Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - July 30 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Riding a cable car down a steep hill in San Francisco the tourist, gasping at the view, turns to whomever is near: “Whew! or “Wow; look at that!” The friend with whom we're sharing dinner tastes the salmon and says “Yummy” or “The ginger glaze (or the dill) does something, doesn't it?” Someone who has just fallen in love feels he or she has to tell someone or everyone about this extraordinary being they've met.
Not only in delight, whether small or great, but in grief or disappointment, it's the same. No matter how stunned into silent sobbing, we must tell the sorrow to another, and most appreciate a friendly voice or an arm around the shoulder or a hand on yours.
We can, of course, within ourselves cry out to God: “Thank you, thank you, Lord, you have blessed me so much” or “Lord, why? Why? Help me! Help me through this!”
Poet Franco Pagnucci writes that he and wife Susan “have a habit of sharing what we see when we go for a walk or on a trip. The other day she saw a great blue heron flying over the road. That was the first thing she had to tell me when she got home. She said, 'The fun of seeing things is having someone to tell about what we see.'"
Francis, the bishop of Rome, writes that telling others about the Lord Jesus, about what gets us out of bed, stems from a similar impulse. If “in your heart you know that it is not the same to live without him; what you have come to realize, what has helped you to live and given you hope, is what you also need to communicate to others." (The Joy of the Gospel, paragraph 121.)
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!”
