We Can Do Better with Our Worrying

Homily for the Baccalaureate Mass of Mount de Sales Academy

I used to worry a lot when I was your age. Sometimes there was something worth worrying about, something wrong, something definitely not good, but usually my worries had nothing to do with the real world. My life was good enough; not always great, but good enough. And yet I worried. I have this idea—it might not be a good idea but that’s ok because I still really like it—that with every passing generation the potential for interior depth in the human heart expands while the culture around us gets shallower and shallower.

The problem is that we have all of this potential to be ‘deep’ persons with rich interior lives but the world around us doesn’t give us much with which to work. So, what do we do? Well, we worry, is what I want to say. We fill our lives with concerns that we don’t really need to have. When I was your age, we called that being emo. I have no idea what you guys call that kind of life today, the word ‘emo’ seems kind of old-fashioned to me now. But I know you know what I mean, because you kids these days love drama, and the love for drama isn’t helping most people in the world today. There is so much needless worry.

I was trying to think of what advice I would have liked to receive when I was your age, whatever wisdom I didn’t learn until later in life but would have loved to possess when I was 17 or 18 and looking at the years ahead with so much excitement and joy but also the fear and the anxiety that comes with venturing out into the unknown. And, at least for today, the wisdom I wish I possessed all those years ago can be said plainly: We don’t need to worry so much in life.

Why not? My answer to the question is given in the Gospel we just heard: God makes his dwelling in us, with us. The love of God—this dynamic reality of eternal self-gift, Father and Son and Holy Spirit giving themselves to one another in love—that same love makes its home in our hearts, makes its home in our lives. God is with us always, no matter what we do or where we are in life. We call that kind of divine love living in us, with us, ‘divine providence.’ We spend our lives in the hands of God, because God spends his life living in us, with us.

We worry so much and I don’t think we need to worry as much as we do. I heard a story a few weeks ago about a young missionary, someone just a few years older than you guys, who spent the last several months working with the homeless on the streets of Denver.

A friend asked this missionary: What have you learned from your experiences on the streets with the homeless?

The missionary thought about her answer for a few moments and then replied:

I learned about divine providence. You meet these people on the streets and you get to know them and then you start to care for them and then you love them. And then you want to do something to help them. And then you realize that you can’t really do anything to help them. They are homeless, suffering addictions a lot of the time, there just isn’t much you can do and you get frustrated and you worry about them and you lose hope. But then I realized that what I can do is leave these people in the hands of God, I can leave them with God, and that is enough. That’s actually the best thing I can do.

And then, I thought about my own life. I used to worry so much; about my family, about my friends, about my life and what I’m doing and going to do. And I realized that my life and the lives of my friends and family are also in the hands of God, just like that person living on the streets. Divine providence is real, and now I don’t worry as much. Somehow, someway, God is going to care for that person, and the same is true for me. I might not know how but I do not need to worry.

You guys, you graduating seniors, you need to know that divine providence is real, and that you spend your lives resting in the hands of God, whether you like it or not. How do we learn the ways of divine providence, to rest in the hands of God, to not worry so much in life? Here is one recommendation: Look back over your years here at Mount de Sales. Are you the same person you were when you started your freshman year? I guarantee you the answer to that question is ‘no.’ In fact, some of you I have known for three years now and so let me offer my testimony: You have changed, grown, matured. Mount de Sales has given you something, a formation in the ways of Christian discipleship, an education in the ways of eternal truth, a web of relationships that have filled your lives with purpose and meaning, and now none of you are the persons you were four years ago.

Here is a second question: Is the person you are now the product of only choices that you have made, have you created yourself, are you in complete control of your life and the lives of the people around you? I guarantee you the answer to that question is also a ‘no.’ There is goodness in the lives of each of you, beauty in the lives of each of you, that does not come from you and of which you are not the cause and that no person can really explain unless they come face-to-face with the fact that God is living in us, with us. We spend our lives resting in the hands of God.

The goodness and beauty in each of you that comes from God, the working of divine providence in your life, you also need to know that the love of God that is in you, with you, exists in you in a way that is personal and yours and that no one else in the history of the world has ever known. The love God has for you is personal, ineluctable, for you and you alone. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit, says St. Paul. There is a way that God is alive in you that is unlike the way that God lives in anyone else. The goodness and beauty that is in you and that comes from God is for you, made for you, fashioned for you. The life you will live in the years ahead, no one else has ever lived it—it is your life in Christ, for you to claim and call your own. And everything you need to claim that life and call it your own has been given to you these last four years. You have been given a gift, a divine gift, and my hope is that you make something of the gift you have been given.

And that reality—the fact that we have been given divine gifts to either use or disregard, to claim for ourselves or to push to the side—that is a reality deserving of our worry. The way we all obsess over drama these days distracts us from the remarkable possibility for our lives that is given to us in Christ. Maybe the problem is not that we worry too much, but rather that we worry about the wrong things. We settle for a lesser drama, let ourselves get caught up in parts of life that lack real depth of meaning. And so, we worry—about friends and family and our lives. Then life gets hard, loses its mystery, and we spend our years just moving from one practical concern to the next. We can do better with our worrying.

My prayer for you guys is that you worry well in the years to come. I think I know many of you, and Mount de Sales Academy, well enough at this point to say something that I am sure is shared by your family and friends and teachers and coaches: I cannot wait to see what becomes of your lives in Christ, if you let God dwell in you, live in you, live with you. Go ahead and celebrate in the days to come; you have achieved something that matters; you have worked hard. But then, when you’re ready, go claim the life that is made for you in Christ and for no one else and worry about it for all the years to come.

Homily preached at Mount de Sales Academy on Thursday, May 25th, 2023.