This week we come to the end of the Church’s calendar year. As we get ready to begin again a step by step journey recalling how the world of ages past prepared itself for the birth of Christ, his life, death, and resurrection, now is a good opportunity to take a step back to discern if we have grown, matured in our lives as Christians, are my relationships better because of my faith in Christ? Is my world, my friendships, my family, community or even nation a better place because I am a Christian?
If we don’t stop and honestly evaluate whether we have been resistant or able to cooperate with the flow of God’s grace in our lives, then we risk, as we get ready to begin a new year of grace, circling the same block again and again until we either run out of gas, or we get bored to death seeing the same signs and hearing the same messages again and again and again.
We hear in the Scriptures, especially today in the prayers and readings of this Mass, about an ‘everlasting kingdom’. An everlasting kingdom? You mean the same forever? No updates, no progress?
An everlasting kingdom and way of life is not the language of a politician, an activist, a consumer or a citizen of this world. They constantly preach, tweet or campaign on change: change this, change that, change the law, change taxes, change the system, change the government, change the climate. But an ‘everlasting kingdom’?
How do I integrate something that is, by its nature forever stable and enduring and yet at the same time to live in a constantly changing world? Over these past few years, in particular, I’ve tried to wrestle with this. Again and again, I’ve brought to God in prayer, meditated on this theme, “An Everlasting Kingdom in an ever-changing world”.
(So, not this Tuesday, but the following Tuesday evening, December 11th over in the hall as part of our monthly Family Faith Evening, I would like to share with you, some reflections, some ideas and maybe a plan to help all of us, and our church community, especially leading up to the hectic time we all experience getting ready for Christmas and the holidays - a better way of managing our time, maybe even to slow time down a bit, and hopefully, with God’s grace, able to capture, unlock and hold onto something that is indeed, everlasting.)
For if we enter into the direction of a circle, it's easy to get caught in a repeating loop, like a dog chasing its tail or a goldfish in a bowl going round and round while thinking its swimming in a straight line. For if we don’t break free of this slavery, then I fear, we risk getting stuck on cruise control or autopilot, getting so used to circling the block that we don’t realize we might be on a downward spiral, bumper to bumper until we come to a dead stop.
In this Holy Eucharist, towards the end of the year, let us pray for the hope for a new direction in our lives that will lead us, with God’s grace, not to a longing of change in our lives so much as to a fulfillment of our heart’s desire for the security of a love that does not change and is truly everlasting, through Christ our Lord who live and reigns forever and ever and ever and ever and... "Amen"