Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - October 22, 2020
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Someone has suggested the process of doing a crossword puzzle as a model for theology or for our understanding of life. She says it's "very arrogant to do it in pen." First you should do it in pencil since you'll probably find out something new that will require changing the original guess. Figuring out life might be like that, too. At a certain cocky young age -- or in a cynical phase -- we think we've figured it out or, at least, seen through it and through other people.
It's also likely that at the same age, we find it all very confusing, making no sense. With age and experience, raising a family, working, we come to some certainties or near certainties. But these can be dashed or changed, too, by new experience. Covid-19 is dashing many a certainty to the ground. Sometimes we develop new answers to life's mysteries; other times we realize that there are no answers that are completely satisfying for some of these conundrums.
Our experience of trying to live a Christian life must tell us in regard to many matters that the best we can do -- and it is the 'best' -- is to trust in the one who has shared our life and its puzzles and perils, Jesus Christ.
"O Lord God, who has called us, Your servants, to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden and through perils unknown: Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that Your hand is leading us and Your love supporting us. Amen" (Anonymous prayer).
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
