成人快手

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Luigi Gioia.

Good morning.

A well-known page from the book of Ecclesiastes says that there is a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up 鈥� and, we can add, 鈥榓 time to be earnest and a time to pause鈥� and 鈥渨ait in silence鈥�

There are times in which we have to endure the sense of emptiness and hopelessness, knowing that whether or not we are aware of it, they are healing something in us.
The 16th century Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila in her Interior Castle warns us against our well-meaning earnestness.

She uses this image.

We get so caught up in the excitement of the technical challenges involved in fetching water from a distant river through elaborate pipe systems and prodigiously effective pumps that we miss the spring welling up just behind the foliage near us, and which brings the water directly to us, naturally and silently.

Had we alternated our times of action with times of rest and silence, we would have perceived the spring鈥檚 gentle murmur, and delighted in the freshness of its water.

One of our greatest temptations in life is to want to control everything 鈥� even our relations.

We need to learn the crucial skill of staying still, and not mistake it with laziness. Waiting is not passivity, but the moment when we let our desire do the work.

According to Teresa, this very desire is the God-given living water that wells up from within.

Let us pray.

Give us wisdom to know when to act, Lord, and when instead wait in hope and trust, in silent desire.

Amen.

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