Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. As I meditated on today’s Scripture, I had a deja vu feeling I had been there before. Looking back, I discovered I’d offered a reflection four years ago today, and decided it was worth sharing again.
We are all called to proclaim the Gospel. How we do that begins with each of us asking the question:
What Shall I Do, Lord?
On this Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul we hear St. Paul ask, “What shall I do, Lord?”, after he is blinded on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians. His question is proof of his instant conversion to follow Christ.
It’s a good question for each ofus to ask every day, as well, if we desire to follow Christ and grow in holiness. There’s no better way to begin one’s day than through meditation asking the Lord to reveal His will for us. It’s our job, then, to listen and make a resolution to go do it.
“Heavenly Father, through St. Paul and the other Apostles, the faith was spread throughout the world. As I celebrate his conversion today, I pray that I may follow his witness in at least my little part of the world. Amen.”
(From the Archives: What Shall I Do, Lord?, was first published on the blog Reflections of a Lay Catholic)
I hope everyone had a beautiful and blessed Christmas! This was the year our daughters spent Christmas with their in-laws. Thus, on Wednesday after Christmas we hit the road for a week and traveled to see them, my parents, and my siblings in Southeast Missouri, and as far west as Olathe, Kansas where two of my daughters and five grandchildren live.
We stayed with Mary who has two sons, ages seven and four, both very busy and demanding boys. While staying with them, I came across a children’s book called Five Minutes’ Peace1. When Mary and her sisters were toddlers in the late 1980s, I read this book to them frequently. It is a story about a mother elephant, Mrs. Large, and her three elephant children. Mrs. Large gets up one morning and finds her children eating breakfast in their trashed-out kitchen. She decides she needs five minutes’ peace so she prepares her breakfast, grabs the morning paper, and heads for the bath tub. Of course, the kids ask why she’s taking her breakfast to the bathroom and she replies, “Because I need five minutes’ peace from all of you!” Then, no sooner than she settles into her bubblebath, the kids begin coming in and disturbing her peace. The first comes in to play a tune on his recorder. The second to read a few pages of her book. And then, the baby with his toys, which he throws in the bathtub and jumps in after them. Soon, the four of them are in the tub together. Mrs. Large has enough, gets out of the tub, dries off and heads for the kitchen still saying, “I need five minutes’ peace from all of you!” In the kitchen, she receives exactly three minutes and forty-five seconds of peace before the kids come to join her.
The story ends before we learn whether or not she put each kid in separate corners with their trunks to the wall. I tried that once with Mary and she peeled the wallpaper off the wall.
We are all a Mrs. Large at various times in our lives. It’s often daily! Parents are harried by their children, employees by their bosses, teachers by their students. Circumstances out of our control cause us anxiety, plans get sidetracked, schedules get delayed. Things break down and bills pile up. There is no end to the plethora of things that can steal our peace.
You walk away like Mrs. Large and the peace thieves follow you. What can you do to keep your sanity?
Instead of looking for only five minutes’ peace, go big and shoot for 60 minutes instead – a full hour. Impossible you say? Not so. Every Catholic church, yours included, has a tabernacle in which the Body, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus resides in the consecrated Eucharist. Jesus is there waiting for you to come to Him, to spend an hour with Him in Adoration and lay all your worries, pain, frustration, and suffering before Him so He can exchange it with His peace and love.
One hour of Eucharistic Adoration where I sit before Jesus and pour out my heart with love for Him is the best way I know to retrieve that stolen peace. I turn away from my troubles and focus on loving Him. In return, He loves me…and I let Him. I feel it, and I soak it up. When that hour is up, I am refreshed far more than any bath or shower can provide.
Be like Mrs. Large. Walk away from the frustrations, but walk to Jesus. Spend an hour with Him. He’ll renew your soul and make all those troubles seem insignificant.
“Dear Jesus, thank You for being there for me, for waiting patiently for me to come to You so that I can adore you and receive Your love in return. You take away the sins of the world. You take away our troubles, too, and You replace them with a supernatural peace that can only come from You. Amen.”
1Jill Murphy, Five Minutes’ Peace, New York, NY, Penguin Putnam Books, 1999
(Fending Off the Peace Thieves was first published on the blog Reflections of a Lay Catholic)
Reflections of a Lay Catholic 