AT THE END OF THE DAY
Saturday of the Third Week of Lent
My dear encountered couples:
When we start our days, we might have all the good intentions in the world. We are going to be nice to everybody. We are going to be kind, considerate, and do all we can to make life pleasant for everyone who crosses our path. Then after a few hours, or is it less, we are back to our old ways of acting and being.
And we find ourselves at the end of the day with many regrets as to how we have carried out our duties, and the way we have treated other people while doing them. We find ourselves like the people God is talking to in our first reading through his prophet Hosea:
“What can I do with you Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your piety is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.”
The good feelings we have in the morning, our many admirable intentions, often get lost in the shuffle, don’t they? Like those morning clouds God is talking about, like the dew on the grass that evaporates, they seem to vanish from our minds.
Why is that? The realities of life just might be incompatible with the reality of your characters. As husband and wife, for instance, the only way you are going to be able to deal with realities is learn what love is really all about and let it take us over as you experienced it in your daily living. Until then, like the tax collector in our gospel, all that you will be able to do is strike your breasts at the end of the day, and say, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
But that’s not so bad. At least we are acquiring some humility.
