S2 E6: To Live is to Change

Transcript

Carol Vassar:

Change is something most people resist. Routine feels safe. Familiarity gives comfort. Yet life has a way of interrupting even the best-laid plans: through loss, uncertainty, new beginnings, or turns we never saw coming.

Father Marks knows all about that, having recently made the transition into retirement for his role as pastor at SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, CT. In this episode of the podcast, he reflects on the truth that growth in the spiritual life always involves change. Drawing on the wisdom of St. John Henry Newman and the challenging invitation of the Beatitudes, he explores what it means to live as sons and daughters of God — open to transformation, strengthened by grace, and called to be salt and light in a world that longs for hope.

Father Mark Suslenko:

Whether we realize it, we are all creatures of routine and habit. Whether we're getting up to go to work in the morning, we have certain things we need to do in a certain way. We want to go to the grocery store. We usually try to park in a similar place. Enter the store by the same door, and proceed through the aisles in a similar manner. Young people here today when they get ready for school, have certain things that they do in the morning that organizes their day and brings a sense of familiarity to life. These routines and these agendas make the world a easier place. It is a place that's familiar, a place that I can negotiate, a place where I feel accepted.

We do not like change, whether there's construction in the road or whether life brings us to a point, we turned upside down. Maybe some of you have lost your spouse, and that sets you into a whirlwind of who am I now what do I do, and what is life going to bring for me? You lose your job. It brings you to a place of anxiety and fear. How am I going to prepare for my family? What am I going to do to make ends meet? Is there someplace I can find work?

So this fear of change is a big part of who we are as human beings. We like to predict stuff. We like to be able to say, in two years, in five years, in 10 years, I see myself here, I see myself there. What happens when that agenda gets turned upside down? We feel lost, we're afraid, we're anxious, and we're shaken. So, change in a very real way sometimes becomes our enemy. But yet, without change, you and I don't develop our full potential. If we don't change things up in our lives and realize that we can do things differently, if we don't take a different course or proceed in a different manner, we don't realize the resources we have within us. Those of you who have gone through tremendous struggles know exactly what I'm talking about. As you enter into that moment of crisis, there's a lot of trepidation. But as you work your way through it, you find yourself coming out on the other end a better person. That change has a positive effect on who you are. But yet we, at the same time, continue to fear and resist it.

St. John Henry Newman said this, "To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." To be perfect is to have changed, often.

To be perfect.

St. John Newman wasn't talking about living life without flaws or sinfulness. What he was talking about was living life out of the integrity of who we are. Each one of us gathered here today is a baptized Christian. A baptized believer in Jesus Christ. As so, we are all brothers and sisters, but also sons and daughters of God. That gives us a unique distinction. It gives us a unique mission.

So, for us to be perfect means that in everything I do, I always live out of my identity as a son or as a daughter of God. That means I'm open to embracing change. I'm open to doing things differently. I'm open to seeing the world in a more wonderful way. It gives me a mission. It gives me a purpose. But it also tells me how to solve conflict. It tells me how to order my relationships with my brothers and sisters to see this as being healthy and good and rejecting that as being negative and hurtful

To be able to change.

Jesus gave us the whole list of the Beatitudes. To live out those Beatitudes, if we truly listen to them and digest them, requires change.

We live in a secular world that sees life in a particular way, but it's not through the lens of a Christian. We have to bring that layer to our world. We have to bring that philosophy to the people around us. It's not gonna happen just automatically. So when Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs," he's elevating the poor to a high level and giving them a dignity that they never had before.

When he calls us to be peacemakers, he's calling us to lay down the arms of violence, to resolve conflicts peacefully, and not with violence or aggression or anger.

Changing the axis of our life requires change, and we often resist doing so. We want to stay with the old way of doing things. We wanna keep the old order in place because that's the way it's been and that's what we know to be. But yet, those Beatitudes and the call of the Gospel change it up immensely.

You are the salt of the earth. That means in our relationships with one another, our mission is not to serve ourselves. Our mission is to serve the best interests of those people sitting around you today and those who are outside the doors of this church. To make life better for them, to lift them up, and to treat them as blessed children of God that they are.

Are the light of the world. To be the light of the world requires change. It means that I cannot be encapsulated into myself, but that I must be open and joyful, and bring that openness and that joy to every dimension of our life, so that when others look at us, they see a person who is totally in love with God and filled with the life and light of the Holy Spirit.

The Beatitudes require change. To be salt requires change. To be light requires change.

Do we accept that call to change, or do we resist it out of fear because we wanna keep things the way they were and not discover something new?

If we don't venture forth, we're never going to tap into those holy resources that are given to us in our baptism so that we can truly understand what it means to be a beloved son or a beloved daughter of God. When you do discover that, deep within your soul, you also discover an immensity of love and a profound sense of freedom