Post by Maggie on Sept 28, 2013 21:26:36 GMT -6
I found this wonderful YouTube video (an advertisement!) on the website of the Archdiocese of Washington on which Msgr. Charles Pope blogs and blogs most movingly. The video can't help but inspire the same thoughts in us who are older that it did in Msgr. Pope. He writes:
His meditations on the video are quite beautiful and I highly recommend them to you.
Christians do not believe that this life is all we get. But it is filled with sorrows as well as joys and it is over far too quickly. How hard it is to want to undertake some project but be forced to think, "no, too late for that." I must face up to the fact that I will never be a ballerina. I will never become fluent in Greek. Nor will I ever play the piano-- much less play as well as my mother did.
Far worse is the thought of the opportunities wasted to seek reconciliation with those I wounded or who wounded me. The psalmist reminds us:
We would do well to remember that our lives have limits and not put off the good we intend to do.
My mind drifted back to a photo album my father once assembled not long before his death. In the frontispiece he etched a quote, from Psalm 103:
But as for man, his days are like the grass,
or as the flower of the field.
The Wind blows and he is gone,
And his place never sees him, anymore.
Indeed, our lives do pass swiftly. I often wonder of the many men who once lived in my old rectory, this place that never sees them anymore. One day I will be swept from here, a distant memory in some old pictures in the archive.
His meditations on the video are quite beautiful and I highly recommend them to you.
Christians do not believe that this life is all we get. But it is filled with sorrows as well as joys and it is over far too quickly. How hard it is to want to undertake some project but be forced to think, "no, too late for that." I must face up to the fact that I will never be a ballerina. I will never become fluent in Greek. Nor will I ever play the piano-- much less play as well as my mother did.
Far worse is the thought of the opportunities wasted to seek reconciliation with those I wounded or who wounded me. The psalmist reminds us:
O Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him?
Or the son of man, that You think of him?
Man is like a mere breath;
His days are like a passing shadow. (PS 144)
Or the son of man, that You think of him?
Man is like a mere breath;
His days are like a passing shadow. (PS 144)
We would do well to remember that our lives have limits and not put off the good we intend to do.
