Putting God Off

Second Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I struggle with a bad habit.  And it manifests itself in two primary ways.  In one situation, I see some dirty dishes on my counter that can’t be washed in the dishwasher.  I know it will only take me about 5 minutes to clean them, but I don’t feel like it, so they sit on my kitchen counter until I get disgusted enough to actually clean them.  In the other situation, I have folded my clothes and they are in my room, ready to be put in my dresser drawers or hung up in the closet.  It will take me all of 5-10 minutes to do this.  But I’m tired and just want to go to bed, so I put it off as long as I can.  
    When it comes to these bad habits, the weight of inaction doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.  But the Gospel alludes to another way that we can procrastinate, and that is with our faith.  All the invitees to the banquet have reasons to delay attending.  And the reasons make sense as to why one would not go.  But the point of the parable is that the banquet is so important, that even those legitimate reasons make skipping out the wrong choice, because they may be left out for good.
    I can’t find an original source, but there’s a quote floating around the internet about procrastination that bears hearing: “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  When it comes to doing the dishes or putting away laundry, maybe it’s not that bad.  But how many times do we think about or talk about truly growing in our faith with God, only to put it off until tomorrow, which God never promises we will have.
    Obviously, there are some ways in which one has to delay certain good spiritual desires.  For example, a stay at home mom may want to go to daily Mass, but with six kids that may not be practical.  She may have to wait at least until the kids can get in and out of the car and their appropriate car seats themselves.  But what is stopping her from taking a little time to look up the readings for the day and thinking about those readings as she cares for her kids and her house.  A dad may want to pray the Rosary each day with his family, but he works nights and the kids are all in bed after he leaves for work and then are up mostly when he is sleeping.  But what is stopping him from saying a decade or two on his way to and from work, and asking the rest of the family to pray while he catches up on his sleep?
    We have to make realistic goals that conform to our vocation.  God does not call married couples to follow all the monastic hours.  But He does want couples to pray together every day in some way.  God does not give every person the ability to go to Mass each day, or even to make a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament each day.  But He does want us to offer up our daily sacrifices in union with the cross of Christ, whose perfect sacrifice is made present in an unbloody way in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  Simply a quick, “God, I offer this to you” is a great way to accept your invitation to the banquet, and not make an excuse, however plausible you think it is, for not attending.  Or maybe, right after you wake up, you pray your morning offering, so that you have the intention of uniting everything you experience with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  

St. Paul

    Making little changes, and capitalizing on little opportunities may not seem like much, but daily little practices add up and can change the entire trajectory of one’s life.  By doing what we can, no matter how great or how small, we open ourselves up to more and more of God’s grace, until the areas of our life that we have not given over to God slowly transform into the actions God would take were He in our shoes.  When St. Paul wrote in his epistle to the Galatians, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” that didn’t happen all at once.  In fact, even after the Lord appeared to him, and Ananias healed Paul’s blindness, Paul went into Arabia for three years.  I would guess that the Apostle to the Gentiles had to slowly change his mind to more conform with Christ and work out how he could accept the Gospel and then share it with others.  But because he did those daily spiritual practices over three years, he could so identify with Christ that he became an icon of the one whose Gospel he proclaimed.  
    True transformation rarely happens quickly, and never happens if we put it off for tomorrow.  What if, as Garth Brooks sings, tomorrow never comes?  Based upon how we lived today and all the yesterdays that came before, would we be welcomed into the banquet?  Or would God say that we had other priorities, and that we will never taste of His banquet?  “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  Don’t put off living your faith more deeply, according to your vocation.  Accept the invitation to the banquet, and prepare for the heavenly life now, with God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.