COMMENTARY

God’s love is present every day

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New Englanders can easily become obsessed with weather. Hurricanes and snowstorms lead us to the Weather Channel as if it were the holy grail.

Each season has its spectacles of heat and cold, winds and rain, sleet and sunshine.

October is one of the months, which is never predictable. We can have the glorious days of Indian summer or the early onslaught of winter.

Halloween night can be a lovely fall evening or a winter blast with children and their costumes wrapped under winter coats. Because of the vagaries of the temperature during October, it is a season that is usually measured day by day.

On a beautiful warm summer-like day, everyone notices the day and appreciates it. The sun lures the walkers and strollers, the outdoor café tables, the final trip to the beach. In the city every wall and stoop becomes littered with people basking in the rays.

Festivals and road races, flea markets and sports’ games become the excuse to loll around God’s great creation. Leaf peepers critique the colors and hues of each tree, constantly attentive to the peaks of fall’s display.

Knowing that winter is close behind any day, those extra days of sun and warmth are appreciated far more than they are in the midst of summer. Each beautiful day is a delight where the morning sweaters are shed and once again earth comforts us in her embrace.

October carries a metaphor for life within its days. Many centuries ago, spiritual writers used the expression “the sacrament of the present moment.” Within these few words is a whole guide to life. God is pure presence, beyond time and containing all time, neither past nor future but the eternal now. By our baptism we are given divine life, so we become part of the very life of God in Christ. That’s the theology behind the expression. More simply, it means living the life we have each and every moment, neither bemoaning the years we have already lived nor longing for the life we wish we had. This day is all we have and it is a potential gift to receive.

If we wake with hope and peace, confident that God is with us and that we will be blessed even in hard times or seemingly long days of pain or sorrow, the day becomes a gift as it is intended by God to be. If we wake with dread and despair, anger or hurt, the day will be clouded with self-fulfilling hours. Consider a newborn and the infant’s family. Parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles who see the child every day, notice the slightest changes: a smile, a sign of recognition, a stronger grip, a keener sense of alertness.

The child is never boring or bland; each day is a new revelation of growth and life, a new sense of belonging. Imagine if we could believe that God looks at us each day in the same way, with even greater love and compassion, anticipating our new signs of life, comforting us in our fears, carrying us through our dangers, protecting us in love every moment, never taking eyes off of us.

Consider the other end of life, an elderly person in a nursing home or hospital. If family is present, they also look for changes in each day: a strength present one day to be gone the next, alertness, signs of pain, weakness, smiles. No day is taken for granted. Some long for their days to end and if the longing becomes despair, their lives end before their deaths occur.

Imagine if we could believe that God looks at us each day in our declining days in the same love and hope as in our infant days. The same love and hope are in the heart of God present to a 95 year old as to a two week old. There is as much life in one as in the other for those who know that life in God is far beyond life as we measure it.

Consider a person living with a chronic or serious illness. Each day is a gift. The preciousness of life becomes more tangible; the treasure of life more palpable. The future is not guaranteed for any of us, but the sick know this experientially.

They can live each day far more consciously than so many of us who are too busy with life’s chores or distractions to even notice life itself. God is present to strengthen and console, support and encourage, to gaze with the eyes of love on those who suffer.

Catholics are a sacramental people. We don’t just think about God or interiorly talk to God. We engage God and are engaged by Christ in concrete ways. We are sprinkled with water, anointed with oils, fed with the living body and blood of Christ, sealed with chrism, joined in union and touched in love. Every day is a sacramental opportunity to be opened to the wonder of God’s love. One wonderful breath on a clear crisp fall day can fill us with the overwhelming breath of the Spirit of God. We move from receiving sacraments to becoming sacraments for the praise of God and the good of the world. Each present moment can be a sacrament of encounter with Love.