The Call to Live Awake (Day 1)

How much do I understand what I believe? This was the pressing question that left me after today's talk on "Understanding the Eucharist". While I've attended similar talks like this throughout my life there was something different about this one.  Perhaps it was because I am more desperate in seeking the truth or perhaps God just really wanted me to be jolted awake.   

The speaker spoke loud and clear.  

Lex orandi legem credendi constituit. The law of prayer determines the law of belief or the way we pray reveals what we believe.

After the talk we gathered to share our thoughts and many in the table agreed mostly one thing.  How can we say that we keep seeking God in daily life?  In praise music?  In worship gatherings?  In one another? When we cannot even see Him in the Eucharist where His presence is the most real? There must be something terribly amiss about what we continue to profess as our belief.  Listening to the few young people who have decided to go to this morning's talk helped me open more of my heart to God's movement in my soul. 

He wants me to live awake.  He doesn't want me to miss it.  He doesn't want me to miss His presence that is real in the sacrament He has instituted for us to receive His unfailing love.  

The mere fact I can still forget just goes to show how terribly weak I can get with my resolve when I only use my own will to move me towards deepening my life of faith.  So the prayer I have learned of late is a pray whispered to me in the late nights of solitude.  "I pray I desire you more Jesus.  Please awaken my heart to your love."  Thomas Merton's words continue to echo and I am reminded that desiring God is already Him desiring us. 

The words resound in my head.  Live awake daughter.  And so I am jolted into awareness of everything else that is going on around me. Carrying that new found understanding of the Eucharist and how this understanding helps grow my appreciation for it and transforms me into answering the Lord's call to "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord and one another!" 

Living awake today I see the many different stories about the aftermath of typhoon Yolanda.  Living awake today I remember the remains of the recent earthquake down south.  Living awake today moves me to look through photos of these calamities and say a quiet prayer for those lives that have been affected and taken away.  Living awake moves me to be grateful that I am alive and safe and able enough to be of help to those who need me today.  

Last night when the rain poured and the wind howled and the electricity was cut for almost 4 hours, I laid on my bed listening to the strength of the storm.  How can nature can nurture life but at the same time destroy it?  How can God watch all of these?  Luckily I've read something that helped me grapple with these questions and to my mind it's simple.  God only moves when we pray.  

Today, I pray I stay awake to how He moves in my life so that I will never lose sight of the hope He alone has promised to fulfill.