“He is going before you to Galilee. There he will meet you.”
C.S. Lewis once wrote,
“In life you cannot go back to the beginning
but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
Little wise sayings and parables like that
require of us to ponder them more deeply.
Of course that is what the very mystery of the Easter is all about.
We have been on a journey for the last 40 days,
which we call Lent and in this time of Lent, we recalled
that we have not gone back to the beginning
but we tried to acknowledge and recall where we really are;
where are we really in our life and then to seek a conversion,
a change of mind, a change of heart;
what we call in the Church “metanoia.”
So that we can change the ending.
That is what the whole journey of Lent is about.
It is a time of reflection;
a time of insight;
a time of personal evaluation of one’s own life.
And we do it every year
because we are called to do this journey every single year.
This journey comes to a pinnacle at the Easter Vigil,
which we celebrated last night and blessed the Easter candle,
and in doing that we acknowledge that this is a holy time.
And in blessing the candle, I traced on the candle the symbols recalling
that Christ is the beginning and the end.
The Alpha and the Omega.
And as we write the numbers 2021,
which are on the bottom here, and we trace the cross,
we say that all time belongs to Christ.
All time belongs to Christ.
Last night’s prayer vigil was kind of a
microcosm of our journey as a people of faith.
We listened to different readings, reflecting how the Jewish people
and then the Christian people had listened to God;
or sometimes did not listen to God on this journey of faith.
We acknowledged that this is Christ’s time.
Christ is risen from the dead.
He is alive and among us.
And so what does Jesus tell his disciples,
the women disciples, who were the first ones to visit him at the tomb?
He tells them to go back to Galilee.
Now what you have to understand about Galilee
is that it is not such much a place as it is a time.
A time where they first, they first met Jesus.
A time where they first fell in love with Jesus.
A time where they first followed Jesus.
This call to go back to Galilee is a call to go back to their first fervor
and to recapture the gift of faith and how precious the time is.
Remember the disciples would have been pretty devastated.
They thought he was the Messiah.
He died, and was crucified in a humiliating way,
naked on a cross and now he is raised from the dead.
He says all is not over.
This is our time, he tells them.
Go back to Galilee.
What are we to do with all of this?
This is a precious time.
This is a holy time for us.
Not just at Easter but in fact all of this time has been a holy time.
If we just look at time, who would have known a year ago
that we would have still been in a shelter-in-place mode.
This is the first time we have seen people at the 9:00 a.m. Mass inside.
This is the first time for this celebration in over a year.
Most of the rest of the world is still in a complete shutdown.
In Ireland, my home country, they still have not celebrated Mass inside
since before Christmas and they will not do so today.
And it is heartbreaking that right across the world the pandemic still ravages.
But yet in this time of pandemic, there has been a grace.
There have been many graces.
I have heard it over and over again
that I have spent so much time with my family.
They are not slaving at work like they used to;
and now they are working, yes, from home
but they see their family so much more and they like them.
That is the surprise. Right?
The surprise is they like their family.
They like their spouse and they like spending time with them.
And the kids have discovered that
you know, Mum and Dad aren’t so bad after all.
And the parents are saying, you know, they are not bad kids after all.
They are actually pretty good.
We kind of started to like one another.
It has been a time of grace.
To get the value of the time that we have, we must reflect.
We too must do what the disciples did and go back to our Galilee;
go back to the time when we first fell in love with Christ;
or fell in love with the person who Christ put in our life:
Our spouse that might be very well with you today or at home;
or it might be your children;
your parents who are in your life.
And evaluate the preciousness of our time.
We never know, we never know when our time will be over.
Nor does it necessarily really matter.
What matters more is how we use the time we have been given.
So often, we chase the time and we wonder
if we will have enough time for this or for that.
We would choose to spend time brooding on things that have bothered us;
we waste time in getting upset over things,
which we have no control over.
And yet, we claim we do not have the time
to do those precious things.
My hope today is that today as we celebrate this Eucharist
and come around this time,
to recognize the sacredness and the grace
and the preciousness of this time that God has given us
no matter how long it is;
and to recognize that it is a gift;
that time is our friend;
and that we are called to seize it;
and use it;
and to choose it.
There is a beautiful song written by Liam Lawton called “Where is There a Time and Place” and I would like to quote those last few words of his refrain, which are just a reminder of the preciousness of time and it goes like this:
“I wonder if I will ever have the time
Cause time will wait for no one in the end,
time goes on without you
on that you can depend.
And though you may be wondering
Where it ends.
You can save it
You can lose it
You can chase it
You can choose it
You can be its victim or it’s friend
Time is precious.
May we make sure that we let our family members
and those whom we love know and
let Christ know how much we relish the preciousness of time;
and we thank God for it.
And let our loved ones know how precious
they are in this moment of time.
Let’s listen to this beautiful song.
