Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - July 17, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
There was a song quite a few years ago entitled "The Tender Trap", and it was about marriage. Calling marriage a trap might seem flippant. But we can take it to mean that marriage draws two people into the kind of self-giving and sacrifice they would otherwise never imagine. If we don't like the word trap, we could say that marriage seduces us into these things, attracts us with the promise of love and intimacy into a life that entails we might say more than we bargained for.
With the arrival of children, couples find they must inevitably give up much of their freedom, time and comfort, to take care of dependent little beings. They have no choice about getting up at two in morning to have a sick child vomit on them even though they might have serious responsibilities the coming day. Parenting means giving, like the poor widow whom Jesus commended in the Gospel (Mark 12:38-44) giving of what we might seem almost to lack: time and energy.
Parents are often not giving of their surplus of energy and time; they are already, as we say, "run ragged." The widow, and parents, remind us all that true giving, true sacrifice, is not of what we have left over, but of what we could use for our comfort or convenience. Statistics on giving to charitable causes show that the poor widows still give the most: people of lower income give more proportionately than do the wealthy. As we recall the Lord's self-giving, we ask to be strengthened in our own willingness to give.
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!”
