With stars and creches packed away
we pray our scheduled hours
and liturgies
without emotional promptings,
beginning the ordered weeks
of Sundays by the number.
No frills of added songs,
or ornamentation entice us.
no prelates officiate
as their vestments get tucked and pressed,
for coming festive days,
so this every-day-time
of praying
for laborers for the vineyard,
and for our own perseverance,
forms our day by day devotion,
so much the same
as our daily occupations
and interrelationships.
We pray for champions,
the leaders and saints
whose zeal for work
gives way only to fervor for prayer
that urges their neighbors
to higher plains,
especially in this holy year
of every-day blessings,
as in greater sacrificial service,
until the thousands
have learned the pace,
like Mother Teresa’s
women of love
who glorify the simple sari.
The stout designs
of Francis, our pope,
bring purifying to a sullied Church
by strategies
that were set in place
by Pope Saint John Paul II.
If ordered time
seems boring or repetitive,
we can apply the rules
of friendship,
for though our greeting to a friend
may use the same repeated words,
our joy and delight
will differ with the day,
and the thought we carry
about our friend.
and we know his door
remains unlocked,
like the holy doors of mercy.
January 11, 2016
Bonaventure Stefun, OFM Cap.
See more reflections here.