Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”

“Stay awake. You cannot know the day your Lord is coming (Matthew 24:42).” Most of us could use a little Advent in August, some reminders to live attentively. What is more difficult for us than to stay awake and to be alert? Throughout our lives we have these alarms in the form of accidents, illnesses, deaths of friends, yet find ourselves forgetting the impact they made at the moment. It's not simply the elderly who find it hard to stay awake past eight in the evening; it's the young too who in other ways so often live half-consciously, oblivious of opportunity, wasting time.

To be more alert, more attentive is so important that some religions, like forms of Buddhism, sum everything up in mindfulness. It's immensely productive of genuine living. Saint Augustine, great theologian of the Western tradition, probes his own spirit in his autobiography, Confessions. He remarks on how even though God was present within him, he was so often absent. God is present and close to all of us; life and its possibilities are available to all of us. We either meet them alert and wakeful, or we are oblivious of the passing moments. “Stay awake. You cannot know the day your Lord is coming.”

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!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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