Progressing from tragedy into triumph

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Good News ReflectionFriday of the Second Week in Lent March 13, 2009
Today's Readings:Gen 37:3-4, 12-13, 17b-28aPs 105:16-21 (with 5a) Matt 21:33-43, 45-46http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/031309.shtmlAudio: http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/09_03_13.mp3
Progressing from tragedy into triumph
How awful we feel when our plans get sidetracked, especially the important ones. How tragic when we lose a loved one or a job or our health or a marriage. Discouragement sets in, as well as despair with hopelessness, anger and mourning.
That's how Joseph probably felt in today's first reading, because he lost his doting father, his family, his inheritance, his home, everything that was familiar to him, and all his plans, hopes and dreams for the future. He nearly even lost his life. Sold into slavery, he lost his freedom. He had every reason to despair and grieve.
Jesus gives us another example of ruined plans in the parable of today's Gospel passage. The property owner's hopes for a good crop were sabotaged by the tenants who were supposed to take care of his vineyard. And they murdered his son!
It's normal to feel resentful and to hold onto huge grudges when our lives get sidetracked by the sins of others, as in these two stories. Our lives would be so much better if only the "jerks" we know would stop causing so much trouble.
We try to cooperate with God's will, do what he's called us to do, and live out what he's designed for us, but then someone's sinfulness gets in the way. Grrrr!
The good news is that nothing is ever really destroyed — no dream, no plans, no relationships permanently side-tracked — if we're following Jesus and living in HIS plans for our lives. God is bigger and more powerful than any disaster and sinful interference, more loving than any loss. Out of deep concern for us, he starts planning how to make triumph come from our tragedies long before the disasters begin.
It was many years before Joseph became the Pharaoh's right-hand man and saved all of Egypt and his own family from starvation in the drought. It only took the vineyard owner's son (Jesus) a short while to rise from the dead and become the cornerstone of a victorious Church. How long did it take before he became the cornerstone of your life? What happened to you before you gave him your heart? What disastrous directions did you go in before you converted? How did the mess you got into convince you that you needed God?
Your own life is already an example of how God turns tragedies into triumphs. Whenever we ask for his help, he takes the bad consequences of sin and reshapes them into a glorious plan that will benefit many. Isn't it amazing? He is so awesome! It might take longer than we'd like it to take, but his plans for victory are always very amazing!
Make Jesus the cornerstone of whatever is going wrong in your life. Let him take it over with his own ideas and dreams for you, which are far better than anything you could dream up. And give him time to work.
Today's step on the Lenten journey: List the tragedies that you would like Jesus to turn into triumphs.
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