Perhaps you’ve had an experience similar to this: someone just the other day sent me a picture of me with a group of friends from way back in our college days (I can’t believe it’s been almost 15 years for me already—where has the time gone?!). I immediately started texting it to friends, where the obligatory comments commenced: “We were such babies!”; “I can’t believe how long ago that was!”; “Oh my gosh, I forgot he had a fro!” [Rest assured, that was not a comment made of me.]
I’ve always been a sucker for nostalgia. Sure, there’s a bad side to nostalgia, namely, coveting a past that will never return. But there’s a gift in it, too. It can be a moment to remember the providence of God. Things like that picture from my college days always make me take a step back and think of how grateful I am for how blessed my life has been; in ways I never could have predicted, God has written a story with my life…a story that has fulfilled me in ways I can’t possibly thank Him enough for. And I don’t say that to brag. I say it because it’s true, and that truth is and should be a testimony to me and to others of how GOOD our God is. The prayer of final commendation (which the priest prays at a person’s funeral Mass as we commend the person back to God) perhaps says it best: “We give you thanks [O God] for the blessings which you bestowed upon N. in this life: they are signs to us of your goodness and of our fellowship with the saints in Christ.” Would that we could all realize that in every moment, and not just at the moment of our parting from this world!
It reminds me of something else God put in my path the other day. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a former graduate of our wonderful grade school, Noelle (DeJaynes) Malkamaki, will be competing in the Paralympics in Paris this summer. It’s a big deal. [And she came back during Catholic Schools Week to speak to our kids about her life, inspirations, and track career…it was great!] But I saw a clip the other day of someone asking her what she would tell her younger self if she had a chance. Her reply was, I thought, a good one: “That things work out even better than you think they might. Just to keep dreaming big! Things are more possible than you think they possibly could be.”
It had a ring to it. “Things are more possible than you think they possibly could be.”
Call me cliché—or maybe it’s the ordination season (and seasonal allergies) that has me misty-eyed and reflective—but there’s a profound hope to which this season of Easter beckons us. And it’s a hope that’s founded in the evidence of what God has done and what God is continuing to do in our midst. When we take a moment to slow down our lives, reflect a little, and take in a sunset and a glass of bourbon/wine, we come to a slow but persistent realization that our God is truly, albeit mysteriously, at work. Somehow, through the winding course of events in our often overly-full daily lives, God is there, in and with and through all of it, directing a symphony that in the present moment we don’t have ears trained well enough to hear. Right now, we hear cacophony, the striking of different and dissonant voices. Even now, as we look back over our lives, we can hear how the notes begin to harmonize and resonate together, and a bigger and more beautiful sound emerges. But someday, perhaps only in the future and with the hindsight of gratitude, we’ll come to understand how all of it plays—and has always played—together, and we’ll hear the true magnum opus of God: the masterpiece He’s always been making with our lives.
It’s the message I see written all over the Cross and empty tomb: that God’s plan is bigger than what we see right now. Our limited perspective might only reveal something scary or ugly or twisted (like Good Friday). But someday, the trumpets will herald what was the plan of God all along—a plan for our goodness and His glory, the joy of Easter morning.
When we take a chance to look back on life and see it all with gratitude, then we can realize that there’s no need today for worry, no matter how big or overwhelming today or tomorrow’s storm seems: God’s grace has provided for me yesterday and all the yesterdays before it, and His grace will provide for me again tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come.
One of the powerful things about gratitude is that, when we focus on the good things that are from the Lord’s hand by thanking Him for them, it equips us to know and be confident in His blessing which is ever-present to us. We realize that His blessing isn’t “for sometimes,” but really is always present. Looking back can help us to look forward with confidence, knowing that the blessing of the Lord will be in whatever future circumstance we meet there. And hey, we might just find that, in God, things are always “more possible than we thought they possibly could be!”
Keep spreading joy! Fr. Friedel