Life Ways

Life Ways

The Glory that Attracts Us
by Fr. William Murphy

Yesterday morning I did some food shopping for my parents and on the way to my car I passed by a woman with a full cart of groceries and a young boy sitting high in the cart, in the spot where children can sit. The boy, about two years old, was fixed in staring towards the other side of the parking lot. I looked and saw the object of his attention: a huge truck hauling a trailer full of groceries. A little girl would probably not have been as interested, nor would the boy himself be in ten or fifteen years. To a two year old, though, few things rivet attention like a huge machine. They draw kids like flames draw flying bugs.

In so many ways, our lives express our attractions. We seek what we want, and we want what we believe will bring us fulfillment. We have natural desires for food, companionship and order; for a sense of power and appreciation. We use our energies to join ourselves to the things we love.

When we succeed in connecting to the things we love, when we belong, when we achieve, it can be said we are "in our glory." That powerful sense of getting what we've set out to get is exhilarating. It's exciting. The dictionary speaks of glory as "a condition of highest achievement, splendor, prosperity" (as in "glory days") or as "great honor and admiration won by doing something important or valuable; fame; renown." Glory is living in the recognition that the focus of achievement has been fulfilled.

For that little boy in the shopping cart, nothing would have pleased him more than to have that truck - to be able to climb on it, control it, explore it and ride home in it. So fascinated was he with the power and size and sound of the thing that to be able to spend time with it would have been for him to be in his glory.

Glory is a word we also use when we speak about God. Today's scripture is peppered with the word. When speaking about God, glory sometimes takes on a sense which removes it from our experience. We think of God far off in the heavens. Jesus prays to his Father for the glory they shared before the world began. Images from medieval and renaissance paintings contribute winged angels and saints looking wistfully at the risen Christ or the Trinity assembled as for a family picture. As a result, heavenly glory can seem to have little to do with our daily lives.

That's too bad, because heavenly or spiritual glory is not so different from the glory of running a road race, doing well in school or getting kids to bed early. Glory, heavenly or worldly, is the experience of getting what we seek. When we achieve our goals or connect deeply with what we love, that's glory. Each of us can think back and easily name a few moments of true glory in our lives. These are the moments when we are lifted up out of our struggles and there's nothing in the world but us and what we were hoping for.

God deeply desires that we experience glory in our lives. In fact, the purpose for creating the world and all that is in it, including us, is that God wanted to share Himself. He created us so that we would know Him, and live forever in the glory of His love. God came to live among us in the person of Jesus Christ so that this truth could be told and explained by none other than the Author Himself. He remains with the world in the form of the Holy Spirit so that we will stay true to the path which leads to Him. Saint Ireneaus said, "The glory of God is man fully alive." What we want deep in our souls - the peace the world cannot give - is what God wants for us.

It's no secret that in looking for glory there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it. The wrong way to pursue glory is to do it without any connection to God. When our desires and loves make the rules for our behavior then the world begins to deform. The glory of being number one, of making the grade, of succeeding, of having what we want may bring a limited joy to us, but it begins also to drive us away from other important pieces of God's world. If left to its own direction, the glory we can create for ourselves will place us at the center of the universe. That is a dangerous place for any of us to pretend to be.

The right way to pursue glory is to seek God first. By placing God at the center of our lives, the joys of achievement and connection take on a double meaning. They are delightful in themselves and they also propel us closer to the glory that will be ours forever - life with God. Take the example of the boy in the shopping cart - the truck lover. If he loves trucks because he loves trucks, he may become a mechanic, a truck driver, a mechanical engineer. If he loves trucks and loves God, he may still become any one of those things but for a slightly different reason: he will somehow be using his love of trucks to enhance a life which is pleasing to God. As Christians we believe that this approach will result in a life more truly complete, for the man and for the world in which he lives.

I once met a young man who loved fixing cars. He did it all week. Because he loved God as well, he would spend time riding around the highways on weekends looking for stranded motorists to help. Often he and his fiancée would spend the afternoon that way. He never took a dime for it. His love of machines and his love of God fit together perfectly. That's the way life is meant to be.

Sometimes we feel that loving God means separating from the world-becoming dry and uninteresting. That's simply not so. To love God is to love His world. To find joy in this world is to be led closer to His eternal glory. On what we love is written the directions for finding the source of all love, and all true happiness.

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