Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize
Mar
21
Written by:
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize
Pastor’s Column
5th Sunday of Lent
March 21, 2010
For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things,
and I consider them so much rubbish
that I may gain Christ and be found in him…..
depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection,
and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
if somehow I may attain the resurrection of the dead!
Philippians 3:8-14
When I was in Lisieux, France, I picked up a holy card of St Theresa of Lisieux from her convent. There is a phrase of hers on it that has stuck with me: she said, Let us keep our eyes fixed on heaven, the one true object of our labors.
In this frequently confusing and often difficult world we live in, Scripture clarifies very clearly what goal we are all actually working toward …. The resurrection of the dead! Our goal is heaven—moving into the home of Jesus Christ. This is the one object of our lives. To know what life is all about we have to keep our eyes on the goal!
Once we realize that there is life after death, everything immediately changes. Things in our lives begin to take on their proper perspective. Even the worst crises and sufferings that life may dish out to us are very temporary when seen in the light of the eternity that lies just ahead. Saint Paul went so far as to say that everything in his former way of life that did not lead to Christ he now considered as “rubbish!”
Lent is a time to take inventory of our lives. What areas of my life are leading me away from Christ? Am I on the right road, the one that leads to heaven? Most of us, for example, try to avoid suffering at all costs, but this is not how it was for St. Paul! He realized that a true follower of Christ will wish to imitate Christ’s suffering and death, so as to arrive at the resurrection of the dead. What does that mean?
Imitating Christ’s suffering and death means being willing to say you’re sorry to someone when you are wrong, or having the humility to go to confession and receive absolution from Christ. It can mean accepting a difficult trial or illness, just as Christ accepted his passion before the resurrection took place. Suffering, acts of humility, dying to ourselves: life offers us many opportunities like these both great and small. And our Lord wishes to work every single one of them to good in our lives, if like St. Paul, we keep the goal of heaven before our eyes while we go through these things.
Father Gary