tvc.dsj.org | October 8, 2019
By Father Brendan McGuire
Pastor of Holy Spirit Parish, San José, and Special Advisor to the Bishop,
Diocese of San José. [email protected].
Jammed Packed Suitcase of Life
Pray always without becoming weary.
When I travel, I have a bad habit of leaving my packing to the last minute; not
just to the last day but the last hour. As a result, I always over pack! I think of all
the possible eventualities and I take clothes for every possible option. I will even
roll up my clothes so there is no air in the suitcase at all. The suitcase is jam-packed
full no matter whether I go for a 2-day trip or a 12-day trip!
Ron Rolheiser, the Catholic priest, great theologian and author, says that our
lives are like that jam-packed suitcase. Our lives are so full that we cannot fit
anything more into the suitcase of our lives. When we hear today’s gospel telling
us to pray always without becoming weary, we think, “I have no time. There is
no way I can put one more thing into that suitcase.” We are absolutely right! We
absolutely cannot. We have to take something out to make room for the Lord. We
have to stop trying to stuff Jesus in between the shirt and the pants of our lives!
When we shove Jesus into our packed cases; we squeeze all the air out of him
and there is no room left for him in our life. The suitcase is not going to be any
less jam-packed until we decide that something has to come out.
We do not need all the functions, things and people that we have in our life
even though we have convinced ourselves we do. We do not have to go to every
sports event. We record every TV show as if we are missing out on life. We fear
that somehow something is going to be lost.
No. It is okay. We don’t have to record all the shows. We most certainly do not
have to watch them all. We don’t have to drink out of every fount in life. We are
convinced that the more we have, the better it is; the fuller our life is, the better it
is; the busier we are, the better it is. That is simply not true. More is not necessarily
better. Busier is definitely not better.
Please open up your life and decide to take out something so that you can put
in Jesus into your daily life. Only you know what you can do without so you can
make room for Jesus in your life.
When we put time for prayer into the suitcase of our lives, it has to be a hard
case! It cannot be flexible because then what happens is Jesus gets squeezed be-
tween two things. It has to be a hard case; we promise to always pray and we will
not grow weary. That is the commitment. When we lift up our mind and heart to
God in that way things change, really change. This will change our life forever
but only we can decide to do it. When we change, our life purifies, our thoughts,
our intentions, and our way of being changes. We become better, gentler, kinder
people with room for people; with room for their mistakes.
Pray always without becoming weary.
SPIRITUALITY
11
Sunday Homilies
Hard Resetting your Spiritual Life
You know that feeling when your smartphone or your computer just stops work-
ing and often right in the middle of an urgent need or a critical project? Sometimes
this happens because we have too many applications open or too many programs
running at the same time. How do we fix that?
We start to close down applications or programs that we don’t need right now
and hope the computer returns to normal operation and we can go about our
projects again. And we hope that we don’t have to do a “hard reset” to get the
computer back to its former condition.
The same is true for our spiritual lives. There are times that life life is just too
busy and we have so many things coming at us that we lose site of what is most
important. We are programmed to shut everything down each week with a Sab-
bath day and then annually with a vacation. That is the way Lord made us and
he commands us to take a Holy Day every week. The challenge is that many of
us don’t take the weekend to relax but get even busier with more work projects
or other home projects. Then our vacations seem to be equally as amped up. So
what are we do?
We need to somehow close some of the unnecessary things in our our spiritual
lives. When we don’t, things start to go wrong. We get testy or unpleasant with our
spouses or our children. Work starts to unravel in some way. Our friends seem to
be at odds with us like never before. These are all signals that the system is about
to freeze and go into “blue screen” mode. We need to stop and reset our lives. We
need to come away on retreat or at the very least start a new prayer discipline.
If you need a spritiual cleanup or reset, I encourage you to take a full weekend
away to join me on retreat October 18-20, 2019 at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Los
Altos. This retreat, led by me, is titled “Hard Resetting Your Spiritual Life.” I
will focus what can we do to refocus our lives back on Jesus and his mission for
us. Please visit www.jrclosaltos.org or call the center at (650) 917-4000 to register.
It is critical to deepen our relationship with Jesus and hear where he is calling
us to grow. We need PRAYER. We need to move closer to Jesus so we can under-
stand how God wants us to lead our lives for the good of all, including ourselves.
Come and reset your life this fall.
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