August 27th - Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Recently, I started rewatching The Office. During the final episode, Andy Bernard says a striking quote, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” Throughout the series, Andy was always talking about his glory days at Cornell, his friendship with Broccoli Rob, and time singing in his acapella group. Yet, he recognizes by the end of the show when he left working at Dunder Mifflin and started working at Cornell, that he misses his previous job and the friendships he formed along the way. I am sure we have all had this feeling, where in hindsight we realize how much we miss things which we never thought we would. Where we thought about the “old days” fondly while forgetting to appreciate the present moment we are living through. As summer comes to an end, children prepare for another school year, adults prepare for another fall season of football and apple cider, and all of us continue through the season of ordinary time leading up to the season of Advent. Both our liturgical year and our lives are experienced through cycles, and we can get so bogged down in preparing for the next big event that we forget the beauty that is the present moment. Think of the lives of the saints, we look at them with the knowledge of their whole lives. We are blessed to see the whole picture of their public ministry, but there are so many days of their lives which are forgotten to history. Those days when they simply woke up and got to work spreading the Gospel. We need to always remember to appreciate the moments and times in which we find ourselves each and every day, because these are the days when God is speaking to us right now. If we get so caught up into thinking “how great things used to be,” and “how great things can be in the future,” we forget the present moment of grace when God breaks into our lives and reveals his love for us.

Andy Bernard went from a calculating yes-man when the audience was first introduced to him when he was working at Dunder Mifflin Stanford, who said, “I’ll be the number-two guy here in Scranton in six weeks. How? Name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake. I’m always thinking one step ahead. Like a...carpenter...that makes stairs.” To someone who the audience loved by the final season. What happened? Growth. The growth that takes place within us every day, lets take a moment to realize that we may indeed be currently living in the “good old days,” and remain in the present moment, not allowing ourselves to be consumed with what comes next.