Simply trust in God
Homily of Jan 24, 1974
Your life is like a thin fog, and you can’t quite see clearly. You don’t know where you’re going. You may not be here tomorrow. While you’re going through this fog, you may fall into a pit or step in front of an automobile.
I remember a night in London when they had the blackout during the war. Everybody carried little flashlights with paper over the light to dim it. I had one of these flashlights with me, but I still bumped right into an iron post that was right in the middle of the sidewalk! I almost broke my nose.
This is the thin fog of our life that we glory in. “Tomorrow we’ll go out into the woods,” “tomorrow we’ll go to see Grandma,” “tomorrow I’ll get that letter from my best friend,” “tomorrow I should get a check from home. “Tomorrow! We don’t know whether we’ll be here tomorrow or not!
What shall we do then?
Simply trust in God to take care of us. He put us here. He knows what he wants us to do. He knows exactly how long he wants us to live. And he will see that we live that long. We may all be here only five minutes more. But he’ll take care of it. It may be five years, maybe fifty; we don’t know.
When I was ordained at seventy-eight, I never thought I’d live to be eighty-three, almost eighty-four. That I would be a priest for almost five years would have seemed ridiculous to me. I thought I’d be a priest for a day or two, or maybe two or three months; perhaps a year. I wanted to end my life as a priest. I didn’t have any idea that I was going to live on and on like this!
But that’s the way God does it, you see. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, and I don’t particularly care at this moment. So long as I stay on the right side of God, everything is O.K. If he wants me tonight, why, he’ll find me! I’ll be in bed as usual. And if he wants me tomorrow, he will know where to find me then. It’s wonderful to be always prepared.
And sometime the fog will go away—this fog of life, the thin fog in which we walk. And we will see things as they really are—glorious, wonderful, sublime!
And God will be there, and Our Lady, and all the saints, and most of the people we knew on earth (maybe all of them, I don’t know). Anyhow, it’ll be a great day. The lifting of the fog!
God love ya!
Editor’s note – Fr. Eddie’s fog “lifted” on May 4, 1975.
