Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Recently on Father’s Day, my children gave me the DVD “Cliffy”, a story about the 61 year old Victorian potato farmer who won the Sydney to Melbourne Ultra-marathon. In preparing for the race he had to try and manage to get his distance per day up to something like 125km. I don’t know about you, but I think the greatest distance I have ever run has been about 13km, in the Senior Cross Country, when I was at school. It was completely exhausting! I can’t even imagine what it must be like to run 125km in a day, not to mention the whole 862km, as it was then to Melbourne. It makes one weary to even think about it!
At around the same time I have also been reading a book by that title, “Weary” which is a biography of the life of Sir Edward Dunlop. As a Prisoner of War in WWII, first in Java and then on the Thai-Burma railway, his race was of a different nature. It was a race to stay alive and keep others alive. As he battled as a doctor amongst his troops with cholera, vitamin deficiency, malaria, not to mention the wounds inflicted by both harsh conditions and an often intolerant captive force with very slim supplies is an amazing story. It is a very detailed account of those times, and so takes quite a bit of getting into, but very well worth the effort.
Why am I raising these little snippets of ‘running the race’ you may well ask? To answer that is to realise that all of us in one way or another are involved in a race. The analogy of using a race to describe life is often a very apt one. There are often many priorities, busy lifestyles, urgent action that requires our attention etc. How important it is to realise Christ at the centre of all that has to be done and needs to be done in the course of a day, a week, a month, a year. Grounding this race in prayer and realizing Jesus presence with us as we meet the challenges is a vital one. Christ through his Holy Spirit can
also help us NOT to miss what is important as we continue to run the race.
As it is written in the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 12:1-2) “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our faith.”
De Colores,
Fr Ian—Diocesan Spiritual Director