Most of us have a sentence somewhere inside us that begins, “Once things settle down…”

Once work becomes less demanding, I will pray more. Once this family problem is resolved, I will breathe. Once I feel better about myself, I will begin again. Once I understand what God is doing, I will trust him.

The trouble is that life rarely settles down.

Job knows this painfully well. He wants to understand what has happened to him, but God will not fit inside his explanations. “If he should come near me, I see him not.” There are seasons when we cannot make sense of our own lives, much less God.

Then comes Jesus, saying things that sound almost unreasonable: follow me now. Do not wait until every obligation has been resolved, every goodbye spoken, every loose end tied up.

Jesus is not teaching us to become careless about people we love. He is exposing our endless ability to postpone becoming the person we already know we need to become.

Saint Jerome was not an uncomplicated man. He could be brilliant, difficult, passionate, argumentative. Yet he spent his life returning to Scripture, translating it, wrestling with it, allowing the Word to work on him. God did not wait until Jerome had become serene before using him.

That matters to me.

Because I sometimes imagine that another, better version of myself will eventually live the life I keep avoiding the more disciplined me, the healed me, the less frightened me.

But that person may never arrive.

There is only this life. This unfinished self. This Wednesday.

What have I been telling myself I will begin “someday” that may already be asking something of me today?

#gospelechoes #midweekreflection #gospel #stpaulofthecrossretreatcenter