Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - January 16, 2025
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”
Before Communion we say: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you; say but the word and my soul shall be healed.” Appropriately at this vital moment in Christian life we express our conviction that God can and will help in our deepest needs. The leper too, approaching Jesus in Mark's Gospel (1:40) expresses it: “If you will to do so, you can cure me.” Such a belief keeps us at prayer, keeps us from despairing in the face of life's crushing disappointments and hurts. This conviction contains the belief that what seems impossible to us can be changed by the power of God.
Further, it helps considerably to believe that not everything is in our power and know-how. That's probably the central and most difficult element in our trust in God, this surrender of our own control of everything. But it's what keeps a family praying when Dad or Mom or a sixteen-year-old daughter is diagnosed with cancer. This trust in God and even surrender to God does not mean that we refuse or ignore what medicine and all the ingenuity of our modern world can offer. We know God works through them. It's simply that we accompany surgery and/or chemo with a trust in one more powerful.
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!”
