July is quickly coming to an end and this can only mean two things…school is about to begin and life at a parish with a school is about to get much busier again. I thought about this during my morning exercise.
Busyness is a weird word because it can have two sides; one is that you have a lot to do and the other is you are doing a lot. The one side is the reality of the needed work of caring for and doing the necessary tasks to make things work and run properly and the other is the doing of tasks and other things where you are running around in circles getting very little accomplished as you occupy every minute with a new thing and leave uncompleted tasks in your wake. At the end of the day, on one hand you feel tired but at peace even when your “to do list” is left with many items to be checked off but it was a day “well done”, on the other hand you feel discouraged and exhausted because just as in the first, the “to do” list is not completed, but the fruitlessness of jumping and running about has robbed peace from your heart.

We’ve all had those days. What brought this thought about…I had just come back from a wonderful Holy Hour in the church. Each morning, I wake up, thank God for the gift of the day, get dressed and walk over to our parish church and spend an hour in prayer with Our Lord. It is a integral part of my day and always makes my day a little better. But…it can get busy. Like anything else in my life, I can mess up my prayer life pretty quickly but stuffing all sorts of things into what should be time with Jesus. My Holy Hour usually consists of three small things: the Office of Readings, Sacred Scripture (usually the daily readings) and the reading of a small spiritual meditation. One is a duty and promise, the second is a act of love and service and the third is a opening of a joyful door.

So, how can I mess this up? It is simple, by trying to do too much. Rather than taking time in silence, I begin to wonder what else I should be reading and praying or meditating on. Rather than contemplating the presence of Jesus in the tabernacle, I can distract myself by the book, the the breviary, the rushed reading of Sacred Scripture seeking to ponder anything but the silence and peace that is presented to me in this hour of blessings and joy.
What made this morning different? Why was it so fruitful? Partly, it was giving away my Holy Hour. I had promised and offered the Holy Hour for the healing of a friend in the hospital, and then for a second gentlemen who also unexpectedly ended up in the hospital. I didn’t do anything markedly different; I still prayed my Liturgy of the Hours and did a focus on the Scripture, but during each of those prayers, I kept hearing the voice of those two gentlemen, praying together and joining in praising and adoring the one true God.
The hour ended with a refreshing peace and whisper of hopefulness.

On that morning I never did pick up the book of spiritual reflections I am reading, but the next morning, I heard this from Pope Benedict XVI, “…prayer is the encounter with a living Person to listen to and with whom to converse; it is the meeting with God that renews his unshakeable fidelity, his “yes” to man, to each one of us, to give us his consolation in the storms of life and to enable us to live, united to him, a life full of joy and goodness, which will find fulfillment in eternal life.” (P222 from “A School of Prayer”)
God Bless
Fr. Mark.