The eternal "now" of the love of Christ

This was the topic for Fr. David's homily today, and I thought it was worth some virtual ink. One of the easiest things in the world, as he mentioned, is to get caught up in the past, or to spend one's life "looking away to the future, to the horizon" (bonus points for identifying the movie quote -- it's a seriously easy one). When I think about it, it's really easy to see how true this is in my own life. How many times each day do I catch myself brooding about things that have already happened, wondering if maybe I shouldn't have said something or should have done something differently? How often do I relive old moments, fretting over that which I no longer have the least ability to change? And it's even easier to spend too much time looking forward in any of a number of ways. This is perhaps understandable -- the future is unknown to us, and so we come up with plans to make it seem less frightening, less overwhelming. So instead of accepting that we don't know, we design something of a fantasy life and try to convince ourselves that our vision reflects a future reality. But both of these things remove our focus from the present, from where we are now. (Side note - in his book The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis makes a very interesting argument regarding why concentrating on the future is an especially dangerous thing. I highly recommend it.)

But hold on a minute. This whole "living in the present" thing, isn't that what most people do nowadays? Isn't it the "Do what you want today because tomorrow may never come" mindset? Well, no. I think it's particularly important to make a distinction between "living in the present" vs. "living for the present." When we do the former, we are trying to allow the presence and love of Christ to affect us where we are. We recognize the day for the gift it is, and we open ourselves to the grace that God offers us. The latter is something entirely different. When we live for the present, we neglect God's grace entirely. This is the mentality so common today, the idea that it's perfectly acceptable to do whatever we feel like because today is the only thing that matters. In living for the day, the eternal is deemed to be of no consequence; indeed, the very concept of eternity is alien. It offers no recognition of past or future, which (it must be emphasized) is NOT true for one living in the present.

It's getting late and I'm becoming incoherent, but I want to take a moment to offer a quick summary of what I think it means to be living truly in the present. It means that, on some level, we have come to terms with the unalterable nature of the past and the uncertainty of the future, and that we are willing to commend the past to His mercy and the future to His grace and providence. It means that we open ourselves to His love now, that we seek Him where we are, and even when we can't seem to see Him, we still choose to open our hearts and obey His commands. It means acknowledging our own limitations and shortcomings, and placing ourselves in the hands of the One who has promised to be our shepherd. ...um, yeah, I can't do all that either. I'm not even close. What makes it so tough? Because as with so many things in life, the hardest part is letting go.

That sounds like a nice dramatic ending, and I don't have the energy to go into detail for the purposes of explanation just now, so we'll leave it there for the night.

Peace and God bless!