We all know someone who is a contrarian! the kind of person who offers us disrespect, insult and inconstancy. You know, the person you don't even talk to. Keep this person in mind.
In the Apostles Creed (great transition, huh?), we recite the phrase "He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead". Think about this. The only begotten Son of the Father, who sits at his right hand and is our judge, who, according to scripture, empowered us to become sons and daughters of God!
Now remember the guy in the first paragraph? The one we don't even like to talk to because he's so thoughtless and rude to us? He's us. Really. By all our sins, venial as well as mortal, we offer him insult, betrayal, disrespect, etc. If we had friends like us, we wouldn't talk to them.
Yet Jesus Christ, the Lord, keeps trying to get us to talk to him! He's always there, waiting and ready, to greet us in prayer. Think about that other guy, the one we avoid because of how he treats us. The about the love, the Charitas, it would require of us to greet him with open arms. That's what Christ holds for us, for anyone who would simply say a prayer. And think about the relationship with God the Father he offers us. Would you or I take that obnoxious fellow to our parents house? Prayer is a privilege, whether it's a badly recited, barely remembered Pater, or an ecstatic hour before the Blessed Sacrament!
AND RELATED NOTES ON SOME OF THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES, from our family devotions.
Monday we were saying the Rosary and some things occurred to me. (Mondays we do the Joyful Mysteries.)
During the Annunciation I was struck by Mary's Fiat. Here is this teenage girl, at that time and place when would have been about 13 or 14, about the age of an 8th or 9th grader, who simply says "yes" to God, to His will. And just here we sit saying "no". Not so much to the big things. We generally do pretty well with big things. But in the little things.
And life is made of Little Things.
Things we ignore, like the prompting to put down that novel and colour with the kids, or skip the latest episode on TV and pray with our Sig O. We should say yes to the little things as well.
During the visitation, I thought of Our Lady travelling through a region that was rife with violence, brigandage and intermittent rebellion, as a teenage girl, to help out a pregnant relative. Then I thought of another kind of visit: I walk past a Catholic church every time I go to the Library, but only rarely do I stop in for a Eucharistic Visit! The unborn infant John lept in his mothers womb to be in the presence of his Lord! And, that brought me up short again, at the Finding in the Temple. What did He say? "Didn't you know I would be in my Fathers house?".
Obviously, I have been remiss in availing myself of the privilege of prayer, and in making the most of the opportunity to visit the Blessed Sacrament, physically as well as spiritually, in prayer.
