A couple of years ago I got a call from the son of a parishioner I knew in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
He called to tell me that his father had passed away. After I expressed my condolences, he mentioned that even though he and three siblings lived in the area, they had not spoken to their dad in almost a week. Sadly, his father had a heart attack and his body just sat there for almost a week.
This reminded me of the story that some years ago a mummified man was found in Southampton, N.Y. He had been dead for a year! He lived alone in a remote area and had apparently died of natural causes as he sat in front of his TV.
When the police found him, the TV was still on and he was just sitting there. Maybe this is a metaphor for the lives that some of us lead……Life is flashing by — great and small events that have profound and accumulating moral consequence are happening — while we just sit there — uncomprehending, motionless, and mute.
As life keeps flashing by YOU, what is and what has been YOUR response?
My Commentary:
This reflection confronts us with a sobering truth: it is possible to be physically alive and yet slowly absent from our own lives. The two stories I recount are disturbing not only because of the deaths themselves, but because of the silence surrounding them.
Days passed. Screens flickered. Life went on elsewhere — while no one noticed that a human being had quietly slipped away.
That is what makes the image of the television still glowing so haunting. It suggests motion without engagement, noise without awareness.
So much is happening — within us and around us — yet we can drift into a kind of spiritual paralysis. Relationships thin out. Attention dulls. Days blur together. We sit in front of life as spectators rather than participants.
The deeper warning here is not about isolation alone, but about responsiveness. Life is constantly asking something of us: to love, to forgive, to speak, to notice, to act.
Moral moments do not always announce themselves loudly. They accumulate quietly, one ignored nudge at a time. When we stop responding, we don’t suddenly collapse — we simply grow still.
My final question is the right one, and it is mercifully personal. As life keeps flashing by, what is my response? Am I awake? Am I engaged? Am I present to God, to others, to myself?
The invitation hidden in these tragic stories is not fear, but urgency: to turn off the screen, rise from the chair, and step back into a life that is meant to be lived — fully, attentively, and lovingly — while there is still time.
GOD DOESN’T GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT. GOD CREATES THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOU TO DO SO!!
Someone you know could use this message today. Please share it.
