Ordinary Time

Pause

Start by placing your feet firmly on the ground
and placing your palms facing up on your lap
like you’re ready to catch something.

When you breathe in, receive God’s love into every inch of your body, mind, and heart.

When you breathe out, share God’s love into a world which desperately needs that love.

Take a deep breath—in and out.
And another one—in and out.
And one more—in and out.

Be at peace.

Listen

From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, to promote the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus.

To Timothy, my dear child.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I’m grateful to God, whom I serve with a good conscience as my ancestors did. I constantly remember you in my prayers day and night. When I remember your tears, I long to see you so that I can be filled with happiness.

2 Timothy 1:1-4

Think

One of my favorite parts of the midweek mass at the church where I’m currently serving is the Prayers of the People. Everybody in the assembly reads aloud the names of those who have asked us to pray for them. There is great power in a whole congregation reading aloud the names of those who are sick, in transition, experiencing hardships, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, preparing for ordination or marriage, going to school, or recently deceased. I often pray for names of people I’ve never met, and I feel connected to them in a special way.

In today’s passage, Paul writes to assure Timothy that he is being held in prayer. In a time way before telephones, Paul had no clue what was going on in Timothy’s daily life, and so his way of maintaining a connection is to pray constantly for Timothy, in both good times and bad times. Our invitation as Christian disciples is to engage in that kind of constant prayer, whether it’s for a personal friend or a person on a prayer list at church, relishing in the connection being knit together by God.

Cody Maynus

Pray

Dear God, I give you thanks for the many people who are praying for me, even if I don’t know about it. Help me to remember others, especially those who are in some kind of special need. Amen.

Go

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery in Anne of Green Gables (1908)

As you move into the realities of your daily life, go into the deep woods of your imagination, look up, up, up into the sky of your heart, and feel a prayer.