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Daily Scripture

+ 4th Week in Ordinary Time

Everyone needs a bit of ‘pocket time’

Readings: 1 Kings 3:4-13 Psalm 119:9-14 Mark 6:30-34

The apostles rejoined Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. Then he said to them, “You must come away to some lonely place all by ourselves and rest for a while.” [Mark 6:30]

The notion of Sabbath rest is rooted in the third of the Ten Commandments, “Keep holy the Lord’s day.” For Christians, Sunday is our Sabbath because it was the day on which the Lord rose from the dead. Holiness is the state of being whole, i.e., fully integrated, mind, soul and body. It is the acknowledgment of God as the ground of our being.

In truth, God doesn’t need the Sabbath; we do!

However, I am of the mind that we need to build into our daily routine, a mini-Sabbath or two. I call it ‘pocket time’ or time out from the pressure of our daily schedule. Some folks call it down time.

Of course, there are different strokes for different folks. A good power walk also can be a great opportunity for conversation with God. It’s an easy script. God talks and I listen.

All of us, married or single and whatever our call and career need pocket time every day and in that way we learn to live in the present moment. As my cousin frequently reminds me, “Yesterday is a cancelled check; tomorrow may never come; the present is a gift.” How true. I’m still a neophyte.

+ Holy Saturday 2009

Friday April 10, 2009

Waiting for the mystery to unfold.

Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:2 Genesis 22:1-18 Exodus 14:15-15:1 Isaiah 54:5-14 Isaiah 55:1-11 Baruch 3:9-15, 32-4:4 Ezekiel 36:16-17, 18-28 Romans 6:3-11 Matthew 28:1-10

Death has no power over him any more… and in that way, you too must consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus. [Romans 6:10-11]

In the old days Lent ended at noon on Holy Saturday. The ancient vigil rites were celebrated early in the morning beginning at 6:00 AM— in a near empty church—and concluded with the Vigil Mass at 8:00 AM in the presence of a very small congregation. Of course, as kids we were more interested in the noon bell that signaled the end of our ‘abstinence.’ We were less interested in the newly blessed baptismal water than in the candy that would satisfy our ‘sweet tooth.’

Waiting is not something kids do with any ease. When I told mom I couldn’t wait for the noon bell, she used to respond, “Don’t wish your life away!” I didn’t know what she meant then. I do now!

Holy Saturday is indeed a ‘vigil’—waiting time for those who how to wait and what to wait for. We wait not for candy but for the taste of new life and the sweetness of a fresh start. That’s what Resurrection is all about. We are waiting not for the resuscitation of a body but for the reawakening of the human spirit to the reality that the Jesus who died once has become the Christ who will never die again; the Christ who dwells among us and within us – ever the same, yesterday, today and forever.

Waiting is fallow time while the soil gets ready for the blade of grass to break through the crust of the earth to absorb God’s smile and wetness of God’s grace.

Waiting is for contemplatives who know how to blend mystery with reality, faith with determination, hope with courage, and charity with action.

This evening in Catholic churches throughout the world, catechumens will be baptized in the newly blessed Easter water and candidates already baptized either as Catholics or in another Christian church will complete their full initiation into the Roman Catholic Church. But all of us will renew our baptismal vows and promises to accept Christ as the one who leads us to salvation.

We would do well to find some ‘pocket time’ today to ponder the mystery of what it means to live in Christ.