Paying Attention

In both of today’s reading, Ecclesiastes 11: 9-12 and the Gospel Luke 9: 43b-45, we are faced with realities that are difficult to embrace: that youth will give way to old age or that difficult times are on the horizon, as was the case with Jesus.  The time will come, Ecclesiastes says to the young, and to all of us, that the time will come when “the sun will be darkened, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, while the clouds return after the rain.”  Time also will arrive when “strong men [and women] are bent, and the grinders are idle because they are few, and they who look through the windows grow blind.”   Yes, Ecclesiastes reminds us, “the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it.” In the Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples—that is us: “Pay attention…The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”

It is very difficult to face the kind of realities to which both the OT and the NT prophets ask us to pay attention.  In the Gospel, the disciples do not understand what Jesus is talking about and, out of fear of hearing Jesus repeat the message, I suspect, they do not ask him any questions. Is that not how we, too, sometimes act in the face of impending disaster or challenging difficulties. I have heard myself say “I don’t want to know,” when someone is trying to open my eyes to troubling issues.  I may even be as blunt and arrogant as to proclaim “It is not true,” when I know it is.

Help us, Jesus, listen to the messages you send us in the Scriptures, in homilies, in nature itself, from friends and family members and, yes, even from persons we perceive as enemies or persons of whom we think little (and forgive us for those kinds of attitudes).