As a confessor you encounter all kinds of people whose perspective on sins runs the gamut from everything is sin (most mortal!) to “well… I haven’t killed anyone, so I must be good.” Of course, there are very few who inhabit the extremes. Most folks are somewhere in the middle, trying to be Christ-like in all things and all times, and like us all, falling short now and then. The folks “in the middle” try to be attentive to their life of prayer, worship, and service. They are reflective about their lives and come to the Sacrament of Reconciliation to confess, get some perspective, and above all to receive the healing grace of forgiveness.
I serve an active parish with lots of families. They are busy and you hear the stories of being pulled in multiple directions all at once with responsibilities of family, work, community, the parish, and some semblance of a spiritual life. It is expressed as “I don’t pray enough” or “I read the Bible as much as I would like” or “I don’t ______ as much as I want.” I’ll leave it to you to fill in the blank.
This is when I remind people of the first reading from Ecclesiastes: “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for everything under the heavens.” The appointed time can be in the grand sweeps of time: childhood, the teenage years, young adult, married couple, family with children, empty-nesters, grandparents, and more. The appointed time can be on a smaller scale: this month, this season, this year – or even this one day. They hear the words anew, but there is still a sense that people want “everywhere, everything, all at once” or they feel they are falling short. It’s hard to shake.
I think people are hard on themselves as they don’t pause to think what they are doing right now is “of God” – and this is as they are being amazing parents, taking care of aging parents, and doing all kinds of things of service to others.
“What advantage has the worker from his toil? I have considered the task that God has appointed for the sons of men to be busy about. He has made everything appropriate to its time.”
I ask people to consider this simple line from the first reading and prayerfully reflect whether they are able to discern if all their activities are tasks that God appointed them – at this point in their lives – to be busy about. Whatever the task, are they able to see pathways in which their activity shines a little bit of the love of God into the life of others? If so then it is “appropriate to its time.
To shine the love of God into the world…. there’s something that is always “in season.”
Image credit The Exhortation to the Apostles | James Tissot | Brooklyn Museum | US-PD