Our Never-Dying Souls In Jesus Are The Light Of The World

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus speaks powerful words about our soul, raising the question of what is there if we gain the whole world at the cost of losing it. To ponder the soul that God has given us, I'd like to share two stories with you.

The first story is from my days of teaching at our Theological School at Trinity College. During that time, I

was a member of the Centre for Ageing and Pastoral Studies at Charles Sturt University (now called the

Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture). I undertook research into our relationship with God as we

get older. Especially the relationship the people in their 80s to 90s had with God. (If you look up, you will

see that I have written two chapters on this subject in two textbooks and two academic journals).

In our research team was a senior gerontologist whom I used to call Doc Long fondly. I called him Doc

Long because he had the spitting image of the US Congressman Rep. Clarence D. Long. He played an

essential role in securing funding for the Mujahedeen rebels' covert war against Soviet troops in the 1980s Afghanistan. His name was immortalised in the 2007 Hollywood movie Charlie Wilson's War. "Doc" was Long's nickname.

In 2008, Gerontologist Doc Long was 83 years old and was a real character – he was young at heart and

never considered himself old. He always used to refer to the elderly we were working with as "old people"

and got offended if anyone had called him old.

I shared this brief anecdote to tell you about someone very special we met in a Retirement Village in

Melbourne. This extraordinary person's name was Gertrude. She was 88 years of age. As a way of trying to

understand how we may think about ourselves and God as we reach our 80s and 90s,

we used to invite people to write poems as a research method. Here is a part of the poem Gertrude wrote for me.

My beautiful face wrinkled and old;

my hair is no longer curly and long …

My beautiful body isfragile and torn;

wasting away like a candle lit in the barn

My soul shining bright like a flame,

I don't think I am old

I love my God, who keeps my soul warm

Until I die when I am old

Very beautiful. Gertrude passed away after about a week of writing this poem. And I remember us

celebrating her life. Later, I came to know more about the beautiful life that she had spent in service to God and fellow human beings.

The second story is from my final year as a theological student in 1992, when I completed the 6-month Advance CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) in a psychiatric ward at the Auckland Hospital. I hope you remember me sharing my experiences from that time and about meeting the exceptionally skilled Jesuit psychotherapist Fr Marcus Prior.

Recently, while searching for a book in a box that I had not unpacked since 1999, I came across the DOS

computer disks in which I had stored verbatim I had written from the days of my CPE. (As some of us may remember, DOS discs were the discs in which we stored computer-written documents in the 1990s before USB storage sticks became the norm). I was extremely excited to find these discs. I got the documents in the DOS disks converted into modern Microsoft Word format so that I could read the verbatims of conversations and therapy sessions again.

Compiling these verbatims helped me reflect on them and discern God's grace, which was at work in the people who came for therapy.

The people who came for therapy were ordinary people like you and me but who had challenges in life

like all of us have, but found it difficult to understand or cope with them.

The purpose of the therapy sessions was not to treat people as "patients" or dis-eased with mental problems but to help people discover the purpose of their lives. In giving therapy, Fr. Marcus spoke to the soul of the person and helped the person to understand why God has placed him/her in the situations they have found themselves in.

Reading them anew amazed me, and I discovered new insights into my writing.

Although I never formally became a psychotherapist, I have studied the art of accessing people's souls and developed skills in ministry over the last thirty years or so.

With these experiences behind me now, I came to read the verbatims I wrote in 1992 with fresh eyes.

With those new insights, I could throw fresh light on the words of Jesus: the question Jesus asked in

the Gospel reading: What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or