I should be acting NOW – and not waiting until tomorrow.
We are sitting on the cusp of the new year.
And that is such a great day for me.
I always sit there on New Year’s Eve and think about all the things that I am planning to do over the next year. It is exciting for me. There is just so much planning involved.
And planning necessarily involves waiting. Instead of jumping in with sleeves rolled up and getting to work.
And I have been thinking about that today because it seems to me that perhaps this is not the very best way to approach my spiritual life.
You see, the whole point of making plans is to prepare myself to achieve the best possible outcome. And that means that there are things that I need to do to get things ready and in order. But my spiritual life cannot be like this. In my spiritual life, I am being called to do things NOW. God is not saying, just wait until you are better at it and then do it. He is not saying, when you have more charity, then practice charity. Instead, He is saying, use whatever shreds of charity that you happen to have and apply those to right NOW…
“Jesus said to His disciples, ‘A nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingly power and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten pounds, and said to them, ‘Trade with these till I come.’” (Luke 19:11-28). The master never told the servants when He would return. Instead, He said, trade until I return. And this means that He expected the servants to get working NOW…
Saint Augustine says, “God has promised you ‘forgiveness’, but He has not promised you ‘tomorrow’.” There is no time for waiting. For waiting is wasted time in a life that is short and should be put to use.
Once a soul from Purgatory appeared to his daughter who was a nun in Belgium. During the apparition, he spoke to his daughter… And he told her that if souls were able to understand the true suffering of Purgatory, they would do anything in their power to avoid spending any amount of time there and they would offer any number of sacrifices to reduce the time of suffering of the Holy Souls who are suffering in Purgatory.
And today – on this, the cusp of the New Year – it seems only natural that I should be pushing ahead, with a sense of GREAT URGENCY – towards the sanctification of not only my soul, but the souls of the Holy Souls in Purgatory and the souls of all the people in the world who are at risk of being damned to Hell eternally or sent to Purgatory until the end of days…
And it seems that I should be doing this NOW – and not waiting until tomorrow.
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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