 |
||||||
Standing
by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary
the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his
mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother,
"Woman, behold your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold,
your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his
home.
|
||||||
"I’m staring out
into the
night, trying to hide the pain. I’m
going to the place where love and feeling
don’t ever cost a thing. And the pain
you feel’s a different kind of pain. Well,
I’m going home, back to the place where I belong, and where your
love has always been enough for me. I’m
not running from. No, I think you got me
all wrong. I don’t regret this life I
chose for me. But these places and these
faces are getting old, so I’m going home. Be careful what you
wish for; 'cause you just might get it all, and then some you don't
want."
|
||||||
|
There
is a saying "Man plans, God laughs." The plans we make for
life are often
nothing more than dreams
because something else seems to always happen that we never expected
and the plans
that we had must be rearranged. The human Jesus probably never expected
the end of his life the way it happened. He
could see that what he was doing, the preaching of the Kingdom, his
different Gospel of life, was taking him down a path which might take a
turn for the worse, but he probably never expected that
he would lose his earthly life this way, and that he would have to
give the people he cared about to
another. As
he was going
home, he wanted to give his mother a home as well.
Chris Daughtry's song "Home" sings about the same thing, more or less. The person in the song never expected what went on in his life, and therefore he had to adjust to the situation. The way that he adjusted was to return to his home, hoping to find life to be a bit better than it had been up until that point. We plan and God laughs--that is, we may plan, but other things happen--the sudden death, the accident, the unplanned hurt, the feeling of loss, the despair when we hoped for happiness, and so forth. The definition of life might involve nothing more than adjusting to what happens--what do we do at a time like that? Who do we turn to? How do we cope? It is interesting that the people at the foot of Jesus' cross came to Jesus even though they did not understand what was going on in their lives. For the Christian, perhaps, that is the answer. Turning to Jesus in prayer, listening to his direction in the Gospels, could be the constant that we must have in the ever-changing world in which we live. |
||||||
|
THOUGHT
What can we do to prepare for the
unexpected?
PRAYER Good
and gracious God, there are many things that happen in our lives that
we did not plan, or did not want, or at least that we would have
done differently. Give us the grace to accept what you send us,
and the strength to follow through with what you want. Be with
us, we pray.
|
||||||
©2007
Capuchin Province of Mid-America
Fr. Mike Scully is a member of the Capuchin Province of Mid-America |