Our Lady Saint MaryBarry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Religion
Our Lady Saint Mary
Barry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Meditations
There are thoughts and actions which so enter the daily conduct of our
lives that we take them for granted and never pause to analyse them. If
perchance something occurs to make us ask what these thoughts and
actions truly and deeply mean we are surprised to find that we have, in
fact, no adequate understanding of them. We have a feeling about them
and we are quite sure that this feeling is a good and right one. We have
ends that we are seeking and we are satisfied that the ends are in all
ways desirable. But suddenly confronted with the question why,
unexpectedly asked to explain, to justify ourselves, we find ourselves
dumb. We cannot find adequate exposition for what we nevertheless know
that we are justified in. It is so with much that we admire; we have
never tried to justify our admiration, have never thought that it needed
an explanation; and then, unexpectedly, we find ourselves challenged, we
find our taste criticised, and in our efforts at self-defence we blunder
and stumble and hesitate about what we still feel that we are quite
right in holding fast.
It is common things that we thus take for granted; it is daily
activities that we thus assume need no explanation. For us who
habitually gather to the services of the Church there is no more
taken-for-granted act than worship. Worship is a part of our daily
experience. At certain times each day we offer to God stated and formal
acts of worship. Many times a day most likely we pause and for a moment
lift our thought to our blessed Lord for a brief communion with Him. It
is a part of our settled experience thus to draw strength from the
inexhaustible source which at all times is at our disposal. We know how
the tasks of the day are lightened and our strength to meet them renewed
by these momentary invasions of the supernatural. There are also special
times in each week when we meet with other members of the One Body of
Christ in the offering of the unbloody Sacrifice. We know that in that
act heaven and earth join, and that not only our brethren who are
kneeling beside us are uniting with us in the offering of the Sacrifice,
not only are we one with all those other members of the Body who on this
same morning are kneeling at the numberless altars of Christendom, but
that all those who are in Christ are with us partakers of the same
Sacrifice, and that in its offering we are joined with all the holy
dead, and by our partaking of Christ are brought close to one another.
We therefore lovingly take their names upon our lips, and enkindle their
memory in our hearts; and find that death, which we had thought of as a
separation, has but broken the barriers to the deepest and most blessed
communion, and that we are now, as never before, united to those whom we
find in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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