Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C

Reflecting on Luke 13: 22-30

We had our fiftieth high school class reunion last weekend. We had such a great class, and we’ve all stayed close. We even have a prayer chain to support the needs of all our classmates.

I’m sad, though, when I think of the wistfulness with which people I encountered in the days before the reunion said, “Oh, that sounds so neat.” I could hear the regret they carried for not keeping in touch, not having a community of old friends. I could tell that they long for the things they left behind.

In some ways, we have to leave things. We move. We have careers and families. We are taken up with the immediate demands of our lives. Over time, the old friends fade. We put those long-ago days in their proper perspective. We move on. And then one day, decades later, some silly woman is showing you her nails, decked out in her school colors, that she had done for her high school class reunion that weekend. And you sigh and say, “Oh, that sounds so neat.”

I think of that wistfulness when I read about the Master of the house coldly telling those who knock desperately on his door, “I don’t know where you’re from.” Our churches cry out for the millions who have left us, their absence an ache at every Mass. Their reasons are legion, the sexual abuse scandals probably topping the long list.

But in a world that offers fake internet friends, a glance at any parish bulletin shows the many enriching offerings of education, prayer and community that welcome anyone who is hungry, or wistful, for the things he or she may have left behind.

What part of the spiritual life are you longing to return to, or create yourself?

_{Kathy McGovern ©2019}                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Ordinary Time - Cycle C