Come Holy Spirit: teach me when to sit still and when to be active.
Each morning in prayer I end my holy hour with a brief verse from Sacred Scripture followed by a small reflection and a phrase, like the one above, to ponder throughout the day. These past few weeks as we have stopped and started, planned and unplanned and replanned, as we have sought to make lemonade from the lemons this has been a very difficult question to answer: When do I sit and when am I called to be active?

“No one can stay in any golden moment, and no more will I let any trick of light betray me to a house that is nothing but a door.” (Jessica Powers from Songs Out of Silence ”No One Can Stay”) To sit and be active must remain in constant harmony in our lives. When we sit to long their becomes a frozenness hindering us from moving forward and when we fail to stop, slow down and ponder we miss the small beauties and blessings enriching the moment with love. Our life of faith must follow the joys and blessings shown in the example Jesus where even as died on the cross he looked toward the gift of life God shares with each of us. The short verse from Jessica Powers (Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit) is a reminder, all contemplative prayer must end with a choosing to seek greater and more glorious. The trick is when we have a worldly view of “great and glorious” and miss the small treasure placed before us. This is especially found in our families and circles of friends when the “great and glorious” is a shared smile, a touch or the gift of presence acknowledged and lifted to God. The betrayal of the door is the leaving behind the golden moments in search of the glory of the world the never satisfies the heart made for love. It is choosing to do the once simple act of love, blessing another with Jesus’ presence by becoming a blessing in life.
And this is not easy. Flannery O’Connor shares this recognition of how hope does not me an absence of troubles or suffering but rather the blessing of life, but at the same time knowing there is always a struggle in the seeking of hope.

“Dear God, About hope, I am somewhat at a loss. Is so easy to say I hope to––the tongue slides over it. I think perhaps hope can only be realized by contrasting it with despair. And I am too lazy to despair. Please don’t visit me with it, dear Lord, I would be so miserable.” (Flannery O’Connor from “A Prayer Journal” p. 17) How often I have often said a similar prayer. I am by nature a pretty hopeful and optimistic person and despair doesn’t creep into my thoughts that often but the struggle of the virtue of hope is real. Choosing to sit in hopefulness doesn’t mean we abandon the active pursuit of the good and holy. God has called us to be a pilgrim people, a people on the move seeking the justice and peace on which hope must rest. It’s easy to allow hope to be a destination rather than the locomotive moving us toward our true destination. It doesn’t mean I am running about aimlessly “hoping” but it does mean I am choosing to reach out and touch the other.
Before the quarantine I remember after Mass talking to a family and their almost walking baby crawled up to her father. She looked up in the hope of being gathered into his arms…when that didn’t occur she pulled herself up by his pant legs…when he still didn’t pick her up she reached as high as she could, arms above her head on the tip of her toes. This image reminds of the verse quoted below: we could be satisfied by the things of the earth, but God has made us for so much more. “God seeks a heart with bold and boundless hungers that sees itself and the earth as paltry stuff; God loves a soul that cast down all He gave it and stands and cries that it was not enough.” (Jessica Powers, from Songs Out of Silence “The Second Giving”) Each of us as we sit and as we go forth enter into a conversation of grace with God where in thanksgiving for all we have we see the place God has prepared for us filled with not the things of the earth but the love of the heavens: the warm embrace of a spouse, the laughter of a child, the gift of time shared abundantly. To sit and to be active in love is to be in the intimate, joyful and grace filled relationship with the other, with God and his holy people.
How do we do this…it’s always changing and always the same…the humbleness of the cross.
God Bless
Fr. Mark