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Early this
past week, tragedy visited one of the families of our parish. Their
nephew and cousin―a 21-year-old Marine corporal, Kyle Grimes, of
Bethlehem, PA―died along with 29 of his comrades when the helicopter
transporting them to their duty post in western Iraq crashed in a
sandstorm. You may have learned something about Corporal Grimes
and his life’s dream when Channel 10 featured his family and friends in
a tribute on the 11:00 news on Wednesday evening.
The day I was
informed of Kyle’s death, I received an email from my uncle in
Milwaukee, WI, containing a moral lesson has been making the rounds of
the Internet. I thought it would be good to share this moral lesson
with you this morning, especially in light of the tragedy that visited
one of our parish’s families and today’s gospel in which Jesus teaches
his disciples about the pathway of blessedness, the life of the
“Beatitudes.”
The moral lesson
reads as follows:
Ready or not, some
day it will all come to an end.
There will be no
more sunrises, no days, no hours, or minutes. It won’t matter where you
came from or on what side of the tracks you lived. It won’t matter
whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Your gender, skin color,
ethnicity will be of no consequence whatsoever.
Your wealth, fame,
and temporal power will be rendered irrelevant, as if you never
existed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will
disappear; but so will your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists.
The wins and losses that once seemed so vitally important will
instantaneously be rendered meaningless. It will not matter what you
owned or what you were owed. Everything you have collected, whether
treasured or stored away in the attic or basement, will pass along to
someone or else be transported by a garbage truck to its final resting
place in a land fill.
So, what will
matter? How will the value of your days be measured?
What will matter is
not what you purchased, but the life you lived; not everything you
acquired for yourself, but what you gave others. What will matter is
not what you learned, but what your life taught; in short, how you gave
life to others as well as how you enriched and encouraged others.
What will matter is
not your breadth of competence and skill, but the content and quality of
your character. What will be significant is not your success, but the
significant way you touched others’ lives, not the number of people you
knew, but who will remember you and for what. What will matter are not
your memories, but the memories of those whose lives you changed for the
better.
“Remember, you are
dust and to dust you shall return.” Living a life that matters doesn’t
happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstance or Fate but of
choice. Choose to live a life that matters.
When we
contemplate the tragedy of a 21-year-old Marine’s death, that moral
lesson sounds a sobering wake up call, doesn’t it? There’s a lot of
wisdom that moral lesson contains that directly addresses the deep
desire we all have to be happy. Because we know that without happiness
life is a harsh and cruel existence, we desire and seek happiness to
avoid having to confront and deal with that harsh and cruel reality.
What this moral
lesson asserts is that many of us seek happiness the wrong way―by
following the pathway of materialism―which equates happiness with
acquiring things like money, fame, and power or acquiring a quality of
life that is characterized by ease, pleasure, and being served by
others. This pathway is steeped in the “beatitudes of this world” and
the set of values by which human beings judge their worth and success in
terms of a materialistic “quality of life.” This set of values is the
one that the media, and especially television, trumpets to our culture.
In today’s
gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples that they shouldn’t seek happiness.
Instead, the pathway Jesus teaches―the pathway of blessedness―involves
embracing the set of spiritual values Jesus embodied and living those
spiritual values out in our lives just as Jesus lived those spiritual
values out in his life.
Jesus teaches
that blessedness evidences itself when his disciples are poor in spirit,
meek, and as they hunger and thirst for holiness. Blessedness evidences
itself when Jesus’ disciples are merciful, pure of heart, and make peace
with others. Blessedness evidences itself when Jesus’ disciples accept
persecution, insults, and slander for upholding Gospel values. The
blessedness this set of values brings is the power of inner freedom that
enables Jesus’ disciples―people like you and me―to love the most
important things, God and neighbor, just as Jesus’ disciples love
themselves.
The beatitudes
are not lofty spiritual ideals describing how to achieve blessedness.
No, the beatitudes set forth a roadmap that will lead Jesus’ disciples
away from the prison of sin―where people find it easier to complain
about everything they don’t have and to find blame with everyone
else―and toward the freedom God gives His sons and daughters―that place
where a disciple’s blessedness changes other peoples’ lives through the
power of poverty, humility, holiness, mercy, purity, and forgiveness.
Blessedness, however, requires making the conscious choice to follow
that roadmap Jesus entrusted to his disciples, to commit themselves to
it, and to follow its directions each and every day.
In contrast, the
happiness that most human beings seek has more to do with one’s lot in
life, with chance, or pure luck. Looking around and seeing everything
they don’t have, it is so easy to believe that happiness is found by
possessing material things and, if only they could have all of those
things, they’d be very happy and content. So, they dedicate themselves
to working very hard to acquire all of these things with the goal of
being happy; but, more oftentimes than not, they discover that even if
they are lucky enough to win the Super Lotto and possess everything they
want, the goal they seek―happiness―eludes them. Lost of stories have
been written about how “hitting the jackpot” didn’t bring happiness but
has actually brought misery.
Jesus doesn’t
teach his disciples to be seek happiness nor does the pathway he teaches
them promise happiness. Instead, Jesus calls his disciples to become
holy by following the pathway of blessedness. This isn’t a lifestyle
reserved for “saints.” No, this lifestyle involves making a personal
commitment to live out the spiritual values of God’s kingdom rather than
allowing the materialistic values to define what we will chase after in
an ultimately futile effort to find abiding happiness.
Much like our
culture, the Corinthians lived in a very materialistic culture. Looking
to find happiness in things rather than in God, St. Paul describes for
the Corinthians the choice they have before them. If they respond to
God’s grace―and if we respond to God’s grace―St. Paul tells the
Corinthians that the freedom God bestows upon His sons and daughters
will evidence itself in not in being happy but in being blessed, not in
lives where they possess everything they want but in lives where their
love of God and neighbor shame the influential and those who the world
considers wise.
As Jesus’
disciples, we have the same choice that St. Paul put before the
Corinthians. As that short moral story making the rounds of the
Internet reminds us:
“Remember, you are
dust and to dust you shall return.” Living a life that matters doesn’t
happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstance or Fate but of
choice. Choose to live a life that matters. |
HOMILY
