The Family Foundation School Catholic Community Bulletin
Pauca Verba (a few words)
When we read this bulletin, it will be the end of Graduation Week. A great many of us will have left and the suddenly it’s quiet and perhaps there’s a sense of loneliness – emptiness. We must be careful. We need to remember the speeches we’ve heard and the great witness to friendship and joy. Wonderful things have happened for our friends. Real friendship shares the joys of others.
This is why we come to this school, right? Not to stay here, but to readjust our thinking and our living and then to move on en-spirited! I must be attentive to the tendency to self-pity, a falling into negativity. God wants to do wonderful things in my life too! Do I know that? Do I want that?
Sometimes we have to wait for the good thing to happen. We’re not very good at waiting, are we? But good comes with waiting: a baby is born, the better weather comes, a nice meal is prepared, a birthday comes around, a privilege is earned. Meanwhile, there is work to do. What about that?
This might be a night to ask: What do I really want for my life? What is God hoping to see from me? Do I really care about the others with whom I share life in this community? What am I afraid of? Am I holding God at a distance because God asks for me to respond to his love with a love of my own? What’s my stumbling block?
So let me encourage you. Too often we think of freedom as, freedom FROM: Freedom from this place, freedom from school, freedom from my parent’s domination, freedom from broken home life. But that’s not what real freedom is about.
Freedom has much more to do with interior things. Real freedom has to do with realizing future possibilities – future growth. And so I want to be free from resentments, free from hatred and so much selfishness. I want to be free from my worst thinking – that slavery to my own reasonings. Why? So that I can love. So that I can see myself as God sees me. So that I can love God who has so loved me, that he would even die for me (mother-like), and so that I can love other people – generously and happily.
When we start to look at freedom this way, freedom from what enslaves me interiorly so that I may love – then I’m really onto something and I will find joy – real joy – which is a deep peace, a sense of OK, no matter what’s going on around me.
Isn’t this what we’re really looking for? Isn’t this why we get high and run around in promiscuity? We’re searching for happiness and peace. But it isn’t there and the dangers are very great.
So go inside these next months. God is there. Your heart is there. Make real and generous space for God. Let God speak to you. Let God love you in the face of Christ. Make real and generous space for people in their needs. The happiest people I know are the people who do this, who live this way.
And come and talk. Venting is important, but there’s more to life than this. Come and ask questions. Be open to being taught. Come and grapple with bigger issues. Is there some life-question that concerns you? Is there some issue of conscience that’s hoping to be explored? Is there some un-confessed sin that needs to be expelled? Come and talk to me about Jesus in your life!
Let’s go to sleep tonight, happy for our friends. Let’s thank God for his presence and action in ALL our lives. Let’s hand ourselves over to God’s care tonight – knowing that the same God who takes care of us while we sleep will also care for us tomorrow and through break week and into the new semester. Say “yes” to that. And believe this: EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL RIGHT!
A Few Words