Turn the Lens of Life to Clarity

Whoever finds his life will lose it.
Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

One of the great gifts that we have as priests
is that we are invited to journey with people
in some of the most tender and vulnerable
moments of their life.

In particular, when people get sick,
and when they get terminally sick,
they invite us into that very vulnerable part of their life,
and they share the most powerful insights
and the most tender moments ever shared.

A lot of people will tell you
what they regret of those moments of their life,
but they also tell you what they have valued.
It is as if in that moment of illness,
the lens of life sharpens completely,
and they see what is important and what is not.

Interestingly enough,
in all the years I have heard people’s regrets,
the one thing I have never heard
is that they wish they had worked more.
Never. No one has ever said,
I wish I had spent more time at the office.
That is one regret that has never happened.

But what most people come to clarity on
is the importance of what is important in life,
or really “who” is important,
because they realize that all the happiness
they have had in life
did not come from the money that they had,
not from the house or the car or even the yacht,
or whatever it is that they have had.
It has come from relationships.

It has come from their spouse
and the love that they have shared,
their children and their children's children,
the gift of grandchildren in their life,
the gift of love shared.
But those who have the most extraordinary shine
in their face, if you would,
are the ones who have given their life away
to others beyond the family.
Yes, they have loved their family,
but they have poured themselves out for a wider group.

They have given themselves away.
And there is a smile,
a smile in their eyes,
a smile in their soul,
that they are content.
They have literally spent their lives
giving themselves away to others.

In those last moments,
they have nothing else left to give.
They are completely content.
They know they have done
what the Lord has asked them to do,
and they are happy to their soul's content.
That is what I call a good death.
My friends, that is exactly
what the Lord is saying to us today.

Now, this language is harsh.
You have to admit that what he says is hard.
If you love your mother or your father,
or your son or your daughter, more than me,
then you are not worthy of me.
That is hard to hear.

But understand what Jesus is saying.
He is not saying,
do not love your mother and father.
He is reframing and resetting
who you are called to love.
You are called to love the whole human family.
You see, He is resetting the expectation
that your family now
is not just your nuclear family.
It is the whole human family.

And this is the insight for the apostles.
He knows that they are going to suffer,
but He says, none of that will matter
if you are serving everyone.
If you love as I have loved,
you will have done well, and you will be content.
This is the lens of life sharpening,
and everything else falls off to the side.

We live in Silicon Valley,
which values the accumulation of titles
and power, money, shares and investment,
and who you are matters because of what you do,
in the sense of what company you work for.
We are driven by this insatiable appetite for more.
It is not just us.
It is the whole of American society.
It is so hard to fight against.

This era of artificial intelligence
is all about the data,
and you get more and more and more.
The Pope, in his recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas,
has tried to recenter this and says,
no, relationship is at the center
of who we are as human beings.
That is what makes us flourish.
It is not who we are, it is whose we are.
With whom do we love, and who loves us?
How do we spend our time giving our life away?

In fact, one of the most beautiful parts of that document
is the whole last section about the limitation of humanity,
that when we get sick, and when we start to die,
that is where we learn the greatest lessons, he tells us.
Technology does not do that for us.
That is something we do for one another in relationship.
When we start to give ourselves away in that way,
that is the fullness of humanity.

So how does that work out
in our own life?
We are called to love our children,
love our parents,
love our siblings,
and love our extended family.
Yes, we are called to that,
and we know that it matters a great deal.

So when we put down the technology,
it matters when we do that,
and we look across the table and we are present,
because that is the greatest gift we can give somebody.
It is not the money, not the things we give them,
it is our time and presence.
We sit there without devices, and we are present to them.

And I will tell you
that in the moments of somebody dying,
what they do not want is a lecture.
All they want is presence.
And that is the most powerful part.

Now, I am hoping that we do not need to get sick
and get to the point where we are dying
before we learn that lesson.
It is the reason we come to the table every Sunday,
to pull away all the stuff of life
and to focus on what is important,
to turn the lens of life to clarity,
so we can see what or who is important to us.

Now, the last part of this is super important.
He said, if you give a little cup of water
to one of the little ones,
that is the real power of your love.
And to that end, we need to care for those beyond our family.

For example, we should care
about all those children and men and women
in Venezuela buried in those piles of concrete,
as if they were our own children.
We should weep as if they are ours.
Why? Because that is what the Lord would have us do.
That we would weep for those children
and men and women who were killed in Iran by our bombs,
because they are children, they are our children too.
They are the children of the world.
We should weep as if they were ours.
That is what the Lord wants.

He wants us to understand
that the whole of the world
is the family of God.
I understand that is hard,
but how we bring that back home
is we have to find who around us is the little one.
Who is the one who needs
a little cup of water, metaphorically?
Who would matter a great deal if they got that today?
Would that be a phone call, a text, or an in-person visit?
Somebody who needs the love of God.

So today, let us not wait to the end
to get clarity.
We receive the clarity today,
and we look at what is important today,
and with whom can I share
my time and my presence,
because it is everything.
It is the whole family.
That is what the Lord wants.

Whoever finds their life will lose it.
Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.