Running Back and Slowing Down
We are just at the beginning of the Christmas season which lasts until the Baptism of the Lord. We are also just a few days away from the start of the New Year. Today, we celebrate the feast of St. John the Apostle.
In today’s gospel reading we find the beloved disciple who runs and arrives at Jesus’ tomb first. Notice how the beloved disciple runs, slows down, and waits for Simon Peter to enter. Although the reading does not explicitly state who arrives first, many believe that it is St. John whom we remember in the Roman Catholic Liturgical year as the beloved disciple. One of the reasons why the gospel is written in this manner is so we can place ourselves in the scene.
For the most part of my life, I found myself wanting to do the opposite of what St. John -- run away and avoid slowing down for God. Some of the reasons include wanting to immerse myself in everything that this world had to offer. The other side of it is, I did not know how much I hated this life that I was given.
During the beginning of the pandemic, I attended an online retreat led by Fr. Casey Beaumier, S.J. One of the things that he spoke about at the start of the retreat is to know what is our primary identity. Do you know what is our primary identity as human beings? It is to be the beloved child of God. Everything else of this world is part of our secondary identity like our past, present, and future. Our secondary identity includes desires, doubts, failures, accolades, technology, vacation, and the list goes on and on. What is the purpose of our secondary identity? It is to help point us back to our primary identity. It is to help me run back to God faster and faster and to slow down with God in all of my actions.
Up until the about the last ten years of my life, I wanted to run away from everything and today, I am learning how to run back and slow down with God. I ran through most of my life without God. God put on the brakes in my life through a gift in disguise – a gift in the form of cancer. I received my first cancer diagnosis in 2017. And since I was being scanned every six months after the first diagnosis, in 2018, the day after Christmas, I received my second diagnosis that they found a second mass in my pancreas. If it were not for my first cancer, I would never have known that there was a second one growing elsewhere.
Through my cancer journeys with all the doctor visits, tests, scans, results, and surgeries, I learned how much I needed to keep running back to God and slowing down with God. I never imagined how I am deeply loved by God with the new life and with the new eyes that I am given.
How do I find myself running? To where and to whom? Lord, help me to slow down to see the grace in Your workings.
Tram Nguyen