Thursday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel is always very striking to me. It brings to mind a very vivid image of Jesus watching our lives, as if they were a movie. But for this movie, Jesus already knows the ending. He knows there will be a time of destruction, pain and devastation coming for us, yet he can do nothing to change the ending. This realization and truth moves him to tears.
Thankfully though, our lives are not a pre-scripted movie but instead we are in the middle of real life – constantly moving, changing and growing. We can change the ending. We can wake up out of our stupor and realize that Christ is with us here and now, and that Christ wants us to believe and to act now. We can realize the time of our visitation and we can do something about it.
I work with high school students daily. As their counselor, I share in a lot of their high highs and their low lows. I watch them experience life and grow and change. I watch them succeed and fail, have great joy and great sorrow. There are times where I think I can see the ending of the current drama they are in – times where I want to step in and pause their lives and stop them from experiencing the next failure, but I know that this is not how they will grow or learn. I often have to do my part, offer my help, make my support known and then allow them to act from there. I can offer a hand to help them, but I cannot force them to hold on, to reach out and grab it.
I think God often works in a similar way with us. He sends us His son. He offers us help and hope, but he knows that he has to wait for us to act. We need to take the first step and get to know Jesus – read scripture, pray, spend time in adoration. We need to be the ones to grab on to the hand that God extends to us. We need to be the ones to make the change – go to reconciliation, participate in the sacraments, go to mass. When we pray and embrace God and reach out for his hand, we may not change the ending – there may still be hardship, destruction, pain – but we do change our attitude towards it, our perspective on it and our approach to it. We change our movie from a tragedy to a story of hope,
In a way we do change the ending, from the destruction of our earthly lives to our life as saints in heaven. Watching someone journey to sainthood – that’s a movie I want to see!
- Amanda Grimm