“The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale
We are quickly coming to the “beginning of the end” in terms of our school year. We have already celebrated a few “lasts”: the Athletic Awards Banquet, the Honors/Awards Banquet to name a couple. Each day that we move to the last day of the school year, our students, especially our eighth graders, are saying to themselves, “This will be the last time that I do this.”
There is nothing inherently wrong with that as long as it does not trap us in a feeling of moroseness. If we begin to think that we are living the last of things, we will forget that to which we have been pointed from our conception: the future. Life is not about endings but about beginnings.
Even as our grade school, high school, and college parishioners look toward their last days of school, they also realize that there is something else that awaits them. For our eighth graders, it is high school. For our high schoolers, it is college or trade school. For our collegians, it might be graduate school. Sooner or later, it will also be employment.
We must look ahead. The looking ahead fills us with great excitement and motivates us to work for the future. The future is definitely bigger than us yet, if we lose ourselves in that something bigger, we will always be willing to take a new direction, to search for a different path, or to remind others that our present reality does not have to be our permanent reality.
As we continue our Easter season, we are mindful of the fact that Jesus helped us to break away from the present reality of sin and death. By His death and resurrection, Jesus effectively destroyed death and restored life. There is nothing that holds us back from grasping onto the hope and promise given to us by the Lord.
On this Memorial Day weekend, we remember our fallen heroes. Some might say that their deaths were tragic and in vain. Yet, those heroes went to wars looking ahead. They were not afraid to lose themselves in something bigger than themselves. The promise of freedom, to them, was worth even the price of their deaths. In leaving their lives on the battlefields of the past, they gave all of us a chance for a greater future. Let us remember them with love and give special honor to their memory.
FAITH ACTION: As God for the courage to follow Him completely, not fearing any sacrifices you may need to make in the future.