.
I set before you
life or death,
blessing or curse.
Choose life, then,
Today’s first reading makes it all seem so simple.
That’s helpful for those of us who complicate matters unnecessarily.
Every day brings decisions with invitations to discern which response will lead me to more abundant living and heart-felt joy – the joy and abundance which is evidence of divine life experienced and embraced.
Perhaps my problem is that I don’t recognise the ups and downs, the encounters and the experiences of each day, as moments of opportunity to move with or against God.
Instead I too often stumble blindly from one moment to the next, allowing busyness, fears, compulsions and routines to anaesthetise me against the opportunities for encounter with the divine.
Every moment and every circumstance is an opportunity to meet Jesus.
Last weekend before the 9am Mass at Timaru’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart I took a stroll across the Roncalli College school yard. When I was a student there (last century) every morning the entire St. Pat’s High School community would gather for “ranks” and begin the day together with prayer including a well-known Morning Offering in which we offered every prayer, work, joy and suffering of the day to God.
And my good days were (and still are) when every expected, unexpected, unwelcome, unwanted and unwarranted moment becomes an opportunity.
It’s a call to live consciously…
…and to embrace every opportunity for greater maturity of relationship with Jesus who is God-with-us.
It is truly easy to ‘stumble’ through each day lunching from one duty or activity to the next without recognizing in each an opportunity for encounter with God, and our fellow traveller’s through life. Great insight. Also a good reminder of the benefit of that daily morning offering learned at college last millennium: O my Jesus, I offer you all the prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for the intentions of Thy divine heart. Give me Your blessing and keep me from sin. Amen = let it be so.
Thanks & blessings Fr John
As well as more excellent thoughts, another great illustration to accompany us through the day. Thanks John.
Fr John, It sounds as if the “well-known Morning Offering ” is a ‘set’ prayer, known to all Catholics. If this is so, please would you provide the words for those of us who are not “cradle Catholics”?