Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - June 14, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
In the time after Pentecost one hears frequently at Mass this particular prayer: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth. Or, Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. In the same spirit, ever hopeful Pope Francis (May 8, 2017) urges us to be open “to the surprises of God. Never say ‘it’s always been done this way.’” That self-defeating attitude so often implies that we can’t expect anything new to come from our trust in God.
Say we pray and continue to pray, especially for something, and there is no immediate and specific response to our prayer. Aren’t we in this way saying that we are open to surprises, to an unexpected answer to our prayer? For instance, we pray for a family member who has advanced leukemia. Despite persistent prayer the leukemia is never cured. But, as a result the whole family has developed a heretofore lacking relation to the living God.
Or, the example of the praying family fires the doctor to some second thoughts about her agnosticism. These would qualify as surprising outcomes. But let’s leave other surprising responses which would never occur to us up to God’s “ingenuity.” Even if our prayer is not prayer of petition, but persistence in some form of meditation, some simple quiet receptivity to God, that too carries with it a trust in the love of the God and in God’s surprising effects in our lives.
Francis goes on to say: “The Spirit is the gift of God, of this God, our Father who always surprises us. The God of surprises. . . .Why? Because he is a living God, who dwells in us, a God who moves our hearts, a God who is in the Church and walks with us and in this journey surprises us. It is he who has the creativity to create the world, the creativity to create new things every day. He is the God who surprises us.”
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!”
