Friday, June 29, 2012

God of My Daily Routine

I should like to bring the routine of my daily life before you, O Lord, to discuss the long days and tedious hours that are filled with everything else but you.

… In your loving mercy, look at my soul, a road … a bomb-pocked highway on which countless trivialities, much empty talk and pointless activity, idle curiosity and ludicrous pretensions of importance all roll forward in a never-ending stream.

Even if I should try to escape from my routine by becoming a Carthusian, so that I'd have nothing more to do but spend my days in silent adoration of your holy presence, would that solve my problem?… I'm afraid not…. When I think of all the hours I have spent… Reciting your Church's official prayer… Then it becomes clear to me that I myself am responsible for making my life so humdrum.… Through my own attitude I can transform the holiest events into the gray tedium of dull routine. My days don't make me dull--it's the other way around

Oh God, it seems we can lose sight of you in anything we do. Not even prayer, or the Holy Sacrifice, or the quiet of the cloister… can fully safeguard us from this danger.… But on the other hand if it's true that I can lose you in everything, it must also be true that I can find you and everything… Thus I must seek you in all things

It is not anxiety or nonbeing, not even death that can rescue me from being lost to the things of the world.… but only your love can save me, the love of you, who are the goal and attraction of all things.… Before you, all multiplicity becomes one; in you, all that has been scattered is reunited; in your love all that has been merely external is made again true and genuine. In your love all the diffusion of the day's chores comes home again to the evening of your unity, which is eternal life

Touch my heart with this grace, O Lord. When I reach out in joy or in sorrow for the things of this world, grant that through them I may know and love you, their maker and final home.

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