One of the earliest prayers I recall was this: “God, I want to do BIG things for you!” I was between five and six years old at the time, and prayer was a spontaneous, even impulsive, act often motivated by powerful, zealous emotions or thoughts. I didn’t know the implications of such a prayer, or that the attachment to “greatness”—whatever that entailed—would, or could, require monumental sacrifice and suffering on my part.
Because most of us are waiting for something bigger and better to happen to us in the future, or we dwell upon the regrets over what we wish we had fulfilled in the past, we neglect to notice the subtle underpinnings of the Holy Spirit’s movements in the only time and place we have been given—now.
Living in the present moment is a timeless spiritual topic, one that has nearly become a common cliché in Catholic parlance. Yet few of us strive, and even fewer of us live, in what we could call the here and now. Though mindfulness techniques have become popular in our culture, they fall short on how to adequately embrace the quiet stirrings of God in and around us.
Waiting To Live Is Not Living Fully
“… We tell ourselves, we don’t really have a life, but later we will ‘live life to the full.’… We may spend our whole lives waiting to live. Thus, we risk not fully accepting the reality of our present lives. Yet, what guarantee is there that we won’t be disappointed when the long-awaited time arrives? Meanwhile, we don’t put our hearts sufficiently into today, and so miss graces we should be receiving.”
—Fr. Jacques Philippe
Here is an example of how we might miss the opportunities given to us right now—when we are holding out for what’s next. We find ourselves bored with the dull, mundane drivel of daily life. (I know I do—prepare meals, wash dishes, wipe noses and bottoms, clean laundry, repeat.) It seems that we are stuck in a spiritual limbo, in which nothing seems to be happening now—at least, nothing exciting.
Fr. Philippe is encouraging us to recognize God in the ordinary, even drab, moments of whatever season we find ourselves in. For me, it is knee deep in messes, scattered toys, moderating fights between siblings, and the endless piles of laundry. For you, it may be sending your kids off to college or seminary, preparing for retirement, or caring for a loved one who is aging.
Do Only What You Are Capable in This Moment
“There is only one thing we must all do, and that is employ well the time and powers at our disposal. Only thus shall we realize our destiny, and that is the whole purpose of life…When, quietly and without undue strain and with just that effort of which we are capable at the time, we put all our strength into what we are doing, then we may be said to live fully.”
—Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart.
I read a book during my early college years called Fully Human, Fully Alive by Fr. John Powell. It’s enlivening to awaken your senses and your soul to the truth that this moment is a gift. I never really cherished the gift of time, especially the present moment, until our daughter Sarah was born 8 years ago with a rare craniofacial condition that has no known cure.
Living fully alive means we learn to live well what we are given now. The efforts with which we choose to do the next task in front of us, and do it with our full capability, leads to the next moment, and the next. Fr. Guillerand tells us here that this is ultimately what leads us to our destiny.
Ask God To Use You for Small or Great Things
“Deign to fulfill your high purposes in me whatever they be—work in and through me. I am born to serve you, to be yours, to be your instrument. Let me be your blind instrument. I ask not to see. I ask not to know. I ask simply to be used.”
—St. John Henry Newman
The prayer of my girlhood to do great things for God was rooted in a naïve exuberance, a joy not yet jaded by betrayal or pain or prolonged suffering and loneliness. The seed to do something magnificent remains in my soul, yet I have gained a peculiar wisdom in the sense that God’s highest purposes tend to carry on well past one’s life on earth.
Doing great things means leaving a legacy. This is what it means to bear fruit for God’s kingdom. Along the way, life will be riddled with the miniscule, the minutiae. We will be irritated by grueling and unfulfilling tasks. But these, when done with love, compound virtue upon virtue over time. That is what constitutes greatness for each of us and a life lived fully.
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Photo by Joshua Hanson on Unsplash
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