Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - July 7, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Worship, Mass, sacraments celebrate the presence of God's power, help, grace. They should make more evident at this moment what we theoretically know is always true: God is present, near, loves us, is with us. Yet the actual experience of Sunday worship can be anything but helpful. The sound system works fitfully; there is a continual disturbance near us; the music depresses us rather than lifts us up; the preacher sounds lifeless, unprepared or irrelevant. And all of these can happen at one service! We leave feeling we have been involved in a losing battle for encouragement and nourishment. What do we do? Go home resentful and angry? That just makes it worse. This particular Sunday might be the exception, the coming together of all the worst possibilities.
Perhaps there's something we can do about all this? Something we can offer? Possibly we should look into finding a Sunday worship that is more helpful to us. To go back Sunday after Sunday for more frustration and a depressing experience might be too much. If it's simply the exception we probably should realize that our attendance was something we “offer up,” a service where we offer God our disappointment rather than our joy.
One sees parents with little children who every week come and spend a very distracted hour torn between what is going on at the altar and walking little children. They must offer God their good intention and be contented with that. Possibly such people learn more about sacrifice than those for whom everything goes smoothly.
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!”
