IT'S ALL WORTH IT IN THE END

A SERMON FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Did you ever wonder sometimes if it’s all really worth it?  We trudge our way through life, our dull routines rarely ever change.  In fact, when the daily routine does change, it’s usually not because something good has happened to interrupt it.  Sure, now and again, something nice and unexpected pops up to give us a moment or two of happiness.  But more often, it’s not so nice.  It might not be really serious, just bad enough to make life just that little bit more unpleasant.  You might have a nasty bout of allergies, or maybe your car breaks down on your way home from work.  These things are sent to try us, certainly, and very often we react to such inconveniences and annoyances with unnecessary anger or depression.  It’s important, though, to put these things in perspective, because, let’s face it, there are far worse things lurking round every corner of our life, which, if they were to take place, would be far, far worse than a stuffy sinus or a broken carburetor.

But today’s lesson is not to remind ourselves how bad life can be.  On the contrary, it’s a reminder that, no matter how bad, no matter how seemingly intolerable life may become, it’s all worth it in the end.  It’s a reminder, in other words, about the importance of maintaining the virtue of hope.

We place our hope in God.  We trust in him, that if we get through this vale of tears in one piece, that is, if we die in the state of grace, God will judge us worthy of entering his kingdom and being happy forever.  If we don’t have hope, then the ensuing vacuum in our psyche will be that tool of Satan known as despair.  Despair is when we lose all hope, when things seem so bad to us that we surrender to the thought that life just isn’t worth living any longer.  When it gets to that point, we find ourselves in a state of depression, we lose our interest in life, we don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning.  Our thinking becomes clouded and we often turn to chemical means, drugs and alcohol, just to get us through the day.  Or we try to distract ourselves by resorting to a life of meaningless pleasure and material possessions.  We see this all the time in the lives of “celebrities”, Hollywood actors, the rich and famous, who more and more these days seem to be filled with nothing but anger, hatred, upside-down thinking about morality and the common sense truths of this world.  They’re actually a very depressed bunch of lost souls, desperately trying to make sense of a life in which they have failed to seek God.  Sometimes, this kind of depressed state even leads to the ultimate act of despair which is suicide.  If life isn’t worth living any more, then why bother allowing it to continue? Let’s put an end to our suffering, they fondly imagine, sadly oblivious or indifferent to their eternity, or the judgment from God they should expect when they arrive there.

This is the opposite of the virtue of hope.  I mention it first because it’s easier to understand what hope is when you first see what the lack of hope is.  Despair, depression, unhappiness—these are utterly opposed to the idea of a loving God; to a God, who created us so that we can be happy with him forever in heaven; to a God who loves us so much he was prepared to become man and die for us.  This God does not want us to despair.   He has given us everything to hope for—not only the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but unlike the sadistic Irish leprechaun, he’s also given us the actual means of finding the end of the rainbow.  Or to use a different metaphor, he may have placed us in a tunnel, yes, but God IS the light at the end of the tunnel.  That tunnel, our path through life, is sometimes darker, sometimes a little brighter, depending on what’s going on in our life at the time.  We have our joys as well as our sorrows, after all, and that’s all part of God’s mercy as he allows us to suffer only to the extent he knows us to be capable.  But the light at the end of the tunnel is so very bright that it is only with the eyes of the beatific vision that we may safely behold it.  Meanwhile, we trudge along our way, bearing our crosses on our shoulders. Sometimes, they seem too heavy to carry, but, even then, we must not despair, rather “keeping our eyes on the prize,” on the end of the tunnel which gets nearer and nearer as we walk on through life. Instead of giving in to our cross, we must pray to him who showed us how to carry it, asking him either to make the burden lighter, or make us stronger so that we canbear it.

In today’s Gospel, we find St. Peter returning from a night of fishing.  He was a fisherman by trade, and the catch he brought in represented his livelihood, his means of putting food on the table and paying for life’s necessities.  On this particular morning, he was downcast. All night he had toiled and caught nothing.  Our Lord simply tells him, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets.”  St. Peter’s answer to this was not so much an objection as an expression of frustration, perhaps even the onset of depression: “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.”  But St. Peter was a man of fortitude, and without further argument, he continued, “nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.”  He put his hope, his trust, firmly, completely, and without question, in this man before him, as we must put our own trust in that man who is God.  As we see, the results of his perseverance were astounding—so many fish that their nets broke.

Hope in God is the difference between a life worth living and one that has lost all meaning.  I sometimes try to imagine why an atheist bothers to get out of bed in the morning.  Why should he?  What’s the point?  But for us, every new morning is an opportunity, the beginning of a new day in which we are called to love God in everything we do.  As St. Therese, the Little Flower, teaches us, every single act we perform during the course of the day can be an act of love for God, if only we perform it with the right disposition.  Hope gives us the incentive to have that disposition.  Hope keeps us centered on the very meaning of life, which must be to love God in everything we do.  This love is the reason we were given life by God, and it’s the true end of our hope. We do not hope for heaven because it sounds quite a lot nicer than hell.  We’re not picking where we’re going on vacation here—"let’s go to Hawaii, it sounds better than Detroit”.  It isn’t, or at least it shouldn’t be, a question of hoping to go to heaven because it would be better for us.  We hope for heaven because thereis the object of our love, thereis the One with whom we wish to spend our eternity.  We hope for heaven because we hope for God.  

This hope fulfills the words of today’s Epistle, which reminds us that God has subjected us to the virtue of “hope” because it delivers us “from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”  This is our life today then, and when we see it in this light, it’s really not so bad as we thought, is it?  With all its trials and misfortunes, we have been delivered from all that to become the children of God.  Our life is transformed into a wonderful world filled with expectation and hope for what will be ours if we live it as we should.  So this morning, let’s “launch out into the deep” once more.  Let’s cast down our nets, reaching for our crosses. Let these crosses be our “burdens”, because they are the gifts of God and give us hope for a brighter future in the next life.  Let’s carry these “burdens” of God with joy, because it is his will that we should: “Come unto me,” he says, “all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Our crosses may seem very heavy, so heavy in fact, that our nets break.  But with our hope in God pushing us along, we WILL get to the shore of heaven and enjoy the rewards of our labor.