling, she was led to believe and wholeheartedly embraced a
vision promising that she could be a successful neurosurgeon, enjoy a
good marriage, and have loving children.
However, when she
returned to work after few weeks after having her first child, and each
day upon leaving her daughter in the hospital’s day care center, this
woman experienced a twinge of dread somewhere deep in her stomach. This
feeling never left her and it actually increased when she returned to
work a few weeks following the birth of her son.
Her SPS device
was telling this neurosurgeon and mother that she had taken a detour.
Over the next two
years, she considered abandoning her professional practice. She
discussed this possibility with her husband, some close family members
and friends, and some professional female colleagues.
For his part, her
husband wanted his wife to leave her professional practice but said that
he’d support whatever decision she made. For their part, her close
family members and friends were evenly split regarding her decision.
Her mother, however, related how she has always regretted having given
up her career so that she could be home to raise her children. But,
this neurosurgeon’s professional female colleagues were unanimous in
their opinion and quite adamant about it: she must continue practicing
neurosurgery.
As this woman
related all of this to me, I asked: “Having now left your practice, what
do you find gives you greater fulfillment, successfully helping someone
return to health or watching your kids grow up each day?”
To my surprise,
she took in a very deep breath as if she had been punched in the
stomach. Tears welled up in her eyes. And, she hesitatingly responded,
“Watching the changes taking place in my kids each day and seeing them
smile.”
I asked why this
was causing her such distress.
She said: “All my
life I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. I love neurosurgery. I married a
neurosurgeon. Throughout school, I had been told that I ‘could have it
all.’ And, I believed I could. But, when I couldn’t be with my kids to
see what delighted them and would miss being at things that were
important for them, it made me feel very uncomfortable.”
She then related
how she enjoyed taking her children to the park and talking there with
other moms about “mom stuff.” She also very much misses the
intellectual stimulation of her profession and the challenges it
presented. Yet, being there in the park while watching with her
children playing and smiling and being able to talk about mom stuff
offers a type of satisfaction she finds personally sustaining even
though she knows her professional colleagues find such things “demeaning
to a woman.” She also related how much it hurt when she told her
professional colleagues all of these things. They responded as if she
were some kind of freak and, gradually over the ensuing months, they no
longer communicated with her.
Meandering about
in the land where she believed she “could have it all,” this courageous
woman responded to what her SPS device was telling her. She knew that
parents have a special vocation to love their children, a vocation that
no one else can bring to completion. She also knew that children must
be a mom’s and a dad’s absolute first priority. But, what challenged
her to rethink the detour she had embarked upon and to undertake a
radical change direction was that, while she knew how being present at
things important to her kids is necessary, it is so because only she and
her husband can say to their children “You are my beloved, with whom I
am well pleased.”
This is how
parents plant and nourish the seeds that mature into loving children,
teenagers, and adults. Absent those words, adult life for those
children and their children will be an uphill struggle. But, in the
example of the neurosurgeon, how can this mother utter those words
meaningfully if her children take second priority to her professional
career?
It is an illusion
to believe that we can “have it all.” When we freely choose to take a
detour in search of an illusion we believe will make us happy, we
meander about in a wasteland of our own making. It doesn’t matter
whether the delusion is that the words “to love, honor, and obey” don’t
really mean “to love, honor, and obey,” or that “Honor your father and
your mother” means doing what I want not what honor requires, or that we
“can have it all.” When we discover that we’ve taken a detour and are
lost in the wasteland of our own making, we need a Spiritual Positioning
System to get us back on track.
Now, the really
Good News is that each of us already has a built-in SPS. All we have to
do is to be alert to its messages.
All of us have
been baptized and, in that sacramental encounter, God has said, “You are
my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” At that moment, God renewed the
divine spirit which He first breathed into us when we were conceived.
To assist us
along the way to our eternal destination, God has blessed us with many
gifts. In particular, there are sacraments of the Eucharist and
Penance, both of which strengthen the Spirit of God within us. God has
also blessed us with the Bible in which He speaks to us about how much
He loves us and how desperate He has been over the millennia to save
us. God has also blessed us with Church teaching. Believe it or not,
God actually does speak through the Church as it applies gospel values
to the many oftentimes confounding and contradictory moral and spiritual
challenges confronting us today. These blessings—each of them freely
given—are there simply for the taking. When we find ourselves meandering about
in the middle of nowhere, all we need to do is to partake of them.
It’s easy to know
when we have opted to take a detour. It happens as we stubbornly refuse
to partake of the sacraments, to read scripture, and to consider Church
teaching as we make decisions each and every day. Then, when we find
ourselves in the middle of a wasteland out in the middle of some
Godforsaken nowhere, we believe that we’re being rather successful in deceiving
everyone else when we tell them we’re headed in the right direction.
Yet, despite our protestations to the contrary, they just smirk and
think to themselves, “You’ll see. I told you so.”
Our challenge as
we embark upon the journey of our lives each and every day is to listen
attentively to God’s Spirit and to make any necessary changes in
direction so that we continue to live as God’s beloved. The blessings
of the sacraments, of the Bible, and of Church teaching are there to
help us remain attuned to our SPS, to live as God’s beloved in whom He
is well pleased, and to make any changes in direction as necessary.
Trust me on this one: this is the only route by which we will arrive safely at our eternal
destination. Any other route leads to a dead end. |
HOMILY
