Imagine that you are standing on one side of a large room
with your back against the wall. You
really want to get to the room because there is something at the opposite wall
that you desperately want, so you begin walking to the other side of the room.
At first it is easy, but soon you begin to notice that walking become harder
and harder with each step, until all at once you stop. You are frustrated
because you cannot take another step forward. Then, to add insult to injury,
you suddenly feel yourself pulled back to the wall where you started. In your
confusion you turn around and see something you hadn't noticed before: there is
a big elastic band that is connecting your back to the wall! How had you not
noticed it earlier? Now, as ridiculous
as this story sounds, we can easily experience much the same thing when we try
to follow Jesus.
Because of our over-attachment to something or someone,
we often fall short in following Christ. Sometimes our hearts are too full of
things other than God that we do not live up to our potential as Christians. In
today’s gospel, Jesus says that our hearts should be attached to Him alone. He
mentions that we need to detach from certain things, but His language is
confusing. We need to hate our family in order to be Jesus’ disciples? Really? Doesn't that go against the commandment to honor your father and mother? We
cannot follow Christ unless we give up all our possessions? What will we
wear? Where will we live? Clearly Jesus
is speaking in hyperbole; we should not take this literally. Jesus is trying to
strike home this important point: different things, even good things, can hold
us back from following Jesus. These things become like the elastic band in the
story I told earlier. In our life it is
like we are in that room, trying to get to the other side. We are trying to walk towards Christ and
heaven. When we follow Jesus we can feel
like this journey is easy at first, then it can get harder and harder until we
stop making progress altogether.
Sometimes we may even regress and be pulled backwards. Often it is as though we are tied to the wall
by a big elastic band. The elastic is
anything that takes the place of God in our heart or takes us away from
God. The thing might be good in itself
like our family, a friendship, work or a hobby. But when these things divert us
from God they become like an elastic band that holds us back from following
Jesus properly.
Today’s gospel teaches us that Jesus must always be the
priority in our life. Good things, like
family, work and hobbies have a very important place in our life, but Christ
must take the most important place in our life.
I once heard an analogy that explains this well. Actually the one I am about to tell I have
changed a little bit, so if you have heard the original and like it better, I
apologize in advance. Imagine that you
have in front of you a big, empty glass jar. Now imagine that you place one
large rock into the jar. The rock is so big that when it is placed in the jar the
top of the rock is level with the top of the jar. At first glance you may think
that the jar is full, but then you take a bag of pebbles and begin pouring them
into the jar. The pebbles fill in all
the spaces that separate the large rock from the sides of the jar. Again the
jar seems full. But Wait! Again you take
another bag, this one filled with sand, and begin pouring the contents into the
jar. The sand fills up all the spaces
between the pebbles. This time the jar
looks really full! But next you take a pitcher of water and pour it into the
jar. The water then fills all the gaps
between the grains of sand.
Our life is like this glass jar. Each of us fills our life with things of
different importance; this is represented by the rock, the pebbles, the sand
and the water. The large rock is Jesus
and He is meant to fill our life. What
this analogy teaches us is that even when Jesus fills our life there is still
room for everything else. There is room
for the very important things, represented by the pebbles: family, friendships,
work, and school. There is still room
for the things of lesser importance, represented by the sand, such as hobbies
and good recreation. There is also still room for things of the least
importance, represented by the water, such as playing games on our smart phones
and watching videos on Youtube about cats doing funny things. In fact, all these other things that fit in
our jar of life along with Jesus are transformed for the good, they become
“touched” by Christ, just as the pebbles, sand and water touch the large rock. There
is one final lesson the analogy teaches us and this is the central point of
today’s gospel. As long as we put the
big rock in the jar first, there is room for everything else. But, if we put in other things into the jar
first, then there is no room for the rock.
If we fill our lives first with things – whether they be of great or
little importance - there will be no room for Christ. When this happens, these things become like
that elastic band tied to our back. They prevent us from making much progress
in following Jesus. The message of Jesus
in today’s gospel is that He must always take first priority in our life.
Today
is a great opportunity to examine what takes priority in our life and makes
changes if necessary. At the start of
this new school year we have a great chance to ask ourselves the question: what
is filling the jar of my life? Is my life filled with water, with sand or with
pebbles? Is there room for Christ in my life? There are practical ways that we
can give Christ priority in our life. Something that I would like recommend,
something I myself find helpful, is a prayer called the “Morning
Offering”. I say this prayer first thing
each morning. When my alarm goes off I
literally roll out of bed, kneel down and pray this prayer:
Dear Jesus,
through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer you all my works, joys, sufferings
and prayers this day, for all the intentions of your Most Divine heart, in
union with all the Holy Masses being offered throughout the world, I offer you
my heart, make it meek and humble like yours.
The
exact words don’t really matter. The
important thing is that you start each day by putting Jesus first and offering
everything else you do to Him. It is a
chance each morning to first put Jesus in the jar of our life, all else can
then follow. Today we have a great
chance to evaluate and change if necessary what takes priority in our life.
I would encourage each one of us to make the Morning
Offering a habit in our life. In this
way we can try more and more to put Jesus at the center of our lives and cut
any of the bands that hold us back from walking along the path to follow Him.
