Posted by Moments by Fr Jerry Orbos SVD (March 2015)
Fill in the blanks:
__________ is greater than God.
__________ is more evil than the devil.
If you eat __________, you will die.
Answer? Nothing.
Nothing and no one is greater than God. When we take ourselves and our “achievements” too seriously, we are playing God. When we take our problems too seriously, and worry about so many things and about other people in our life, we are also playing God. Please remember that God is greater than all our achievements, problems, sins and failures.
The Holy Week is a good time for us to literally fill in the blanks in our lives. The first step is to accept the emptiness within us which only God can fill. Let us take time to invite Him to fill us with His Holy Spirit so we can see the vanity, the emptiness, the frailty of the lives we are living, without Him. It is time to move beyond being “selfie,” or “groupie,” and be “Godie.”
Let this Holy Week remind us of our mortality. We all will go, sooner or later. What legacy will we leave behind? What do we tell God when He asks us what we have done or have not done? Let us fill in the blanks now so that we will not fail in the final exam.
Speaking of blanks, let us make sure that we are not using blank bullets and firing on blank targets as we go through life. What a big letdown it will be if we realize in the end that we spent all our energy, ammunition and provisions on useless, selfish, fleeting pursuits and endeavors.
Let the Holy Week remind us of the reality of the Cross in our lives. There is no perfect happiness, and there are no perfect relationships in this world. There will always be problems, irritants, conflicts and even crises as we go on. There will always be, so to speak, blanks in our lives. No matter how hard we try, there will never be a full, straight line as we journey on. That only happens when we are gone, and the journey is done.
Let the Holy Week remind us, too, that death and the Cross lead to the resurrection. There is hope, there is meaning, there is purpose in everything that is happening in our lives. Let us be confident that there is a final destination, a final resolution, a final conclusion. It is precisely the belief in the resurrection that empowers us to keep hoping, keep believing, and keep loving, no matter what, in the here and now.
