Yesterday was Father’s Day. An unforgettable experience this year. Far from anything I could have expected.
It all started when a friend asked me to accompany him to hospital to visit an elderly lady who was being treated for a tumor. I could hardy refuse such a request notwithstanding that I was asked to forfeit part of Father’s Day for this visit. At any rate, I reckoned that, at most, it would be a half-hour quickie visit.
As the time approached for me to leave home, I grew increasingly uneasy about this business. The fact that I was watching an exciting World Cup game didn’t help much. My hopelessly lazy character did the rest to make the getting up and going rather heavy.
I did not take off with a light heart, but somehow that Sunday’s Gospel kept flashing in my mind.. “...unless you deny yourselves.......” Well, this was certainly as good an opportunity as any to act on this word.
On the way to hospital I discussed the case of this eighty-five year-old with my friend. He had asked me to go on this visit because he thought that my past experience bore many similarities with the feelings that this lady was going through. He told me that she wasn’t a practising Christian and in fact was very sceptical about religion. On his last visit this lady had shocked him by reflecting that there was surely a meaning behind the word God being spelt backward to read dog...!
Now this comment really turned something on inside of me. It took my mind way back to my late teens when I had disowned God, the Church and all religious belief. During those long thirteen years that I spent being angry with God, and refusing to believe in Him, this same thought expressed by this old lady had frequently crossed my mind.
Why, I wondered, should any one toy with such a thought about God? This set me wondering. I didn’t need a lot of reflection to realise that calling God backwards to say dog meant, in actual fact, calling God “cruel”, “beast”, that’s what you would call someone who was cruel, vicious...
But why would you want to call God so.... unless, of course, you wanted to vent your anger against Him who you held responsible for the mess that He had made of your life.
This was precisely what this lady confirmed when she recounted her miss-adventures when she was still young. And, like me, she had been blaming God all along for whatever had befallen her. She, obviously still felt angry and resentful.
However, it was not so easy for me to arrive at the point of sharing this belief with her. In fact, things didn’t turn out quite as I had imagined. The half-hour quickie visit stretched for the full length of three hours following a surprise offer from my friend to accompany the old lady to her flat to fetch some clothes. I grudgingly acceded to this request.... “Why, of course I wouldn’t mind...why not?”. In my heart of hearts, however, I resented the offer he made on my behalf as I longingly thought of the comfort of my sitting room and the waiting telly and football match on this special day.... MY special day at that..!!!
At any rate we took off for our destination, very taciturn I must say, I am always like that when I am resentful. But more was in store for me. Once we had helped her into her flat, we spent endless hours sifting through old documents in order to try and recover some sort of evidence that this lady had deposited some money with a local bank. I was really getting worked up by now. This was all I needed. On my day off from the bank and here I was getting mixed up in money matters. God, will there be an end to all this?
I found an excuse to leave the flat and wait outside next to the car. I started reflecting that such an opportunity to “die to myself” was flushed down the drain. There’s certainly no merit to be had from grumbling all the way and doing things against your will! Anyway, here I was enjoying the warm sunshine and watching some very pretty girls go by. Why, I thought to myself, be truthful with yourself, wouldn’t you rather you were “helping” one of those twenty-year-olds rather than that old lady? Well, would you be grumbling so much if that had been the case?
I continued reflecting seriously, at this thought.
What is the truth that dwells deep within my heart? What are my priorities in life? Here I was, wishing that I had stayed at home in comfort enjoying a football game on TV with my wife. Here I was eyeing the girls passing by with more than a little bit of adultery in my heart. And I was all along turning my back, even though not physically, on that old lady. Of course, what satisfaction could I get from an eighty-five year old? Besides the nuisance and trouble, of course?
My dear friend, where are you heading to? What is it that you most treasure? To what things is your heart attached? It was devastating to reflect on my plight. Reality is so hash. Yes, that was the real me. My heart was still as enslaved as ever to worldly things. I was still tied down to this earth.
What was worse, Jesus was all this time present and beckoning to me out of that frail old person. Not able to offer me anything, vulnerable, weak... and all the time I was turning my back on... Him...
I returned home with a heavy heart. Even though this realisation hit me like a ton of bricks, still I knew that I did not have the strength within me to be able to alter this attitude. That, if my friend were to ask me to repeat this experience all over again, I would most probably refuse.
At this point I start to realise what being a Christian really entails. What my present situation actually is... far from being saintly, I was utterly wretched. And yet... there was God’s love for me, the sinner. God’s love for the sinner as shown through Jesus, when He was being nailed to the cross, betrayed, disowned... and yet He still loved humanity in all it’s weakness, sinfulness.
That is how Jesus loves me. That is how I am saved, not through any merit of mine, but through His unconditional love for me.
This, therefore, I must say: Jesus is my only hope, my only strength and the only way to arrive home to our Heavenly Father.
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