Live Today–Live for the Future
In Memory of Kolbe Bryant
Mark 3:22-30 English Standard Version (ESV)
Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit
“22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” 23 And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.””
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The world is mourning the death of Kobe Bryant. It is not is basketball playing in which I see his greatness, but in the example he shows us in living out his past into his future. He was had sex with a woman not his wife, who accused him of sexual assault. In the aftermath he admitted his wrong, paid the price, experienced a spiritual crisis and from his experience like Jacob symbolically walked with a limp, which shined through in the way he lived his life forward. To paraphrase his motto: “Live for Today–Plan for the Future! Redemption comes to us when we ask, and in that redemption we can live for the future.
In our scripture Jesus is being judged. People can be vicious in their remarks. We tend to act out of our own shadows, and in the process hurt many. Our criminal justice system is based onfear in much of the way it approaches criminal acts, rather than rehabilitation it brings punishment; our drug laws, the way we treat homeless people, and those who are different from us in looks, age, sexual orientation, religion, culture, race, and economic status. Through our worrying about ourselves, we live in fear.
Father Henri Nouwen gives a good description of what plagues our lives:
“Today worrying means to be occupied and preoccupied with many things, while at the same time being bored, resentful, depressed, and very lonely. I am not trying to say that all of us are worried in such an extreme way all the time. Yet there is little doubt in my mind that the experience of being filled yet unfulfilled touches most of us to some degree at some time. In our highly technological and competitive world, it is hard to avoid completely the forces that fill up our inner and outer space and disconnect us from our innermost selves, our fellow human beings, and our God.”
One of the most notable characteristics of worrying is that it fragments our lives. The many things to do, to think about, to plan for, the many people to remember to visit, or to talk with, the many causes to attack or defend, all these pull us apart and make us lose our center. Worrying causes us to be “all over the place,” but seldom at home. One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.
Our address is in the loving arms of God, and in those arms, let us remember the words of Meister Eckhart:
“Do not think that saintleness comes from occupation; it depends on what one is. The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy.”
In his struggles Kobe Bryant made his work holy and reminds us of our own humanity, and of our call to make our work holy. Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
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Father River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
415-305-2124
TEMENOS CATHOLIC WORKER 
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