Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 / Apocalypse 21:10-14, 22-23 / John 14:23-29
Our one main desire in life is to be happy. But that desire has also created an anxiety.
We can’t call it happy-anxiety. It sounds odd and rather contradictory. There is nothing so happy about anxiety.
For example, we want to have children, but with pregnancy comes anxiety. There are morning sickness, check-ups, gender of the baby, development of the baby. All this can be termed as pregnancy anxiety.
The current trade war between the two largest economies has brought about many anxieties.
One casualty in this economic dispute is a particular brand of mobile phone. It means that will be no more software updates for the operating system of the new models of this brand, leaving customers in a state of separation anxiety.
The pun about this is that although this brand has a hand-phone model with a camera that can zoom 50 times – it can even take clear pictures of the moon, but it didn’t see this coming. Well, what will this turn out eventually, we wait in anxiety.
The 1st reading recalled an anxiety in the early church over the issue of circumcision. That issue caused disturbance and unsettled minds.
That issue was critical enough for the apostles and elders to look into it and eventually resolved it.
So generally speaking, anxiety is a human problem and the problems are caused by humans themselves.
But in the gospel, we sense another kind of anxiety – a divine anxiety.
Jesus is anxious that we keep to His Word so that He can make His home in us. He is anxious to send the Holy Spirit who will teach us everything. He is anxious to give us His peace so that our hearts would not be troubled or afraid.
Yes, Jesus is anxious to fulfill what He has promised us. Because when He can fulfill what He has promised then we are able to believe; then we will be happy.
But this divine anxiety must also create in us an urgency, an urgency for true happiness and peace. The strange thing about human beings is that as much as we desire for peace and happiness in our lives, we don’t seem to be too anxious about it, there seems to be no urgency for it.
Call it indifference or procrastination, there is no urgency or anxiety because there is no scorching pain being felt immediately.
But whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, the pain is growing within, and it is disturbing our peace and draining away our happiness.
And the pain can burn for a long time – 40, 50 or 60 years even – and yet the symptoms are there – we don’t feel peace in our hearts and no happiness in our lives.
Andrea Roncato is an Italian actor and comedian, known in his home country for being a playboy living the wild life. At the age of 80, he has apparently left drugs and the other vices behind.
He recently gave a moving pro-life testimony during a television interview. Roncato, who is childless, said this:
“I miss having a child. It was the worst mistake of my life that when I was very young, I had the chance to become a father, to have a child, but I had him aborted. Now, I’ve become very strongly against abortion.”
He also admitted that he constantly asks God to forgive him.
Roncato has had a change of heart, and has come to appreciate life.
The following is a moving poem he wrote for the child he aborted so many years ago:
I would have liked you to be small, so I could hug you.
I would have liked you to be big, so I could lean on you.
I would have liked you to be looking out the window in winter, watching the snow falling.
I would have liked you to be lying under the covers during a storm, silent so you could hear the sound of the rainfall.
I would have liked you to be kind to dogs, so you could pat them,
and affectionate with the elderly, so you could love them.
I would have liked you to be handsome, so I could brag about you,
with big eyes, like your mother’s.
I would have liked to sing to you, to make you fall asleep, and continue the dream that woke you up.
I would have liked you to be shy, so I could see you blush,
and stubborn, so I could argue with you.
I would have liked you to be at my side, so the two of us could walk in silence,
trying to understand what the other was thinking inside but couldn’t manage to say.
I would have liked to teach you all the things I know how to do.
I would have liked you to leave someday, so I could have the pleasure of seeing you come back home.
I would have liked you to experience your first love.
I would have liked you to be near me on the day I must leave this world.
I wish I had wanted you, that time when I didn’t want you …
It was a long wait, maybe 50 or 60 years, but eventually the father and his aborted son were reconciled on the spiritual realm, and peace and happiness can now happen for them.
Jesus wants to give us peace and happiness in life. But we block it out with our sins of unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, hatred, jealousy, revenge and lustful desires.
All these and other sins feed the fire of pain in our hearts and yet we say that there is no peace and happiness in our lives.
But then the Lord Jesus continues to love us, so that one day when we realize the pain of our sins, then we will want to be reconciled with God and with others.
Then Jesus will make His home in our hearts, and then we will have peace and happiness in our lives.
With Jesus in our hearts, we will then realize that there is nothing to worry or to be anxious about.