Daily Thoughts - 06/30/2013

Daily Thoughts: My mother had a favorite saying that I often heard because it was mainly directed at me. Her saying was, “But you’re not everybody!” I usually heard this simple phrase when I would come to her asking for something that I desperately wanted, a certain style of jacket or coat, a certain kind of sneakers, a certain party or place I wanted to go to. My standard argument in order to get what I wanted always ended with the emphatic statement, “But everyone has one! Everybody is going! Everybody is wearing them!” After a pause I would always hear, “But you’re not everybody!” Which you guess it meant, “No!” Later in life I learned not to use the “everybody” argument and much to my surprise there were a few “yes” responses!

Perhaps the focus of our readings today especially the first reading from the Book of Kings (1 Kings 19: 16b, 19-21) and the Gospel (Luke 9: 51-62) can be summed up in my mother favorite saying, “But you are not everybody!” Being in relationship with God has a tremendous upside but it is also a challenge, a challenge that sometimes means we are not everybody. To be a prophet like Elijah or Elisha, to be a disciple of Jesus sometimes means that we have to let go, that sometimes we end up not being like everybody else. Sometimes the choices that we are confronted with are not between good and evil, right or wrong but between two things that are good. Yet the call to be a prophet, the call to be a disciple asks us to choose the more important good at times even if everyone else goes the other way.

Being a Christian has a price, one that is not always easy to understand. It is a price that can make us feel alone in our choices and decisions. Many a time a walked away from my mother angry, I felt she had done me wrong. I felt that she didn’t understand that she was ruining my life. Yet, here I am and most of who I am and what I believe I owe to my mother and father. They taught me faith and how to live life. The lessons where not always easy, they didn’t always make sense at the time and I wasn’t often not part of the crowd.

Yes, we are reminded today of the challenge of being a disciple, of being a person of faith. It is a challenge that at times calls us to make decisions that are not easy and at the moment don’t make sense. It is a challenge that often reminds us that we are not everybody!

Daily Prayer: O God, you love us not in some aloof, impersonal way, but with the cherishing love a good mother pours out on her children; with the adoring love a good father delights to give the children in his life. With the disciplining love good parents give their children; with the protecting love shepherds shower on their lambs. Your love for us now is gift-love, faithful, committed, unchanging, inextinguishable. Grant us the grace to believe, to follow, to choose, to experience this love even when it is difficult, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when everyone else says differently. Grant us the hope of your eternal love so that we can keep our hands on the plow always look ahead. Amen!

Runner’s Thought: Let us remember that if we run the spiritual path, God is the source of our strength, God is our footpath, and God is the finish line. If we run consciously, with the intention to move closer to the presence of God, then our movement, the sound of our breath becomes a profession of our faith! (Adapted from Roger Joslin, Running the Spiritual Path)

Sunday blessings to all! I will make this short as I will be leaving in a few moments to celebrate the noon Mass at the Church of St. John and St. Mary in Chappaqua, NY. I hope and pray your weekend is going well. May this last Sunday in June and this last day of June be one blessed with family, friends, love, laughter, rest, relaxation and much peace! For those out there struggling today especially my nephew-in-law, Jurek, with is painful tooth, hanging in there, my prayers are with you, may the struggles, the pain end soon! I would also like to send a shout out to my niece, Sarah who finished first yesterday in the Macklind Avenue Mile Race in St. Louis. Yes, she is my niece! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul