Letting go and moving on

Friday, November 11, 2016

From today’s Gospel (Friday of week 32 in Ordinary Time)

Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lost it, but whoever loses it will save it. (Luke 17:33)

As the Church Year hastens towards its last days, the Gospel passages at Mass are also focused on the last days and the coming of the kingdom. These passages are somewhat difficult to work with, and it is also difficult to find something in them that we can take away with us or use for our own personal reflection and meditation. But in all of them, the overriding message can be a warning for us as well. I would sum it up this way: The time is coming when things are going to very different than what we know now; focus on what will really matter at the end of time and give less of yourself to those things that are transient, temporary, merely interesting and ultimately short-lived

Consider Luke 17:33 in this light. As we make our way through life, we are continually in a process of letting go and moving on. The two are essentially linked: Where we refuse to let go, we cannot progress. What we hang on to blocks the on-going process of conversion and the finding of new life.

How might God be prompting us to move on these days? What might He be urging us to lose? It could be a grudge, or a hard-held opinion that we cling to although it isn’t necessarily true. It could be a temptation or a habit. It could be a weakness of character that it’s time to surrender into God’s hands. it could be so many, many things.

And when we do let go, when we surrender to the call to lose whatever it may be, we find that we become richer than we were when we were still clinging or holding on to what we are called to lose.

Lot and his family were called to lose their homeland and everything that was associated with it and to move on. Lot’s wife looked back; she wasn’t able to relinquish what she was called to surrender. She became immobilized.

Sometimes, we become immobilized as well. Jesus, in His great and unlimited mercy, warns us about this today. Something new is in store for you. What you know must come to an end. Are you ready to let go and move on?

God bless you!