Category: Life

From "Upward Glance"…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

“I can hardly wait to retire.  Man, I am going to __________.”  All of us have heard this conversation and some of us may have even spoken those very words.  That blank can be filled in with everything from travel and fishing, to doubling my income with another job.  Some of those words come from people who still have 15 or 20 years left in their career!  Would you believe the average man or woman will spend 50,000 hours at their job during a lifetime?  That’s just average…you are no doubt above average!   How much better it would be for us to find satisfaction in our daily lives rather than living for the future.  This is true rather one is living for retirement or a promotion.  Sometimes the best laid plans (of men and women) can go astray.  Take for a good example the following story:

The Associated Press ran this story of Andre-Francois Raffray.  Thirty years ago, at the age of 47, he worked out a real estate deal with Jeanne Calment, age 90.  He would pay her $500 each month until her death, in order to secure ownership of her apartment in Arles, France.  This is a common practice in France, benefitting both buyers and seniors on a fixed income.  Unfortunately for Raffray, Jeanne Calment became the world’s oldest living person.  She was still alive at 120 when Raffray died at the age of 77.  He paid $184,000 for an apartment he never lived in.  According to the contract, Raffray’s survivors must continue payment until Mrs. Calment dies.

Talk about missing the mark when it came to the future!!  Mr. Raffray presumed he knew what the future held, but the future is one thing we can seldom accurately predict!  Consider this Scripture passage from James that warns us of presuming to know what the future holds: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow…Instead you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”

Now I’m not saying God is opposed to planning.  Planning is good except when we get too carried away with it by trying to live in the future.  We can get so caught up with our plans and schemes for the future that we forget about the day at hand.  We’ve all seen people that had their hearts so set on a promotion that when they weren’t chosen, their world was turned upside down and they became unbearable to be around for quite a while.  Or perhaps you know folks who lived their lives for retirement only to find soon after retirement that sickness or worse put an end to their plans.  One little saying that has always helped me in this area goes like this: Live this moment as if the Lord is coming back today and plan for the future as if He is not coming back in your lifetime.  All of us are just a heartbeat away from the Judgment Seat of Christ…something we don’t think about very often.  May all of us enjoy the gift of life God has given us today and commit our future plans into His hands.

By the way, if any of you are interested in my house, we can work out a deal where you start paying me $1500 a month now and….   :>)  (Just kidding…)

May the Lord bless you richly this day…indeed… this very day!!

The plumber has been here…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

for just about a minute or so and already he’s muttering under his breath. That’s the sound of expensive. I know, I’ve heard it before.

BTW if you think going to confession is rough try explaining yourself  to a plumber. At least a Priest can grant absolution.

Tattoos and infatuation…

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are just not good together. You’ve really got to think before you ink because, you know, people break up and stuff, and things change and when a passing thing gets permanently etched into your body it’s really difficult to remove and more difficult to explain.

Just a Note.

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Each holy thing we do. Each temptation we face and overcome. Every time we choose the good, the holy, the beautiful, and the righteous is cherished by God. It’s not just our struggles and sins that will matter as we stand before Christ but even the feeblest or unforgotten act of goodness as well.

Perhaps another reason…

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to think about how wedded we are to our society’s electric nipple. As I get older the lure of convenience just doesn’t seem as important as interacting with real people. And it’s not that I’m doing anything wrong, its that I don’t want to be tracked across the grid because  its none of their business. I want to choose how far I wish to be exposed and if that makes me a throwback or a luddite then so be it. Even if I don’t make use of it much there’s something precious about the right to be left alone.

A passage I was pondering today…

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Revelation 21

 1And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

 2And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

 3And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

 4And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

 5And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

 6And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

 7He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

 8But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

 9And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife.

 10And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,

 11Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;

 12And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:

 13On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.

 14And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

 15And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.

 16And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.

 17And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.

 18And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.

 19And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald;

 20The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst.

 21And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.

 22And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.

 23And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

 24And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.

 25And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.

 26And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.

 27And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

This is going to sound mean…

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but when a celebrity succumbs to addiction and dies it’s sad but definitely not heroic. We have this way of trying to make such people into heroes but that’s just whitewash by a media that fed on these people during their lives and needs to find a way to feed on them after they’re gone.

Talented? Yes. Tragic? Yes. Heroic? No. Elvis died on his bathroom floor with his pants around his ankles. Amy Winehouse stopped her own heart with a mixture of street chemicals yet to be determined. There’s nothing romantic or heroic about any of it. It’s just sad, a waste, and we don’t want to face that so we pretend otherwise.

Do you know what is heroic? It’s the person calling their AA sponsor right now because they’re struggling with their addiction but they love their kids so much they’ll do whatever it takes to fight for a day of sobriety. It’s the person praying their heart out to keep from going out on the streets because they know the hell that waits them and have no desire to go back. Those, and others like them, are the heroes. The rest are just celebrities whose lives got messed up in the spotlight.