Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

There are so many ways to mark the movement of time and our engagement with life. Our Church year begins with the First Sunday of Advent every year (November-December), and runs through the Feast of Christ the King (November). Our calendar year begins on January 1 and runs through December 31. Our (parish) fiscal year begins July 1 and runs through June 30 of the following year. There’s Chinese New Year and Islamic New Year and Jewish New Year. Personally, I find myself marking time in other ways, too. I am attentive to those dates when quarterly estimated tax payments are due to the IRS. I am attentive to the beginning and ending of my personal year as I mark my birthday and the aging of my life. But these readings today also remind me of another curious way in which I seem to mark time.

 I count the movements of my life in broad strokes. I was born in 1969. I entered seminary in 1987. I lived in South Central LA for a year in 1992. I was ordained in 1994. I graduated Boston College in 2000. I completed 10 years of working with the Archdiocese as a Coordinator and Consultant in 2011. I was entrusted with the responsibility of Our Lady of Lourdes in 2011. I had my first sabbatical in 2009. I had my second sabbatical in 2016.

 Throughout all these movements and experiences, I realize that I engage in constant conversation with the narratives of these chapters in my life. That conversation involves my ongoing self-reflection and no small amount of learning from the experiences that are afforded to me, by God’s grace. While making sabbatical, there were formal retreat experiences that involved extensive written reflections, but even without those formal elements, I engaged in and continue to engage in, reflective processes that allow me to discern and deepen my self-understanding and the movements of God’s grace in my life.

 In this ongoing self-reflection, I am sometimes reminded of others who have entered into the different chapters and moments of my life with their own contributions. I have learned that fellow pilgrims on the journey of life can sometimes be supportive and encouraging, considerate and caring. Others can be disparaging and negative, self-centered and unkind. Yet for all that, I suspect that I am my own harshest critic. I rarely need anyone to tell me the world in which I live in imperfect, and that I contribute in different ways to the imperfections and the chaos that surround me. Still, not unlike Jeremiah in the first reading, there’s always someone willing to step up to point out flaws and imperfections.

 When I am being self-critical, when I am being reminded of my human nature and condition, either by myself or by others, I struggle, I confess, to remember the care with which God holds me. This reminds me to exercise great care when I am in conversation with others, too, of my responsibility to remind them of how much care with which they are held by God. I will be the first to admit I don’t always get it, but I would dread to think that anyone might judge me for being intentionally uncaring or harshly critical.

 Today’s gospel reminds us of the immeasurable care with which God holds us, and the standard of care with which we are called to interact with one another. When we review the narratives of our lives, we do well to keep in mind how God moves with us on the pilgrim paths along which we journey. When tempted to self-judgment, consider God’s love for us. When tempted to judgment of another, take a deep breath. Life is too short and too full of opportunities for us to miss the blessings it offers.