Friday, June 12th, 2020

Today’s First Reading is one of a Christian’s fundamental text - and maybe a good text to stick on the wall in the place where you pray. For when we go to pray, especially at home, we can feel the drag and struggle, the inner revulsion at the possible dryness of that time, the shock of adjusting from easy and direct worldly things to not so easy and immediate heavenly things. For this is the experience of Elijah today: “When Elijah reached Horeb, the mountain of God, he went into the cave and spent the night in it.” Horeb is not like the city and town life Elijah had been living: no more people or sound or easy distractions - just barren rocks, a few leaves and silence. Yet God is there - and what is important is that he is not in the easy distractions - the wind, the fire, the earthquake: he is in the silence. And there he encounters the living One who founds all being: and God speaks to his heart clearly, and God is with him. Just as in our time of silent prayer as well. Let’s savour that rare island of silent present love as the keystone of our arc of activities each day.