Reflection by Fr. Chris

Two weeks ago, I went to Notre Dame with friends to watch the Irish play Virginia. As you can imagine, it was always a dream of mine to attend Notre Dame as a student, but that dream never came to fruition. Over the course of the weekend, I spent time with my friend’s daughter (currently a senior at ND), her boyfriend, and her best friend. I was constantly surprised at the maturity of these students, and the running joke between my friend Chris and I (his name is also Chris, I am not losing my grasp of reality), became “I get how I didn’t end up at ND.” I will not go into what I was like as an 18 year old, but let’s say, you would not have found me in the library the morning of the game during my undergrad years. 

I bring up my failure to get into ND, because I’m sure I am not the only one who did not get into their dream school, and I’m also sure that we turned out ok and had a great time at the colleges we did attend. At the end of the day, where we go to college is not as important as who we are as a person. More importantly, while we all have different dream schools that we wanted to attend when we were younger, there is one place where we all want to go, a place not subject to conference realignment (yes, I had to get that jab in haha), of course I am speaking about heaven. That is the goal in our life, to spend eternity with the God who created the cosmos and loved each one of us into being. 

Here is my point, what are we doing to prepare ourselves for entry into heaven. As I said at the start of this article, I wanted to go to Notre Dame, but the desire to attend South Bend did not force me to grow up, study, and do all the things students need to do in order to attend prestigious universities. Simply put I could wish on every star in the sky, but if I didn’t open a book I was not going to get where I wanted to go. As I said before, despite not attending ND, I like to think I turned out ok, because college is not the ultimate destination for which we were created, it’s Heaven. I say this not because I am a heretic who thinks we can earn our way into heaven, but that there are certainly metrics on which we will be judged when it comes to admittance. Are we living a life of virtue--loving God and neighbor? Are we following the commandments of God and the way of life outlined by Christ in the beatitudes? Are we cultivating a life which places God and others above self? Are we men and women of prayer?

One day we will exit this mortal realm, and go before the judgement seat of God. Let us live each day with that in mind, so that we are ready when it comes. Let us pray to God that His mercy may touch our lives, and let us get out of our own way and ask God to continue the work He has started within us so that we may be the people He created us to be.  

Fr. Chris