“Rejoice, O young man, while you are young and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth.”  

Carpe Diem.  Seize the Day.  The days of our youth do not last forever, so we should take advantage of our youth before we grow old.  I don’t think I’m all that old yet, although when I was young I thought people who were the age I am now were ancient.  But I can still feel it.  My back hurts.  I’m getting some gray in my hair.  Looking back now, I guess I should have appreciated it more, twenty years ago, when I could eat anything, when I could stay up all night.  I thought time would never catch up with me.  But everything changes.  It’s autumn now.  As I’m writing this, it’s the first cool night of fall.  And I love fall, but as much as I love fall and coming back to school, I miss the more carefree warm days of summer.  It’s so easy to say, I wish I’d gone to the beach when I had time off, or I wish I’d spent more time outside while the weather was good.  I’m not willing to say I’m in the autumn of my life, but I’m definitely deep into the summer.  The lesson in the first reading is to take advantage of your youth before you’re old and it’s too late.  Then it goes beyond that – appreciate your life before you’re dead and it’s too late.  The psalm emphasizes that idea, that all men will again become dust.  We should live fully in our time here on earth because that time will not last forever.

This message  should not be seen as hedonistic however.  “Yet understand that as regards all this God will bring you to judgment.”  We should enjoy our youth, because we will soon be old.  We should enjoy our lives because they will not last forever.  But we should be aware of our own mortality beyond that.  When we are gone it will be too late to do anything else here on earth – including good works and including repentance.  We should use whatever time we have to thank God for our lives and for our youth – however young we are.  I know I’m making a point to enjoy this time in my life.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be twenty again, but I want to do things I can do now that I maybe could not do when I’m eighty.  And since none of us knows if we’ll make it to eighty, we need to do what we can now, and live the kind of life we should so we’re ready to go whenever that time comes.

In the gospel Jesus is telling his disciples something similar.  He is telling them that he will not always be here on earth with them.  The verses surrounding the reading for today talk about people asking Jesus for help.  And as Jesus gives it, he says that he will not always be here on earth to do such things, so he needs to do them now.  He tells his friends that they will not always be able to sit and talk with him as they have been, and that they should take advantage of this opportunity while they have it.  They don’t understand.  And we don’t always understand.  It’s too easy to take the world for granted but we need to enjoy the time we have and make the best use of it because it will not last forever. 

Enjoy life to the fullest by doing what is right.  Carpe Diem.