Final Homily for My First Assignment: Caught Between Letting Go and Never Truly Letting Go

It was one of the first dates I remember going on.  And well, I thought I was in love.  As much as a sophomore in high school can be anyway.  We were going to see Titanic.  It turns out I ended up loving the movie.  The graphics were impressive.  It was loaded with history.  And well, I think it is safe to say that I have a little bit of a man crush on Leo.   But there was that dreaded scene at the end of the movie as Jack and Rose are floating in the sea.  Rose wakes up and Jack is lifeless.  They had shared so much and now it had come to an end.  She had to let go of him.  So she removed her hand and his frozen body sank into the sea.  As his body sank she simply said:  I will never let go.   She was caught in the midst of letting go and never letting go.

 

 

Life seems to be filled with these kinds of experiences:  experiences where we find ourselves having to let go.  And yet at the same time we know we will never be able to fully let go.  It’s a tension that exists and it is oftentimes one of the most painful experiences we can have.  But for whatever reason, and this is so hard to understand, it seems that God has allowed this to be part of the plan of life.

 

 

 

It is like the mom and dad who watch their kids get on the bus for the first day of school ever.  Their heart breaks for they know that in some ways this day they have to let go of their kids.  And yet in letting go, they will never be able to let go.

 

 

 

And there is the father handing his daughter over to marry.  She walks down that aisle and his world simply stops.  In an instant she is his baby girl, getting piggy back rides, she is putting makeup on for the first time, she is crying at her first broken heart.  And now she is going.  At the same time he is both letting go of her, and yet never truly letting go.

And there is the death of a loved one.  My good friend lost his brother who was only 12.  Only 12.  He was just a young boy with so much ahead of him.  Talking to the mom weeks after it happened she said to me:  I see him all the time.  I see him walking in our backyard.  I see him on the stairs.  I know he is gone. But yet he is still here.   She was letting go of him, but never truly letting go. 

 

 

The Feast that we celebrate today is a lot about letting go and never really letting go.  The Scriptures have been preparing us for this moment for weeks now.  Jesus has been saying to his disciples that he needs to go.  It is God’s will that he go.  For if he goes than the Holy Spirit will come.  In a sense, they will be given something even more.  But they don’t want him to go.  They want him to stay.  He is everything to them. 

 

 

 

Yet the scene we have from the first reading is so powerful.  The disciples are staring up at the sky.  Jesus is taken away.  He returns to Heaven to be with his Father.  And yet the disciples are transfixed.  They can’t seem to move.  They know they must let go, but they also know they will never let go.  And so they are stuck.  They can’t seem to move.  They don’t really know how to go forward. 

 

 

 

I really believe this can happen to us, too, as we are asked to let go, and yet not really let go in life.  For the parent seeing their child go off to school, for the father handing his daughter over in marriage, or for a person trying to grieve the loss of a loved one.  It can be so difficult for us to know what to do.  We know we must let go.  But we will never be able to let go. And so we become stuck.  We want the past and yet the past is gone.  We want what we used to have but that will never be possible again.  And somehow it seems like we will not be able to move forward in life. 

But notice what happens to the disciples in today’s first reading.  When they are stuck, when they can’t move forward, when they are caught between letting go and never letting go, they are visited by angels.  Two people clothed in white visit them.  They visit them to give them the nudge they need to move forward.  They visit them to remind them that God is in control.  God will take care of everything. 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that over the next few months all of us are going to be stuck in our own process of letting go and yet never really letting go.  For myself it will be very difficult to move on.  I have told people that I have not even given much thought to the next assignment in these past few weeks simply so that I can say goodbye to people.  And it is hard to move forward.  It is hard to leave when people have shared so much together.  But yet I know that we all will be called to move from that place of being stuck.  We are called to move well through the process of letting go and never letting go.  In order to do this, I think the scriptures invite us to look for our angels.    To look for the things in life that nudge us on.  To look for the things that help us to integrate our loss, to let go, but to never fully let go.

 

These angels can come in so many different ways.  They can come from a good cry.  They can come from a friend listening to us.  They can come from a hug.  A smile, or even a gentle goodbye.  They can come from a homily, a book or even a movie.  They can come from a song. They can come from new people who appear in our life without us knowing.  But God is faithful, and he wants us to be able to move forward, and so we need to look for these angels all around us. 

 

It is truly important that we allow these moments to happen to us in our life.  When we find ourselves in the midst of letting go and not letting go, we must find a way to listen to the angels.  For God always has something more in store for us:  for you and me.  God has not given up on us.  He continues to send us out to love and be loved.  To bear witness to him.  To bring about his kingdom.  We just have to listen to the angels around us.  They will help us and lead us on.