Who would have thought that joy could be so difficult to hold on to in the daily gift of life?  It is a passing moment of blessing that reminds us of the joy that we are called to hold and be held by that is our Lord Jesus.

William A Meninger a Trappist monk writes in this updated version of “The Imitation of Christ” these prophetic words. “the world is too much with you.  It is all that you know.  All you being, all your faculties are taken up with it.  Its legitimate beauties, its inevitable troubles, its lures and preoccupation are, a means to something beyond them. The very best of what this world has to offer is not even a shadow of what is to come, which I have prepared for those who love.” (p. 70)

We are reminded in these wonderful words of blessing that we should look through the creation that surrounds us, not because it is hold no goodness, (it does) but because it can become a trap that absorbs our desire for the greater, the holier, the more mysterious. It is how we discover the true person we are created to be when we choose to break the bread and drink fully of the cup.

This is the trap of sin. To settle into the lesser and be absorbed into the mediocre.  God desires greatness and has created each of us to share the saintliness, the holiness, the wonder of Jesus in our hearts.  This is the truth of our call of vocation, as husband and wife, as priest and religious, as those called to live the single life, to see and experience the greater mystery and strive to follow the way of the cross.

The trap of sin is this banality of evil that allows people to speak of monstrous cruelty without seeing the great gift of life and choosing to destroy human life for a momentary gain.

God Bless

Fr. Mark