Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - March 26, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Psalm (118) 119 puts it baldly: “Before I was afflicted I strayed but now I keep your word” (v 67).
“Have you seen Ed lately?” a former student, Jerry, asks me. I say no. In his early twenties Ed was handsome, possessed of an impressive physique. He played rugby, drank pretty freely, ate well, and the fellow above would describe him as a “womanizer.” Well, Jerry tells me, he saw him recently. He's lost over a hundred pounds, is a vegetarian, doesn't drink, is very successful in his business. The most immediately available explanation seems to be the recent death of his mother, something he took very hard.
Another friend, bringing us up to date on his college classmates, says Ted is much changed for the better after a very serious accident and lives on a ranch in Utah. Bill has been sobered by the diabetes that has hit him in his thirties, has married and seems solid compared to his wilder younger days. Energetic, always-on-the-go Joe has pulled through a very rare disease after two precarious months in a hospital; still energetic but quite a bit more focused.
One hates even to entertain the thought, but affliction, death, pain, sickness, accident, sin, all seem to be the agents of our renewal. Richard Rohr elaborates well on this, that there is no growth without one of them, in his book Falling Upward. Though the same events can embitter and depress. There has to be some willingness to learn, to be taught, to utilize all that comes our way. “Before I was afflicted I strayed but now I keep your word” (Psalm 119).
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!”
