There really are many lessons that can be drawn from today’s readings, but today I want to say a few words about the importance of journey and discovery in our lives.
What we have in our Gospel, is the story of men who set off on a journey. Like Abraham they didn’t know where they were going or exactly what they would find, but in the end, it was a journey that changed the direction of their lives - both literally and figuratively. Not only, to protect their new found King, did they literally “return home by another way,” but their encounter with that king forever changed their lives.
This is really a story about what happens to those search for and who encounter Christ. They are, from that moment on, forever changed. A line from a gospel song says it perfectly: “Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.”
It’s a sentiment expressed by Thomas Merton during Holy Week of 1949 when he made his first trip to Gethsemane, a Rapist monastery in Kentucky. During that visit he wrote in his journal: “I should tear out all the other pages of this book and all the other pages of everything else I ever wrote and begin here.” Merton had discovered, like so may other through history, that he needed to change the story of his life and take a different route. And he did. Several months later he joined the Trappists and in time, became one of the most widely read and influential voices in American Catholicism. Like the Magi, Thomas Merton had an encounter with God and it changed him.
You and I too are called, to encounter Jesus, to embrace the conversion that encounter will evoke, and, if necessary, to be willing to allow God to lead us, even to the cross, as he did Peter:
Today marks the end of the Christmas season, but before it becomes just a memory, todays feast encourages us to bring our gifts, our time, our talents, our treasure, to the Lord as the magi did, and to be open to whatever it is he might choose to do with them.
It may mean taking a totally new direction in our lives as it did for one of our parishioners, who after the pilgrimage retreat to El Salvador last year has chosen to leave government work to become a Maryknoll sister. Are we’re really willing to experience that kind of conversion? Are we willing to continue our pilgrimage through life by another route. “Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.”
What we have in our Gospel, is the story of men who set off on a journey. Like Abraham they didn’t know where they were going or exactly what they would find, but in the end, it was a journey that changed the direction of their lives - both literally and figuratively. Not only, to protect their new found King, did they literally “return home by another way,” but their encounter with that king forever changed their lives.
This is really a story about what happens to those search for and who encounter Christ. They are, from that moment on, forever changed. A line from a gospel song says it perfectly: “Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.”
It’s a sentiment expressed by Thomas Merton during Holy Week of 1949 when he made his first trip to Gethsemane, a Rapist monastery in Kentucky. During that visit he wrote in his journal: “I should tear out all the other pages of this book and all the other pages of everything else I ever wrote and begin here.” Merton had discovered, like so may other through history, that he needed to change the story of his life and take a different route. And he did. Several months later he joined the Trappists and in time, became one of the most widely read and influential voices in American Catholicism. Like the Magi, Thomas Merton had an encounter with God and it changed him.
You and I too are called, to encounter Jesus, to embrace the conversion that encounter will evoke, and, if necessary, to be willing to allow God to lead us, even to the cross, as he did Peter:
Today marks the end of the Christmas season, but before it becomes just a memory, todays feast encourages us to bring our gifts, our time, our talents, our treasure, to the Lord as the magi did, and to be open to whatever it is he might choose to do with them.
It may mean taking a totally new direction in our lives as it did for one of our parishioners, who after the pilgrimage retreat to El Salvador last year has chosen to leave government work to become a Maryknoll sister. Are we’re really willing to experience that kind of conversion? Are we willing to continue our pilgrimage through life by another route. “Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.”
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