Shipboard Stumble

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP
John 1: 29-34
January 20, 2008

  Recently, I took a Caribbean cruise with my ordination class to celebrate our 30th anniversary. One evening we decided to eat at 7:30 p.m. and then go to a show. That is a late dinner for me because I like to get up very early to pray and work out at the gym on the ship. After all, we eat way too much on these cruises! During the dinner I began to think about the next morning and came up with a plan. After dinner I went to the theater to see where we were going to be sitting. Then I rushed up to my room to brush, pick and floss my teeth, so that I would be ready for bed as soon as the show was over. The ship was rocking because it was a stormy night and we were in the middle of the Caribbean. When I got back to the theater I was hurrying to get to my seat before the show started. I went down a narrow side aisle that would take me to my saved seat. I was looking at that seat. Suddenly I was on the floor, having tripped over a small step that I did not see beneath me. I smashed my face on some immovable object and bruised myself. I ended up with an ugly black eye.

  What had happened? I fell because I was not paying attention to where I was, in the moment. I was thinking about tomorrow and looking to my theater seat and not to the floor where I was walking. I was not paying attention to the present moment. I did not see the step in the aisle where I was walking. I suffered for days afterwards. I am not like John the Baptist.

  John is keeping to the present moment. He is able to see what is right in front of him. He sees the Lamb of God coming. John sees the Spirit descend like a dove from heaven and remain upon Jesus. John is able to hear God speak in the present moment and tell John what John will see. Therefore, John is able to testify and proclaim the plan of God. Did anyone else with John see what John saw? No! Why did they not see? I suspect that they are more like me. They were thinking about some past event, reliving it, or thinking anxiously thinking about some future time, and making their plans for later, whenever that might be. They were not in the present moment where God lives and reveals divine events. God is not in the past or future. Those times don't exist. Only the present is real. The real God lives here and now. Listen, wait, watch, and you will not stumble.