Men's Night 10-04-06 Recap

Ernie shared some wonderful reflections and insights from St. Alphonsus Liguori on Wednesday night. What is the one thing that you cannot save and expect to have more of in the future? Not money, friends, not hair either. You can always buy more hair if you save your money. It's time! Time is the one thing that we can never get back, or expect to get more of. I know the Rolling stones sang "Time is on my side", however in actuality time is always working against us. As young people we are taught that we have our whole life ahead of us. We believe that we will be on this earth for many decades. We act as if we are in a football game, we have six timeouts, stoppage for each quarter, and the clock stops when we throw an incomplete pass. Life doesn't work like that. There are no timeouts, no quarters or halftimes, and time doesn't stand still when we make mistakes.

So, with that fact in mind, what are we doing with that oh so precious commodity? St. Liguori spoke about utilizing the time we have to give glory and praise to God. As well as leading others to do the same. Are we good stewards of the time God has bestowed upon us, or are we taking our time for granted, letting it slip away? Like our brothers in Trinidad would say are we "just liming", or just hanging out killing time. Every day, hour, minute or second we let pass is that much time gone forever. We can lose just about everything else and get it back, but not time.

Now that we realize that we're letting opportunity pass by us like a bullet train what are we to do? First and foremost, pray and pray often. Pray from waking in the morning to going to bed at night, and every opportunity in between. Prayer is like preparing ourselves for battle, it's putting our spiritual armor on. It puts us in touch with our Head Coach, God. It calms us in times of stress, it steers us straight in times of confusion, and strengthens us in times of doubt or failure. We must remember though that we need to find some quiet prayerful time to listen to what God is telling us. Often God is calling us to action through prayer and we're just too busy doing all the talking. We must make time to listen.

When we hear what God is calling us to do we will be prepared for action. Are we all going to run out and slay dragons and save damsels in distress. I don't believe that is the kind of action God is preparing us for. It's the everyday thing that occur around us that we must encounter, before we tackle the big things. Like St. Francis of Assissi said "preach the Gospel daily and when necessary use words". It's in our work, our homes and in our community that we are called to evangelize. As living examples like the Apostles and the Saints, before us. We are all given many talents, but do we share our talents with others, with our faith community, with our families. When we all give our time and properly use our talents we can accomplish many great deeds and make a positive impact on many lives. And when God calls us home we will not have regrets about the time we wasted, instead we will say thank you Lord for the time we had, I'm ready to go home.

So my challenge to myself and to all Catholic men is this, are you ready to go home now? If not, why? Have you started utilizing your time and talents to give glory to God? If not, what are you waiting for? God Bless you all.

Peace and Love

Brother Ed