Oct42026
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There are two times in your life that you are totally alone: the moment before you die and the moment before you give a speech. I have been giving homilies at Mass for over 35 years, and I still feel the nerves before I talk. This is what I do. Before I speak, I think about the first sentence that I will deliver. As soon as I start talking, the fear goes away. It is true.

 I was in the corral for my first Boston Marathon. I was very nervous. I thought, “Why am I so worried. I trained for six months to do this. I have home field advantage. I ran up Heartbreak hill over a hundred of times. I got this.” But I still felt the nerves until I crossed the start line. Once I started running, all the anxiety went away. The nerves were transformed into pure energy, and I ran my best race.

Nothing cures anxiety more than the start line. When the Lord was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was a mess and asked to have the cup pass by him. He was like a soldier who wanted to desert the army. Then he stood up and started his work of redemption. He completely transformed, and he now looked and acted like a five-star general.

Paul in the letter tells us to have no anxiety. Everyone has fear, nerves, and anxiety. For Paul, it is replacing the fear by crossing over the starting line; that is, walking through the door of opportunity.

When the students arrived in September, I saw a sofa in a U-Haul with a young student sitting on it, waiting for his father to help him carry it into the apartment. He was hunched over with his head buried in his hands. If I could read his mind, I would be sure he was thinking, “What did I get myself into…Why would I ever want to do this?” If he had asked for my advice at that moment, I would have told him this: “You are right. This is a big city; you don’t know where anything is, you don’t know anyone, and you have no friends here. But you have one thing here: a door of opportunity. When you walk through it, you will have the best schools and the best teachers. You will learn skills and be able to do things you never could before. People will greatly benefit from you because you decided to leave your comfort zone and walk through the door of opportunity.

I used to think the hardest thing in a marathon is crossing the finish line. Hardest and greatest part of the marathon is getting to the start line. Jesus said that he will had his vineyard over to tenants who will produce fruit. That means God gives us doors of opportunity. We just have to walk through them.

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