Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - April 5, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Even if we haven't trekked across the Sahara or been lost in Death Valley, we have some experience of thirst, possibly from illness, the heat, or the wine we had at dinner. What better picture for the emptiness and ache in our hearts for perfect love, perfect bliss, fulfillment, joy or peace. In Psalm 63 we hear the cry: “O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.” We go through life with this thirst, hoping to have it satisfied in some person, some experience, some feeling, some teaching or technique.
What we look for too often is the easy fix, some all-effective cure for everything from pain to dissatisfaction and boredom. Mainstream culture and marginal culture agree in this: the first expects to find immediate fulfillment in a degree, money, some new technological development or pill; the other seeks an equally quick fix in drugs or ecstatic experience.
What the Lord Jesus promises is not an overnight release from illness or painful confrontations, but a way through all this by following him on the path of death and resurrection. We get from him not some miraculous exemption from life but a way through all that comes to us, a way of handling disappointment, conflict, failure and the disruption caused by violence, unrest.
This way tells us that self-emptying, self-forgetting is a sharing in the passion and death of Jesus. This leads to new life, resurrection, here and now in more patience, love, compassion, sympathy for suffering and hurt humanity.
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!”
