Today’s find: Extra-ordinary

As I settled in to say my ‘regular’ morning prayer today, I realized that I hadn’t done so for the past several days.

Odd, but guiltless, this realization. You see, those days were spent at a retreat center…where I was serving on team for our parish’s fall ACTS Retreat.

So it’s not like I hadn’t been praying all those days. In point of fact, I’d probably been praying more – and certainly, more in community – than I typically do.

Taking a different path, just for today…
photo credit: Vic Jost

Praying, and being blessed deeply in that experience. My ‘ordinary’ prayer routine had been transformed, at least for a time, into something ‘extra-ordinary.’

I’m still digesting the many spiritual fruits of the past four days…and there may well be a blog post or two that emerges from my contemplation. But I did want to offer one wholly unexpected blessing I received while at LaSalle. My confessor shared a favorite quote with me – some wisdom first uttered by Pope John XXIII as he called the universal church together at the start of Vatican II some 50+ years ago:

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.

A retreat weekend. A council of the church. Either can be an invitation into the extra-ordinary, I’ve discovered.

Either can open our eyes to the simple blessings of breaking out of our accustomed routines.

Open to the possibilities…

The light of Christ can dispel our darkness…
photo credit: Vic Jost

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS