Be still

An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.  Idle hands do the devil’s work.  Those old expressions certainly ring true.  That is why they are so old – they speak truth!  The devil is indeed a crafty fellow.  He takes advantage of those times when we have nothing to do and suggests a path that certainly leads to no good.

Yet, in my own life, I find the devil can work equally well in time of great busy-ness.  So often, I wake up in the morning with a laundry list of things to do and not really knowing where to find the time to do them.  Jesus tells us often to pray constantly, but where can I find the time?  Sure, I can offer up all my efforts to God – that is prayer.  I occasionally remember to thank God for some grace – this is prayer.  I even remember – most days – to do my morning and evening prayers.  That is certainly prayer!

Yet all of these prayers are not enough.   First, they can become almost mechanical.  I check them off my list just like all of the other items on that day’s agenda.  Second, they are just me talking to God.  They are a one-way conversation.  I talk to God, complain to God, thank and praise God, but I never listen.  Who has time for that?

And that’s the devil’s gotcha.  Sometimes, he keeps me so busy I think I have no time to listen to God.  Most insidiously, he keeps telling me that all the things I do are really good things – I’m teaching, I’m preaching, I’m serving, I’m doing what people need me to do.  What’s so wrong about that?

In today’s reading (Mk 1:29-39), Jesus has a very busy day.  He returns from synagogue to Peter’s house and finds out that Peter’s mother-in-law in sick.  The disciples ask Jesus to do something and he cures her.  Pretty soon, the entire town is outside the door and Jesus is healing one, casting demons from another, and they just keep coming.  Then we read: “In the morning, while it was still dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. (Mt 1:35)

Jesus knew his mission was not to do what he wanted.  It was not to do what others wanted.  His mission was to do what the Father wanted.  And to know his Father’s will, he had to take the time – to make the time – to be alone with his Father, praying.

Peter and the disciples find Jesus and tell him to come back – there are more people that need him.  Jesus knows that as fruitful and fulfilling and helpful those healings were, they were only keeping him from his bigger mission, the mission of his Father, the mission he presumably discerned in his early morning retreat in prayer.

Jesus example applies to each of us who live such busy lives.  We also need to make the time to listen to God, to be enlightened by God, to know what his will is for us.  How do we find that “deserted place” where we can be still the noise and the busy-ness to listen to God? 

For me, adoration before the Blessed Sacrament is my first line of defense.  Other than the occasional holy hour during Lent, this prayer had never been part of my life as a child or young adult.  But about twenty years ago, St. Mary’s Parish in Ridgefield, my home parish at that time, began a perpetual adoration chapel.  As I was in formation as a deacon at the time, I thought maybe this would be something that would help.  At any rate, it couldn’t hurt.

Since that time, with only a brief interruption, four o’clock on Friday morning has been a special time in my week.  Now, I adore at the chapel at St. Marguerite in Brookfield, but the place doesn’t matter; the hour does.  In the dark and quiet of the early morning, my troubles, my worries, my concerns are put to rest before Jesus. 

And in the stillness, in the quiet, my priorities shift.  I discern where my wants and needs match with those of God, and where my wants and needs are simply my own wants and needs, things that the devil has placed before me to lure me away from God.

I would have never dreamed that this hour would be so important to me, but I miss it whenever the weather or my travel schedule keeps me from it.  I am refreshed by it whenever I am there.

Be still.