CWCO: Morning Prayers to Share, Day 3

Day 3: Greed

“Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.”
Archbishop Fulton Sheen

In the Gospel reading for May 4 (when this was originally posted), Jesus is praying the high priestly prayer of John 17. One passage is particularly striking:

”I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”

Notice the posture of openness and generosity – rather than selfishness or greed. To truly have the “heart and mind of Christ,” this is the attitude we need to have not only with our possessions but with other, less tangible gifts as well. “Everything I have is Yours, Lord, to do with as You see fit.” There are times when these words stick in our throats … When we want to be doing “A” and it is abundantly clear that we are needed to do “B,” for example (moms especially know what I mean here).

Today as we rest from our ordinary activities – the ones that make us feel “useful” and “important” in the world, perhaps, as well as those that are not inherently bad but simply unnecessary – we do well to ask ourselves, “Have I given everything I have, everything I am, back to the one who gave it to me first? Do I seek my family’s good before my own, and His glory above all?”

Please join me now in praying: Glory be to the Father...