Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - March 3, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
So often Bard, a retired professor at the college, meets former students visiting campus. Those in their 40s, 50s and 60s may show signs of aging: graying hair or no hair, perhaps a paunch, a less jaunty gait, etc. Almost replacing a greeting will be some comment to Bard like: "You haven't changed a bit!" Or "You look the same as you did 30 years ago!" Very often Bard will respond: "You mean I haven’t changed in 30 years? There has been no improvement? That's discouraging!"
Bard has served as chaplain and taught theology. So he teasingly takes the comment about not having changed to refer to a stalemate in his interior life! In other words, his faults and limitations are still there or have grown worse. But the church, with her annual pre-Easter season of Lent, aims to help us become more profoundly like Christ, to renew once again our birth in Christ at Easter.
Our interior ‘physiognomy’, in other words, should be, not more lined or sagging, but more radiant and youthful, full of hope and trust. And consequently more joyful, free and at peace; transformed, remade in the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Saint Paul writes: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." (II Corinthians 3:17-18 and earlier in chapter 3.)
"To those who welcome the Spirit, the Spirit gives each day a fresh liberty and renewed joy and trust." (Suenens)
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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