TIME FOR A CHANGE

June 10, 2007

"Only the dead never change". So it is said. Change is a law of life, and to live is to change. We undergo continuous change as we adapt to new circumstances and challenges. Psychology confirms this. After focusing on child and adolescent development for years and years, psychologists turned their attention to adults and discovered there's no "leveling off" to an unchanging state of life. Growth and change continue right up until the time of death.

Awareness of this should encourage us to seek continual growth, and to remain open to the possibility of new relationships, adventures, and projects. It should also prompt us to ask how we are changing, and what kind of persons we are becoming.

Sometimes change enters our lives abruptly, such as when we fall in love, are struck down by illness, or lose a loved one to death. Most change, however, takes place gradually and imperceptibly, like the dimming of light at nightfall or its gentle return at dawn.

We are too close to ourselves to see gradual change taking place in us over time, and we may, therefore, be completely unaware of how we are changing. Others often notice it right away. How many people have been taken by surprise at hearing someone say, "You've changed!" And when we were growing up as children, although we could not feel ourselves growing from one day to the next, how many times did we all hear, "You're getting so big!"?

While we have little to say about the natural changes our bodies go through in the course of a lifetime, other kinds of change are the direct result of volition and choice. Some of these changes are ones we desire, while others are the unintended, unwanted consequences that follow from some decision or action on our part. How is this?

All decisions and actions have consequences, and those consequences take place in the future, which we cannot see. These changes should be a matter of concern to us precisely because they are hidden from view. They are like the submerged part of an iceberg that can sink our ship.

For example, eating healthy food will automatically have long term beneficial consequences for our health. Eating "junk food" will have the opposite effect. The effects of diet are automatic, and have nothing to do with whether we want them or not. The only freedom we have is to make sound judgments and decisions now about what to eat.

As a general principle, then, along with our freedom to choose comes the responsibility to choose wisely, because our choices will have lasting effects far beyond our direct control or immediate understanding.

Of all the choices we face in life, the one with the greatest consequences is the one governing the attachment and allegiance of our hearts.

Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Mt 6:21, cf. Lk 12:34). To carry the Lord's logic a little further, we could say, “What we respect, prize, and value, we come to love; what we love we want to have and hold; what we have and hold we come to imitate; and what we imitate, we become”. In shorthand, you become like what you love.

So it is that sons become just like the fathers they respect and admire, according to the saying, "Like father, like son". The same holds true of daughters and mothers, of course. This happens not just through genetic inheritance, but also through imitation. The physical resemblance between parents and children can be quite strong, but this likeness often pales in comparison to resemblances of character and spirit.

The same dynamic process of admiration, identification, and imitation is also, common in the phenomenon we loosely call "hero worship". It's natural and healthy to have heroes when we're young: people we want to be like, who can inspire us to aim high in life and to do our best. Unfortunately, we know, not everyone our culture has crowned as a hero is worthy of imitation, but certainly many are.

What we choose to treasure, have and hold, honor and imitate has very deep and lasting consequences. In the Old Testament of the Bible, this teaching is presented in a stark, even shocking, way in Psalm 115:4 8, in speaking about the change that takes place in anyone devoted to material things instead of to God. It reads:

"Their idols are silver and gold, the handiwork of men. They have mouths but speak not; they have eyes but see not; They have ears but hear not; they have noses but smell not; They have hands but feel not; they have feet but walk not; they utter no sound from their throat. Their makers shall be like them, everyone that trusts in them."

The lesson is a forceful one. "Their makers shall be like them." We should be thankful for the gifts of material creation, and we are free to take delight in them, while working to insure that everyone has a just share of them. But we should never give our heart's allegiance or devotion to any created thing, lest we lose our humanity and become like what we have made, instead of treasuring, loving, imitating, and becoming like the One who made us. We can be happy only by being fully human, and we become fully human only by recognizing we were made in God's image and likeness, and by making him our treasure and our heart's delight.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap