Friday, July 4, 2025

Thoughts on preparation



During my first years as a priest, I worked at one of the Jesuit high schools in St. Louis. One of my responsibilities was the organization of the school’s monthly “all-school Masses.” After about two years of arranging things – from the placement of chairs in the school gymnasium, to the recruitment of presiders, lectors and servers – it finally dawned on me that all these efforts, good as I hoped they were, had very little to do with planning, but lots to do with preparation. Indeed, I came to see that we don’t plan liturgies at all, any more than we plan any of our encounters with God, whether in prayer or in any other aspect of our lives.  Rather, the work is always God’s, not our own – the Spirit moves as it wills.  We don’t make God “happen.”  Instead, we seek to prepare ourselves in such a way that we leave ourselves more open and more available to the growth, the conversion and the discernment which are at the core of what it means to be a Christian.

 

All of us at times find ourselves surprised by life’s developments, by situations and turns-of-events which we have not planned.  Perhaps our best preparation as Christians for the unknown challenges and invitations that come our way is our ongoing commitment to live lives rooted in

faith, hope, and love whatever the current circumstances may be.  Then we will be ready, indeed prepared, for what we do not or cannot anticipate, for whatever the Lord wants to do for, with, and in us in the future.

 

Retreats are one special way in which we “prepare,” for both the known and the unknown, for both the inevitable and the unpredictable, knowing that if we remain rooted in faith, we will be able to recognize God’s presence and support each day of our lives. A.M.D.G.

 

Fr. Frank Reale, SJ



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