Thursday of the third week of Advent: The Force Field of the Past

Presence

“Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10). Lord, Your words lead us to the calmness and greatness of Your presence.

Scripture

Luke 17: 29-33

On the day that Lot left Sodom it rained fire and sulphur from heaven and destroyed all of them; it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, anyone on the housetop who has belongings in the house must not come down to take them away, and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.

Reflection

The book of Genesis described the destruction of the city of Sodom. Abraham’s nephew, Lot, had been living in Sodom for a number of years. An angel was sent by God to Lot, at Abraham’s pleading. The angel told Lot and his family to flee for their lives. On no account were they to stop and look back at any point. Lot’s wife could not resist looking back at the blazing city. She was frozen forever in the act of turning. It seems a brutal act of retribution for a relatively minor offence.
Jesus’ words above cast a different light on the story.
The downfall of Lot’s wife was in her refusal to believe that the leaving of Gomorrah was– for her – the day of salvation. The “day when the Son of Man is revealed” is not necessarily the last day – either of the world or of our own life. It can be a time when God’s will is made clear to us. For Lot’s wife, the day she left Sodom was for her “the day when the Son of Man is revealed”. She now knew unequivocally that the life she had lived in Sodom was destructive. She heard the words of warning, but clearly did not believe them. Lot was afraid of the future, but his wife was afraid of leaving the past behind her and that was the greater danger. In seeking to hold on to her life as she knew it, she lost everything.
The influence of the past is at its most dangerous when we see ourselves as shaped by past forces beyond reach of our will and our understanding. “The experience of my past has made me what I am today”, we tell ourselves. “My world view has been determined for me. No matter how much I would like to, I cannot look at life differently”. Maybe Lot’s wife said something like this to herself, “This is all I know of life. I can’t leave it”. Thus we excuse our inaction, our distractions, our refusal to let go of attachments or resentments or guilt or fear. Our gaze is bent relentlessly backward. Yet we need to bear in mind that, while we may not be able to change how we feel, we can change the way we act.
The great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber said, “The only thing that can become fate for a person is belief in fate; for this suppresses the movement of turning…..to be freed from belief that there is no freedom is indeed to be free.”
For each of us, there is a “day when the Son of Man is revealed” in a call to repentance, to growth, to transformation. If we are to heed that call and advance on our journey, we have to take ourselves out of the comfort zone of what was and enter the adventure of what is. We cannot make a journey if we are facing backwards.

Prayer

Lord, help me to know that my life is a freely flowing focus of action in which the only thing that can stop me is the belief that I am not free. Give me the grace to embrace crisis in the original sense of the word as a turning point – something to be welcomed rather than feared, something that the philosopher Ivan Illich described as the “the marvellous moment when people become aware of their self-imposed cages, and of the possibility of a different life”.

Amen

Glory to you, Father, source of all being,

to you, Jesus, Word made flesh,

to you Holy Spirit, Comforter,

as it was before time began,

is now and shall be into the future.

Amen.