Ordinary 30

The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2016 – Cycle C Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; Psalm 34; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

An important stage in life is when young people contemplate their future.  Their futures are filled with idealism, hope, and dreams.  What will I accomplish?  How will I make the world a better place?  The impossible is possible.   Regretfully some people, soured by their life’s experience, crush the aspirations of youth as if their disappointed experience of life should be the measure of other people’s lives.

There is also another comparison.  The difference between the youthful thrust of life forward and that of a mature person looking back on their life.  This contemplative look back occurs at important turning points in a person’s life.  Crisis understood as crossroads.  The letters to Timothy record such a point for Paul.  His days as a traveling preacher and a founder of Christian communities are over.  He sits in a Roman prison awaiting a very probable violent end to his life.  Unlike the exuberance of youthful wanderlust, Paul’s reflections encompass matters with a more settled cast as he muses about life and death, justice and injustice, betrayal and forgiveness, and ultimately good and evil.

Paul has few regrets.  His self-assessment is confident: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.”  Paul seems content.

As he faces an unjust death, he speaks of a just and merciful judge in God.  As Paul remembers with sadness and laments that he was deserted by his companions at trail, he speaks of forgiveness.  “May this not be held against them!”  As he recalls standing alone at trial, he confirms that he was not alone for God stood by his side with strength.

Justice and mercy, forgiveness – and friendship with a God he had come to know through his own experience of betrayal, forgiveness and mercy when so long ago, Paul, in his youthful enthusiasm persecuted Jews who chose to follow Jesus of Nazareth.

Where are you in your life?  Are you at a crossroads, a place of reflectively looking back?

Who is the God that you have come to know through your past experiences?  How did God respond to you?

What have you learned from the mistakes, the blind spots and sins of your youthful enthusiasm?