Good morning, Everyone! It is lovely to be with you this morning as
we celebrate our Eucharist and as we invite the Lord more fully into
our lives, at the beginning of this new week. I have now spent an
entire week here in Christ the King Parish, and it has already been
a wonderful week. It has been lovely to meet so many of the people
and to experience a little bit what life is like around here. I was
mentioning to Father Brian Joyce last evening that, by this
afternoon, I will have baptized more babies in this last week than I
have in the last four years. And all during this week as well, people
have been asking me, “Where are you from in Ireland?” And I tell
them, “I am from Belfast in the northern part of Ireland.” And you
know, even back home, we don’t always have a very good reputation. A
few weeks ago, I was working in the south of Ireland on a parish
mission, and a lady said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said,
“Belfast.” And she began to laugh. I looked at her suspiciously and I
said, “Why are you laughing?” And she responded with a question. She
said, “How do you know that Jesus wasn’t born in Belfast?” I said,
“I don’t know.” And she said, “.... because he fell three times and
didn’t claim for his insurance!” That seems to be the reputation we
have.

It is good to be with you! Someone once said, very correctly I think,
that, as we get older, the past gets longer and the future gets
shorter. I suppose that any one of us, looking back on our own lives,
could see a pattern or chain of events in our lives, the things that
have happened to us to bring us to this point where we are now. Our
lives are composed of all kinds of incidents, events and happenings.
Some of those seem very insignificant at the time, but looking back
we can see how these things are the building blocks of our lives.
These are the things which have brought us to the point where we are
now. You know, you may look back and say, “Well, if I hadn’t been in
that particular place at that particular time, I wouldn’t have met my
husband or wife.” Or “If I hadn’t looked in this particular
newspaper, I wouldn’t have found a job advertisement for the job
which has given direction to my life.” Or indeed, “If I hadn’t gone
to that party or reception, I wouldn’t have met this person who has
become a very close friend to me.” So there are all kinds of events
in our lives which give shape to our lives. Sometimes people call
these things “coincidence,” chance, or even luck. But people of faith
call that “Providence.” There’s the idea that looking back on our
lives, God has been active. God has, if you like, been pulling the
strings of our lives and making things happen in the way that they
should happen for us. In other words, we could say that God has a
roadmap for our lives, and brings situations and circumstances to
pass in the way that they need to so that his will can be done, and
so that we can be brought to the point in life where we need to be.
That’s true of any of us, I think.

It’s certainly true of the Apostles, whose story we listen to in
today’s gospel. The first disciples of Jesus were ordinary people
doing the ordinary bits and pieces of daily life. They were
fishermen, trying to live simply, trying to get on with their work
and their family life. And then, suddenly, quite by chance it would
seem, they had an encounter with Jesus. Jesus came into their lives.
And from that moment, their lives began to change. Their lives took a
new direction. These simple fishermen became people that they thought
they could never become. They did things that they never imagined
that they would be capable of doing. And they went places that they
never dreamt that they would see. They brought the good news of Jesus
to the ends of the earth. But, looking back on their lives, all of
them without exception said that what had happened to them was that
Jesus had come into their lives and he had provoked a huge
transformation for them. It gave their lives a new shape. All that
was because of the encounter that they had with Jesus, an encounter
which, on the face of it, would seem to have just happened by
coincidence.

But as I say, that’s true for any one of us. I think of my own case,
for example, where I can see that very clearly. When I was about
sixteen, I wanted to become a French teacher. It was my dream to
teach French. And then one day, I went to the Redemptorist Fathers’
Monastery in Belfast. There was a novena on there, which is a huge
religious event and thousands of people were going. I didn’t know
much about it but I followed the crowd and went to the monastery that
day. While there, I went to confession. I made my confession and, at
the end of it, the priest said to me, “What age are you?” I said,
“I’m sixteen, Father.” And he said, “What do you want to do when you
grow up?” I didn’t like that because I had just told I was sixteen. I
was already grown up! But I said to him, “Father, I want to become a
French teacher.” And he said, “For your penance, talk to somebody
about becoming a priest.” And I said to him, “Father, you may have
misunderstood me, but I don’t want to become a priest. I want to
become a French teacher.” And he said, “That doesn’t matter. For your
penance, talk to somebody about it anyway.” You see, that’s what they
are like when you go to confession in Ireland. So, when I left the
confession box, the Mass was starting and there was a priest who has
since become a very close friend of mine. He was cantor, leading the
singing at that Mass. He was talking to the people and he said, “If
you look up here to the front, you can see that all of us
Redemptorists are all getting very old. Those of us who still have
hair have white hair. And for our work to continue, we need new
people to join. So if there is anybody who would be interested in
talking to us about the possibility of becoming a Redemptorist,
please come around to the Monastery after the Mass.”

Now, I had no intention whatsoever of becoming a priest, but I did
want to do my penance. So I went around to the Monastery and I had
this guy called. And he came down. The first thing I said to him was,
“Father, I don’t want to become a Redemptorist.” And he looked at me
very curiously as if to say, “Why are you wasting my time then?” But
he brought me in and we talked and we had coffee and he took my name
and address. Then I went home and forgot all about it. Then, a month
or two later, I was at home one day and it was one of these days when
everything was in chaos. The house was being redecorated. My
brother’s children were crying. We had visitors in. The dog was
barking. Everything was in turmoil, and the doorbell was rung. My mom
went out to see who was at the door. Three guesses... There was a
priest there. And he said to her, “I want to talk to the young man
who wants to become a Redemptorist priest.” You can just imagine the
reaction. My mum came walking into the house with this priest behind
her, and she had a look of grim death, and she said, “Brendan, what
is this all about?” And my immediate thought was, “How in the name of
God am I going to explain my way out of this one?” But I told her and
I told the priest, “It has all been a misunderstanding. It was all a
mistake.” And, after a while, he went away, and I was delighted to
see him go. But a couple of months after that, he sent me a letter.
He was really very persistent. In that letter, he invited me to spend
a weekend in the Redemptorist Monastery in Dublin, which is the
capital of Ireland.

Now, I had no intention of spending a weekend in any monastery
anywhere. But there was a guy from my class in school who was very,
very keen to join the Redemptorists at that time. And he had been
invited to the weekend as well. So, he begged me and pleaded with me
to go with him. And the more he begged, the more I refused. But
finally, he got on my nerves so much that I said, “Fine. I’ll go with
you.” And off we went to the Redemptorists in Dublin. Now, that guy
who was so determined to join the Redemptorists is now married with
three children. And, as we say, the rest is history.

But, you know, it goes for any one of us, we can all look back on our
lives like that and we can see that God was active even if we didn’t
realize it at the time, that God was trying to fulfill his plan in
our lives. I suppose the goal for us as Christians, while all of us
need to realize that no matter what state of life we are called to
and no matter what vocation we have, God has that plan for each and
every one of us. And the goal of our lives, the task of our lives as
Christians is to try and uncover God’s will for us, to try and learn
what God is asking from us and put that into practice. In other
words, we need to try and hear God’s will and do it.

My favorite saint is an Italian saint named St. Gerard Magella. Last
evening, someone said to me “Here in the States, he is not called St.
Gerard. He’s called St. Gerard.” (different accent!) St. Gerard was a
Redemptorist and he died when he was only twenty-nine. But even in
those short years he had done a tremendous amount of work for the
poor people and the suffering people in his society. His life was one
of tremendous compassion. A couple of weeks before he died from
tuberculosis, his superior asked him to write down the principles by
which he lived his life, to write down his priorities in life. And he
wrote these words. He said, “You have asked me to describe for you
the way in which I make my life. And here is what I try to do. I try
to love God greatly. I try to do everything for God, to keep always
united to God, to suffer much for God if necessary, but above all I
try to do God’s holy will.” And then, St. Gerard wrote a sentence
which I thought is very beautiful and really very meaningful in our
own time as well. He said, “Some people are preoccupied with doing
all kinds of things. But I am simply preoccupied with doing the will
of God. And so I place myself completely in God’s hands, that he may
do with me as he wishes, for in him I have all my trust.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could take a little bit of space in
our lives, carve out a little bit of space in our daily lives, maybe
five or ten minutes of silence each day? You know, we are very good
at saying our prayers. We are very good at talking to God, but we
don’t tend to be very good at listening to God. Wouldn’t it be great
if we could take that little space every day to try to hear God’s
voice in our lives, so that we might hear what the Lord is asking of
us, and that we would try to respond to that by doing what he wants
us to do. Let us recite for you again those words of St. Gerard. And
let’s try to hold them as our prayer this morning.

“Some people are preoccupied with doing all kinds of things, but I am
simply preoccupied with doing the will of God. And so, I place myself
completely in his hands. I give my whole life to him, that he may do
with me as he wishes.”

In our Mass this morning, let’s pray that in our own way, we would
trust the Lord completely, that we would put ourselves completely in
his hands that he may do with us as he wishes. Amen.