Browsing Pastor's Notes

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

33 Days to Eucharistic Glory

The Day 20 reflection focused upon Rearranging Priorities. The book reflection had me thinking of how difficult it can be to rearrange our priorities and of the various challenges that come with sticking with a change – something we are all too aware of when it comes to “New Year’s Resolutions.”

Rearranging priorities is hard for many reasons. I once heard that during the Vietnam War very high percentages of our soldiers used drugs during their deployment. The situations were beyond stressful, and many turned to drugs to cope. I don’t say this to besmirch their tremendous service or sacrifices in anyway. When I was told this, it was followed by an amazing fact. Most of those same soldiers quit & completely stopped their drug use upon return home. The context & stress being removed and returning home to a home environment where it was neither accepted nor necessary, they just stopped. This is in stark contrast to the numbers of people who begin drug use here in their home setting. Even when they go off for the much needed treatment & detox, many of them relapse into drug use when they return to their home environment. Again, I in no way want to besmirch those who have gotten ‘clean’ and do the amazingly difficult work of staying that way. Nor am I in judgment over those who relapse. Addiction is by its nature a power over one, until one submits to the Highest Power and realized they can’t do it on their own. But what I want to bring into focus is the challenge of our cultural and common environment when one is trying to rearrange one’s priorities. Even when we have a profound experience or develop a particular good habit in one setting, it can be very difficult to maintain it in another, especially back in the ‘home’ environment where the unhealthy habit originated. It is all too easy to relapse and return to past practices and priorities.

Many people I know have had ‘Mountain Top’ experiences while on a retreat of some sort (I was on retreat last week with the Passionist Sisters!). We get away from our everyday environment and really encounter Jesus Christ in the Scriptures and Sacraments – especially the Eucharist. In the moment (& the retreat setting), we can’t imagine ever leaving Jesus again. He has changed our life, our perspective, our very being! And then… then we return back to our homes, our old routines, our prior friends and family. They have not had such an experience, and the inertial pull is to fall back into old ways of thinking, relating, praying (or not), and being. This does not mean one did not have an authentic experience of Jesus on retreat; rather, it just means that living that experience in a different or ordinary setting can be immensely challenging. It is very much one thing to want to rearrange one’s priorities, even to decide to rearrange one’s priorities, and then actually to do so… and stay with it.

As Matthew Kelly pointed out in the Day 20 reflection, “Many people lose friends as they grow spiritually.” At its heart, this is because to really rearrange priorities, implies a change to one’s environment and culture. And that often means our past friendships, especially those who do not support your life with Christ. Either we influence the other to change and grow with us, or they influence us to abandon our new found priority. Rarely is it possible to have a truly neutral relationship with little or no influence either way.

Hopefully, you are growing spiritually with Christ. Hopefully, you are positively influencing those in your life to do the same. Hopefully, they are supportive of that growth in your life. Hopefully, your Holy Family family is instrumental in promoting positive rearrangement of priorities. Yet, it is good and right to acknowledge when such support is not present, and to honestly address it, lest your growth be stymied and stalls. It was precisely to provide His Holy Presence in our life so we could stay close to the Lord and always walking in His Ways, that He gifts us with Himself in the Eucharist. He is the Friend we need, want, desire, and long for. He is the One to whom we must stay close. And if we are not, it’s time to rearrange our priorities and all that goes with it, until He is. May this time of preparing for a Eucharistic Consecration, help us to grow, even as we must prune some false priorities, for that growth to thrive.

 

Nothing Less than saints for the Holy Family of God.

Holy Family, Prioritizing Jesus Christ, Pray for us.

 

~ Fr Jeremy M. Gries

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