If the Mayans are right, how should we live our last year?

My sister wrote the below on one of her blogs.

If the Mayans are right, how should we live our last year?:

 

What if this were the last New year? How would you plan to live your last year?

There are those who believe the Mayan prediction. It will be interesting to see how it impacts their living, if at all?

St Paul believed he lived in the end times two thousand years ago. His advice was to make no major life changes – if you are married stay married , if single stay single. Instead, he suggested, focus on what’s more immediately important. And what was that – to Paul and to you? And me? This deserves some reflection. 

 

(Via Catholic in 21st Century - Mo)

 

It reminded me of something I said during a round table after giving a personal testimony/talk (about my experience of evangelising through teaching and pastoral work with young people) during our annual 2-day Study Session at our Mother House in Ploërmel, Brittany. A fellow Brother asked me what aspect of our Founder's (Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais) writing spoke to me most in relation to evangelisation. I replied that for me it was his emphasis on the quality of our human relationships as a fundamental aspect of our apostolate to "make Jesus Christ better known and better loved".

This also links back to a New Testament passage that has been a constant touchstone for me since my studies in Paris back in the 1990s:

John 17:20-23

“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one - I in them and you in me- that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.

If we live our relationships with others (young people, colleagues, fellow Brothers, family, strangers…) in love, a true love that is selfless, joy-giving, God-inspired, then we bear witness most powerfully to the God who has loved each of us since before we were born and who invites us into eternal union with him through his Son.

We should live EACH DAY of our lives with the expression of such love as a priority… but do we?

And what if this year, this day was to be our last? Who is in need of knowing how much God loves them? Into whose lives am I being called to bring the light of God's love?

Love, and the relationships through which we express our love, are really all that matters. CARPE DIEM