The children were having a great time on the Merry-Go-
Round, or Carousel. Round and round they went, seated on motor
bikes mounted on vividly painted horses
with enormous bright eyes, seated behind the steering wheels of flashy
cars, chugging along in railway trains.
Alas, all good things come to an end! Soon their ride
came to a halt. Laughing, and
chattering, parents and children made their way home.
‘What goes round comes round.’ I thought to myself, and
then, ‘But
what if these children were to go round and round and round and round, on and on
and on and on? They’d eventually become bored at the sheer monotony of
it. What if this continued
- in spite of their boredom,
then their anger, and eventually their fear, as
they realized they were trapped in an experience that had lost its
merriment? What had been great fun would then take on the drudgery,
the sameness, the awful
routine of a treadmill.’
Recently the theme of my meditations, my
prayer life has been,
‘What goes round comes round.’ You
see, as a somewhat retired priest I’ve ended up where I started - young and inexperienced. It’s
like this. In 1959 I received my first posting as parish priest. Now in 2013 I find myself assistant priest in the very same
parish.
I’ve gone round from one place and come back to the same place.
During these fifty or so years of journeying back to
where I started so many interesting things have happened to me, such a variety of activities! Flavoured with joy
and sorrow, hope and anguish, success and failure, self-congratulation as well as self-accusation.
As a backdrop to all of this there has been the
constant routine that
has structured my life and shaped my personality…a regularity, a predictability, within which there has been so
much variety, encountering so many different people, involvement in experiences
and projects,
some weird and wonderful, most
common-place, dull, forgettable.
For me, a priest, to have celebrated but one Mass
in the whole of my life, to
have preached but one sermon, would have been momentous, a privilege beyond . Without
boasting I can claim that to have celebrated Mass thousands of times, and to have preached
thousands of sermons. Don’t
imagine for a moment that on every occasion I’ve felt on top of the world – in a state of
sublime ecstasy. I’d have
been totally exhausted if I’d been
through extreme and intense joy of any kind, emotional or spiritual, for
a long time. So I admit, without surprise and without shame, that over the years there
have been times, even seasons, when I felt a dreary weariness at the thought of having
to celebrate yet another public Mass and to preach yet another sermon.
Similar to my experience as a priest must surely be
that of the couple who have been happily married for many a year. They
couldn't possibly have survived an
endless honeymoon
of gazing into each other’s eyes, embracing, making
love with their spouse, day after day, year after
year.
They’d have tasted the bitter as well as the sweet, the worst as
well as the better. Happily, the verdict will
be,
‘What an immense blessing, a great privilege…but it hasn’t been
easy!’
Much of this also applies to lasting the commitments of
friendships and to life-long careers that, for the most part are worthwhile,
gratifying and fulfilling. These will have been punctuated with irritations and frustrations,
or simply feeling fed-up and bored. With the passing of time what, who, is most delightful to us can on occasion have lost most of what used to charm us.
I suspect that these days we find it hard to
be fascinated by anything or by anyone for long. It’s not that anything
too bad has to have occurred. It’s rather that we see that the ‘shelf-life’ of commitments is meant to
be short. Replacement is
the order of the day. When
we become disappointed or dissatisfied, rather than take the trouble to rekindle the fire that has all but gone
out,
we tend to look to be fired up by something, someone that is fresh, to
stimulate us.
If this occasionally happens to us let us admit it! Let
us not feel ashamed! These ‘off-moments’ are a
necessary part of life’s journey, yours and mine. From these
we are to learn that long-term enthusiasm must not be taken for granted. It does not remain
simply because we would like it to. We must deliberately, explicitly, cherish what we value, take care of it, refresh it, and even repair it, so as to recapture our sense of wonder that leads to thanksgiving!
WHAT GOES ROUND COMES ROUND . Sometimes,
somehow, we have to get round to making ourwaygodsway. And
God’s way is that His love endures forever.
Peter O.P.
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