3rd Sunday of Easter
READING 1:
Acts 2:14, 22-33 Psalm 16 READING 2: 1 Peter 1:17-21 GOSPEL: Luke 24:13-35
There was a cute TV commercial a few years back that featured a small boy proudly buying his own baseball glove. After several shots of the boy dropping balls and missing catches, he was shown returning the glove to the store and telling the salesperson, “It doesn’t work.” The television commercial featuring the boy and his glove highlighted the denial of personal responsibility so prevalent in our age. (“It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t catch the ball; it was the glove.”) I thought of this week when I heard that former Gator side armed pitching closer Darren O’Day who graduated two years ago was called up from the Minor league to play in the Majors for the Angels. The road wasn’t smooth and easy for him, but he worked with the talent God gave him and now look, his dreams have come true. Good things happen to those who receive God’s gifts and live responsibly making the most of them. We all have been given wonderful gifts by our Creator. Every one of us has the talent we need to be happy but there is something that holds us back. Do you know the one thing that holds us back from happiness in your marriages, your careers, your families, your days? It’s negative thoughts. We all have them. If you only knew the negative thoughts and feelings I go through in one day! I might have a negative thought about my family, the Church, you!, my work, oh it goes on and on. Negative thoughts take us off course and lead us to lives like the barren fig trees. And all we have to do about them is regulate ourselves. All we have to do is recognize the negative thought for what it is. Afterall, the negative thought is not about the other person or event, although we may have allowed them to stimulate the negativity. We could train ourselves to recognize them for what they are and realize they don’t define who we are. It is just a thought, it is just a feeling; I don’t have to entertain that and I can let it go. As the late Yogi Berra said (and we put this on the front of our bulletin): “If we don’t know where we are going, we may end up somewhere else.” The disciples on the road to Emmaus were bogged down in their own negativity. They thought Jesus was going to do all the work for them. They were along for the ride. But he loved them enough to turn them around and put them in the right direction. And he loves us in the same way. The boy in the commercial was cute, but he was, Afterall, just a boy. My friends, it is not about the glove. It’s up to us to make our lives happy and meaningful. We have gifts, we have talents, we have Jesus walking with us, and we know our destination. We want to go in the right direction. With God given grace we can do it, when we head in the right direction, we can expect good news! Fr. Jeff McGowan |
