Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - August 17, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Young people never read obituaries. How could they ever be of any interest to a twenty-year old or a teenager? The elderly read them so as not to miss the death of a friend or neighbor. Reading them brings mixed emotions. We read of the death of an eighty-eight-year old. Unless we're eighty-seven, we think that's pretty well up there. The death of a forty-seven-year old mother of three from cancer strikes us as more tragic. A fourteen-year old dead of leukemia is still harder to take. The death of a twenty-six-year old in a car or motorcycle accident seems so unnecessary, so avoidable.
Depending on our age we ask ourselves how or why we should still be alive. Shouldn't we be thankful, more determined to use well the life and vitality we have? At times I think most of the lessons to be learned from observing life and what is around us are all summed up in this: they are invitations, reminders, alarms telling us to use the moments, the days, the years well and from our depths. Generally, these lessons tell us, rule out certain ways of using time as beneath the dignity of ourselves and of time itself.
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!”
