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coronavirus, pandemic, prayers, present moment, thank you, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, to do list
The sun is playing hide-and-seek outside and everything is still. No movement in the trees, hardly a peep from the birds. That’s how it feels inside too…I am wanting only to hold on to what feels like nothing. (How can that make sense?) I ask myself if that means I have moved to another stage of this new mode of living, settling into what will surely be called “pandemic mode” but just as surely could be named listlessness or exhaustion. When I knew we were going to spend more than weeks in “quarantine” (the “just stay home” order), I had a vision of clearing away all sorts of excess in my living space and lack of order in my spiritual and physical routines. Now after almost two months of this new kind of opportunity, I see little progress.
We don’t have any idea of what the future holds and can’t hold on to any past certainties so have been told repeatedly to “live the present moment.” Therein lies the rub on days like today when I have a list of tasks in my head but no sense of how to go about them.
So finally I picked up a little, lovely, home-made book of prayers that our friend Carolyn created a couple of years ago and sent as a gift. There I found near the end of her prayers a possible way to meet each hour of this day. Carolyn speaks:
Dear Jesus, I inhale your words and exhale doubt, fear, anger, judgment and despair so your breath may reach my heart whole, clean, unencumbered, pure, alive and joyous. Thank you.
And I say, “Thank you, Carolyn” for a way through this day, this collection of present moments that I can use as an offering that becomes my best gift of self today.
Psalm 119, the longest in the book of 150 psalms, has 176 verses and can be the study of a lifetime. In a commentary this morning I read that the subject of these prayers is the hard learning one gains in light of a multitude of hardships and circumstances encountered on the spiritual path…Experiences are often repeated again and again. As we go over the same territory learning it in new ways, truth becomes grounded. Insights are gained from each spiral of ascending experience.
It is said that behind every great man is a great woman and this is certainly obvious as one learns the story of Saint Louise de Marillac. Born on August 12, 1591 near the small town of Meux in the southwest of France, Louise had lost both her parents by the age of fifteen. Discouraged by her confessor from becoming a nun, she was married and had one son but soon became the longtime caregiver to her beloved husband until his death. Although she had wise council from two notable men – one a bishop and the other later declared a Saint (Francis de Sales), Louise’s vision of her spiritual path came from an “inner illumination.” In this way she understood that “she was to undertake a great work under the guidance of another person she had not yet met.” That person was St. Vincent de Paul. Vincent, busy with his “Confraternities of Charity” – aristocratic ladies who were helping him serve the poor and neglected children – was reluctant to become Louise’s confessor, but he soon realized that she, of the peasant class herself, could not only meet the poor as an equal but also was gifted in teaching and organizing helpers of their own class.
Three times in the readings for this second Sunday of Advent we hear the call to “Prepare the way of the Lord!” We are accustomed to this directive but I always question how it is that we are preparing. Is the rush to Christmas shopping the way? The thought of gift-giving is certainly part of the thinking about that activity but it has become such a frenzy in our culture that I wonder how many of us stop to think about the genesis of the custom. Here are some questions for us – me included – for today’s reflection about preparing.
During the final siege of Aleppo, Syria, in December of 2016, I found myself more distressed than I can ever remember when watching the evening news. Seeing the faces of the children hiding in bombed out buildings as they waited for rescue was heartbreaking. I have rarely felt so helpless in the face of innocence and those faces stayed with me calling me to do something in addition to my prayers for peace.
Before I learned any of the prayers that are at the heart of my Church practice, I knew I had protection from heaven each night while I slept because of the simple prayer that helped me close my eyes in trust. You may have learned it too. In a sing-song voice to that matched the rhythm of the words, countless young people repeated night after night:
My first thoughts on this fifth Sunday of Lent centered around my relatively low level of attention for what (in my experience anyway) was always called “the holy season of Lent.” I do not disparage that title; more Christians are likely aware of religious practice during these six weeks than at any other time in the year. It makes me wonder, however, why the fervor doesn’t often last throughout the fifty days of the Easter season. Perhaps we find it easier to do penance than to rejoice! If so, what does that have to say about our image of God? But I digress…
Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the most celebrated theologians of all times, held in the esteemed title of Doctor of the Church. Not only was he a theologian and philosopher but he was also a very devout man and priest who wrote beautiful prayers and hymns. Fr. Don Miller (Franciscan Media) captures the essence of his genius, I think, when he comments that “unity, harmony and continuity of faith and reason, of revealed and natural truth pervades his writing.”