July, 2023
Beloved,
“Let us not look back with nostalgia; nor ahead with fear; but around with awareness. May the Blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be among us, remain with us always.” I proclaimed this blessing on my first Sunday when I came to St. Paul’s almost ten years ago. I first heard this blessing from a mentor and a dear friend, Fr. Ralph Carskadden, who was full of wit, artistic talents, pastoral insights, and skills. This blessing spoke to me profoundly because I was a person who always reminisced past and was afraid of my future unknown, so much so that I felt trapped in the present time. As I tried to free myself from this agonizing present, my mind ran to a familiar, comforting past. While chasing the past glory kept me in the spiritual safe space for a little while, it always left me with a heavy sigh of realization that I no longer belonged to that period but the present.
Even though I knew the present would eventually become the past in a matter of a second, I just could not bear to appreciate what I had until it was gone. The same dilemma applies to the future as well. Filling up all kinds of hopes and dreams, I keep noticing the missing pieces, saying, “If I can just have this and that.” When things got too much, I said, “I don’t have time to think of all that! Of all the things that must be done, I can only live in the moment, juggling things more than handsful instead of wasting time to think of the past or the future!” I get exhausted at the end of the day and don’t want to do anything but sit on the couch, get lost in social media, and be left alone. Something tells me I am not alone in this. I still fall into this trap now and then. Living in the moment does not mean running around like a madman. By living this way, we are trying to gain more confidence in the future or prevent the loss of our possessions, pretending to live in the present. The last thing living in the present calls for is the preservation of now.
Living in the present takes the discipline to stand on a foundation of faith, managing three things: 1) letting go of what is and 2) letting God open our hearts so that 3) we can continue to be the Body of Christ with a sense of renewal. Jesus taught his disciples these three throughout his ministry. Our job as Christians is neither about preserving the past glory nor shaping the future in ways only to affirm our righteousness made out of limited understanding; on the contrary, our discipleship must always be about spreading the Love of God in unimaginable ways, as Jesus taught us. To achieve it, we must let go and let God. We stay fully present with God this way to move forward. “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). What can we do to create a brave space here at St. Paul’s where we can dare to live in the moment, sharing each others’ faith journey – good, bad, and ugly, following Jesus’ footsteps, and being fully present with God?
“Let us not look back with nostalgia; nor ahead with fear; but around with awareness. May the Blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be among us, remain with us always.”
In Christ,
Fr. Andrew
