January 10, 2022 Reflection – Now is the time for prayer…

January 10, 2022
Monday, 1st Week in Ordinary Time

Dear Family of Mary!

There can often be a let down after a major time of celebration in the Church Year. We are back to “ordinary”! That term was given its meaning by the Church! Ordinary is just ‘numbered’. But don’t we feel it as tedious and boring! But, how can our lives be boring when we live each day, each minute with such a wonderful God!!!

Our Lady taught us a key to living our ordinary days with God in this message:

October 2, 1986“Dear children! Today again I am calling you to pray. You, dear children, are not able to understand how great the value of prayer is as long as you yourselves do not say: ‘now is the time for prayer, now nothing else is important to me, now not one person is important to me but God.’ Dear children, consecrate yourselves to prayer with a special love so that God will be able to render graces back to you. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

The key word here is “now”! If we want to actually connect with the Lord in prayer, we have to stay firmly rooted in the “now”. We have to let go of our ponderings and memories, our worries and our fears, and realize that God is with us “now”! He is only and always with us in the “now”!

Sister Ruth Burrows, O.C.D., was quoted in the Meditation of the Day, in Magnificat for January 10, 2022. Here is an excerpt of her meditation. It is really helpful in this regard:

“We need enlightened eyes of the heart to pierce the disguises, to say “yes, you are my Father” in the now. There is only one point, so to speak, where God is for us, and that is the now. How readily we would escape from the now—into what we think should be, to what may be, to what has been, to what is coming. How much energy and attention we waste worrying over the past, being anxious and doubtful and full of fear for the future. He is with me now, quietly, unobtrusively asking me to receive him, to recognize him. Now, in this one little circumscribed moment, I can say “yes, Father.” Such a poor little “yes”; no grandiose certainties that I will never do this again, never commit that fault again—no dreads and despairs that I cannot be faithful. Only a little “yes” now…. That is to live in my poverty relying only on him to see me through, to enable me to say “yes” —to do what I can’t—be faithful unto death.”

Isn’t it so true. Prayer is not really prayer until we stop thinking about the past, the future, etc. and just be with God in the moment. Just say “yes’ to Him now, only now, always now!!

I think much of our perplexity would dissipate if we could all pray in this way, as Mother Mary tells us.

“…now is the time for prayer, now nothing else is important to me, now not one person is important to me but God.”

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
(c)Mary TV 2022