Animate Youth Ministry

Why being ready matters

By Father Simon Gore Animate Youth Ministries

It does not seem so long ago that I wrote about using the summer to plan ahead and get ready for the new year – even if that meant chopping down dangerous, overhanging trees!

Now that new year is here and 2022-23 stretches ahead of us. We began the year with a Mass which served both as a Lourdes reunion and a marker for the new academic year. It is always nice to end one particular year and look ahead to the next in this Mass that we celebrate each year. And it gave me, as the celebrating priest, a chance to reflect on what it means to be a disciple and a follower of Christ.

Although not all readers of the Pic will be thinking about September as a new beginning I thought it might be good, no matter where we are in life, to take a moment to think about the call that we all have to lives of holiness. And to start to do that, I would like you to take a look at these Tripadvisor reviews reproduced here. When you see these reviews you get the feeling that the type of people that might write them are possibly the ones who might struggle with the idea of discipleship. These people just don’t know what they are seeing or why what they are seeing is important. If you went on holiday over the summer I imagine you would have got your stuff ready in advance, known where your passport was and got checked in. If we don’t get ourselves ready we might end up in the same position as these unhappy reviewers – writing reviews that don’t make much sense because the issue is probably more with us than the thing or the place itself. We simply aren’t prepared. I think it is this sense of being prepared that is part of being a disciple in the modern world. Jesus reminds us there will be difficulties along the way – and that’s why we need to be prepared. And we need to be prepared to think about what is important to us. If we get so caught up in ‘stuff’ – whatever that might be – it can be hard to see what is most important. If you look at these reviews again, maybe those writing them just couldn’t see what was important about what was in front of them.

They weren’t prepared because they had got so caught up in whatever else was happening that they missed the massive thing that was there in front of them.

For us, the following questions might be worth considering: have we allowed ‘stuff’ around us to cloud seeing God in the world around us? Have we thought about what God might have been asking of us this year? Are there any changes we want to make with our lives?

I suppose the question ultimately is ‘am I seeing the bigger picture or am I caught up in things that might not be as important as I think?’.

It would be sad if any of us were to write a Tripadvisor review of where we are at the moment and make the mistake of these reviewers, missing what can be staring us in the face because we haven’t taken the time to just stop, look and listen to our ongoing call to be disciples.

God bless.