Dumbarton is changing all the time, but what about us? Are we changing with it?
By Canon Gerry Conroy
The latest restrictions imposed and numbers of new infections rising not just in our own country, there is a temptation to wonder if we will ever escape the clutches of this virus. How long is it going to be with us? It’s hard to see a return to normal life, certainly in the near future. It would be easy to blame the irresponsible actions of others, to point out their seeming lack of concern about the disease, continuing their lives as if it didn’t exist.
It is almost part of our human nature when we are in a negative situation to succumb to that temptation to look for someone to blame. Perhaps because we see everything from our own point of view, we therefore find it a challenge to consider the world from anything but our own perspective and when it is negative we get sucked into it. Then there is a stubbornness in us, a stubbornness that grows and imprisons us and makes change difficult. It’s as if we refuse to look at things differently, as if we don’t want change.
This is one of the problems we have to confront, not just in dealing with this pandemic, but in dealing with our life in general: Because we have this mindset that is consumed with reality as it is around us, we find it hard to change the way we do things, the way we perceive things, the way we think about things. We can find it hard to imagine even the possibility of something different, let alone that it might be better. Jesus criticised those in the Gospel who refused to change how they viewed the people round them, He said, ‘Even after seeing that, you refused to think better of it and believe in John the Baptist’, they refused to change how they approached life, even when to every one else it was clear how wrong they were.
It can be hard, to break free from things that hurt us or oppress us, it can be frightening to change the way we do things because it involves a risk, it involves taking a chance. It can be easier to stay in our self-made hell, or the hell that someone else has made for us, rather than believe in the possibility of a resurrection, so we refuse to be free and remain in our prison.
God is a God of forgiveness and second chances as the first reading showed us. Christ came to set us free and he didn’t let his fear of the cross prevent him dying on the cross to give us that freedom as St Paul said. He won’t now abandon us in changes forced on our life. Perhaps this pandemic, perhaps other things in life fill us with fear, but with Christ we can face it and conquer and even learn to live life in a new and better way.
- Canon Conroy is parish priest of St Patrick’s, Dumbarton