Dear Friends,
Time moves quickly now as the school year comes to an end and summer begins. So much was accomplished over the last few weeks – another successful Spaghetti Dinner (thanks to all who helped); a prayerful and inspired Holy Week (thanks to all who helped); an energetic celebration of Easter (thanks to all who helped); First Communion for our young members (thanks to all who helped); the All Saints School musical Lion King (thanks to all who helped) – that we really need summer.
I am glad that summer has come. I am tired, students are tired, teachers are tired and “the end of a thing is better than the beginning,” as King Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, which must be especially true of a school year. Summer has a way of inducing forgetfulness and thoughtlessness among students, teachers and parents alike. Time is a significant commodity during the school year with so many sports, classes, papers and extracurricular activities vying for our time, but in the summer, time seems to be cheap.
For this reason, St. Paul exhorts the Ephesians to “redeem their time” from insignificance. Be wise and prudent with your time. Even in summer, we need to make our time holy. The person who has not redeemed his day often stays up late, searching for something that will satisfy, because the day has been frittered away in meaningless activities. A person who is satisfied with how the time was used does not grasp for hours after dark. He/she is content.
On one of my old Harry Chapin albums, he talks about what his grandfather said: “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired. Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles, you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams. And when it’s all over, there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn; you don’t settle easy.” He went on to say: “It’s that good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you don’t even have to tell yourself because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy.”
You may be thinking right now, what are we going to do this summer? Over the summer, you are entitled to rest. You have earned it. You are entitled to all the joy, pleasure, satisfaction, golden laughter and deliciousness that attends rest. Go to the movies. Go to the pool. Read a good book.
Allow me to caution you, however, to make sure the time is good. Here is a thought from what a wise man once told me, “if you can praise God when you’re finished doing something, go ahead and do it.” If you can go to a movie with your friends then grab dinner and chat about work, money, church, children, parents, college, and it doesn’t seem absurd to praise God before parting ways for the night, then well done. That’s rest. That’s community. Whenever two or three are gathered in the name of Christ, Christ is there, too.
However, if you’re in the middle of a movie, a concert, a trip to the pool, a ball game, the beach, the library and you look at your friends and realize there’s no way you can honestly thank God for what you’re doing, quit doing it. If it seems ridiculous to praise God after playing video games or surfing the internet for hours, you’re right. It is.
“Be very careful how you live,” St. Paul says. If you do not live your life as though it is a gift from God, then it will become a curse. This summer, live your lives in such a way that you can thank God for your lives. If you do, others will thank God for your life.
Peace,
Fr. Damian