Return to the Path

Fr Richard Healey shares an allegory of getting lost on a fire trail in Booderee National Park to illustrate the spiritual concept of repentance. They liken the experience of losing the path and encountering dangers to the spiritual journey where one may stray from God’s intended direction. The speaker emphasises the importance of metanoia, a transformative change of heart and mind, to realign with God’s path. They encourage listeners to embrace repentance, return to the Father, and find life and abundance in God’s love, drawing from personal anecdotes and vivid imagery to inspire a return to a life of goodness, freedom, and truth.

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(00:00:00) – A couple of weeks ago, I was continuing to explore around the area. I was in the Booderee National Park and there were lots of tourists along the beach. So I thought, I’ll just go a different way. And I saw on the map that there was this fire trail that kind of led along the beach and would get me to the other end of the beach, and I thought, I’ll just walk back along the beach. It made sense. But I started along this fire trail and it looked reasonably well maintained, and I walked for a couple of kilometres along it until suddenly the fire trail just disappears into a lake and I’m like, hmm, okay. I could kind of see the other side of the lake. It was a few hundred metres across. I thought, well, I’m not going to attempt to walk on water, but I could probably make my way around the side there. It was pretty overgrown and pretty bushy, but I thought, I should be able to push my way through.

(00:00:56) – And I did, and got to the other end of the lake and climbed up the sand dune on the other side, only to discover that there’s another lake across on the other side. So it looks like the whole valley is flooded. But I thought, well, there was a higher point, a bit more of a sand dune. So I climbed up there to see if I could get a bit of a vantage point to work out where I was and how I could get through, because the bush was just so overgrown and so thick. It was really difficult. And almost stepping on a couple of black snakes didn’t help the situation as well. And so, I saw that the whole valley, where the fire trail was supposed to go, was now underwater. So I thought, well, the beach is over that direction, so maybe I can get through. And I saw on the map that there was another kind of trail that should have been there. So I thought, it’s only a couple of hundred metres that way.

(00:01:47) – So I pushed through and started making my way there, but the bush kept just getting too thick and I couldn’t push through. And so I tried another way, and then another, and that didn’t work. I continued this attempt to find a path for maybe another 20 minutes to half an hour and then I just thought, no, this is just not gonna work. I couldn’t see a way through. So I thought the only thing to do in this situation is just to turn around and to head back towards the fire trail, because I know that I can get out at least going that way. And that’s what I did. And it’s kind of a reminder to me that there are those times when we do wander off the path and sometimes, it’s a pretty reasonable reason that we do this. But if we end up there in the thick undergrowth and the weeds and the bush and, and the snakes and all of that, that it can be just a reminder that I don’t think this is where I’m meant to be.

(00:02:46) – This is not the path that I’m destined for, because we were created in the image and likeness of God, created to be, to share in the very goodness of God. We weren’t created to get lost in the bush. We were created to find life. And Jesus will tell us in the Gospel of John chapter 10 verse 10 that I have come that you may have life in all of its abundance. And sometimes we settle for something that is so much less than what God has invited us into. And when we’ve wandered off, there’s only one thing that we can do in the first part of that is to change our minds, that we need to have. And in the Greek, it’s the word metanoia. We need to change our minds and the way that we’ve been thinking. But just as when I look out at the congregation tonight, I can’t actually discern what you’re thinking. I can get some hints from your facial expressions. I can get some insights into what you’re likely to be thinking, but every single one of us remains a mystery.

(00:03:55) – You know, our thought patterns are utterly just our own, and no one else is able to to understand exactly what it is that’s happening inside that precious brain of yours. And so we first need to change our minds. The second we need to change our direction, we need to get up and allow our feet to begin to lead us in a different direction to the one that we’re on. That’s when this new life is possible and we can choose to stay, get lost in the bush. We can choose to find our way there and to be, you know, beaten by the branches and scratched on our legs and arms. Or we can say, okay, I’ve had enough of this and I want to come on home. I want to return to the path of the father. I want to go back to the life that God has promised to me. And that’s what this whole idea of repentance is, is all about. It’s turning around, as I said, first in our minds. That change of mind, the metanoia that needs to happen, that we change our way of thinking, but it needs to then be translated into action, that our bodies also begin to do this new way of life that God is inviting us into.

(00:05:16) – And part of that journey is to come back, to return to the father, to come back to the life that God has called us to. Has invited us into the life that God destined us for from the very moment of our creation. A life of goodness, a life of freedom, a life of truth, that’s what we’re invited into. So today, as we continue through this new season of Ordinary Time, this season of discipleship, the season of growth, let’s indeed be people that make that decision to come back to the father, to return to the path, and to come back into that community of life that invites us into that freedom that we can only find in God and allow the Lord to bring us back, to bring us into that place of goodness and life, and to remind us that it’s in this place that we find our life. It’s in this place that we are loved. It’s in this place that we find our home with God.