After kids are put into motion each morning and our child care provider (with this many kids, it is more economical — to say nothing for adding some sanity to logistics – to have in home care) arrives, I begin my days with a morning offering. I am part of the worldwide Apostleship of Prayer and this morning, as I said the daily prayer with Fr Kubicki via a YouTube feed (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvF-5b93MDM&eurl=http://apostleshipofprayer.org/&feature=player_embedded), I noticed a bit of text on the screen which up to this point, I hadn’t actually noticed .. it reads:
Whatever your walk of life, the Apostleship of Prayer offers you a simple, profound way to live it. We ask you to pray every day for the good of the whole world. That’s our whole mission. We believe prayer is the way to hasten the Kingdom of God on earth. Even if we don’t understand how it works, prayer itself changes things for the better. We also know that those who pray open themselves to loving service of others.
“Even if we don’t understand how it works” … it seems to me that one of the fundamental crises facing character development in our youth today is the perception that we can and should be able to explain everything . And yet, people of faith, at least those who center on a divine person, have at the core of their faith a mystery. There is something greater than ourselves and we are accountable to that something, regardless of what you call it. My own faith tradition centers on a god who became a man and died for me on a cross a couple thousand years ago. Do I understand that? No. Does it even make sense to me a lot of days? No. Do I still believe it. Absolutely.
Such it is with the notion of the value of every life, from conception to natural death. Even though science HAS gone ahead and given us some rather definitive evidence supporting what most people have always “known”, the hand of the divine in the beginning and ending of our earthly lives leaves it full of mystery. Do I completely understand it? Well, enough to defend it I suppose, however un-articulately. But believe it? Absolutely.
By the way, if you are looking for one of those “missing somethings” in your days, maybe you’re just not starting them right. Consider giving over a few minutes to prayer to start your day … the Apostleship of Prayer can show you how.
