JMJV
Reflection for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
My Dear Good People,
It’s the first recess of the first day of school for two first graders (in the days before kindergarten), and two little girls come running to me in the school yard.
“Sister, guess what! Kathy and I are the same old!”
“The same old what?”
“The same old! Kathy’s five old years and I’m five old years, and tomorrow is my happy birthday and tomorrow is her happy birthday and we’re both gonna be six, so we’re still gonna be the same old! Forever! It’s MAGIC!”
And these two little girls run off into a friendship that was to last through graduation day in eighth grade. I wonder if they still rejoice in being the same old on the same day forever.
In today’s Gospel (Mark 10:16) Jesus once again tells us to be like little children , or we will never enter eternal life. I’ve often thought about what He meant. What is it about children that He promised heaven to those who possess their qualities? I think one of their virtues is finding magic in everything. Nothing is ever just the same old thing. The same old is magic, and it lasts forever.
It’s easy to get bored with life as we mature. Day after day, the same old thing: off to work, house to clean, pick up the kids from sports practice, send them off to college, sit and look at each other in a nearly empty house, wait for the sun to go down so we can go to bed. The same old. We can easily miss the magic– of a new sunrise every single day, the quiet sweet river running along the drive to work, a wooly caterpillar on the fence post by the front walk, hearing the closing hymn sung by the choir that’s growing older but still rehearses every week so it will be beautiful. It’s going to church on Saturday afternoon to confess the same old sins, but receiving the liberating mercy of Jesus in its glorious newness each time, saying grace along with millions of other Christians before supper, watching the excitement of a little boy as he prepares to blow out his six birthday candles, a cat lying in a sun puddle on the living room rug on a cool morning in October—we’ve seen and done these things over and over, and we can become blinded to the beauty of it all. But Jesus says, be like a child who discovers something new every day in the things that we take for granted, and calls it magic!
No matter how difficult life can be, there is always something to be thankful for. Perhaps this week we can see our world as though for the first time, through the eyes of a five old year child and thank God for the beauty, the excitement of the same old. Maybe it’s not really the same, and perhaps it’s not as old as we think. Each time we find God in the wonder of a single moment, we are finding, not magic, but a miracle of His love for us.
And that love will last forever.
Let’s resolve to thank Him every day this week for five wonderful, beautiful, amazing things that we have begun to take for granted.
That will be thirty-five X each of us—that’s a lot of magic—no, that’s a lot of miracles!
God bless you, Dear Ones.
A view from the hill behind our Motherhouse…
Another one of God’s miracles!
Thank you, Lord, for the beauty of Your creation!
and then