I’M merely in my third week of serving as pastor of Incarnation Church, and I love it. The people are warm, and the neighborhood is serene. I know that as time goes by, I will be busy with many ministerial and administrative duties.
But I like to take my time now, slowly getting into the flow of pastoral work. And I try to maintain my peace by keeping a good prayer life. I realize that my work as a pastor and preacher has to be grounded in prayer all the time.
As I grow older in the ministry, I realize the importance of having a quiet and personal time with God. So I’m making a habit of waking up early to say my morning prayer and do my spiritual reading and meditation after having a cup of coffee. In the silence of the morning, I like coming to a deep sense of the presence of God.
But I could only wake up feeling good in the early morning if I don’t go to bed late. So I make sure that I have seven to eight hours of sleep. In this way, I won’t find it challenging to enter into prayer.
The Gospel this coming Sunday is about choosing this better part, which Jesus wants us to keep always. When Martha complained to Jesus why Mary was not helping her in the kitchen to prepare meals for Jesus and his disciples, Jesus responded, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.”
For Jesus, the priority is attentiveness to his presence before anything else. Not that he wants us to be irresponsible and lazy, but because he wants everything that we do to be rooted in prayer so that our worries would ebb away. He wants us to contemplate his presence and rest in it before fulfilling any work. In this way, we become more serene and focused on essential things that matter most in life. Furthermore, we become more attentive and loving to the people around us and less impatient.
The Lord is inviting us all to this intimate relationship with him. In a busy world of business and domestic life, he wants us to stay close to him so that our lives and work would become more peaceful, joyful, and fulfilling.
Let this prayer of Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI become our prayer:
God of stillness and of quiet…
Still the restlessness of my youth—still that hunger that would have me be everywhere, that hunger to be connected to everyone, that wants to see and taste all that is, that robs me of peace on a Friday night. Quiet those grandiose dreams that want me to stand out, to be special. Give me the grace to live more contentedly inside my own skin.
Still the fever I inhale from all the energy that surrounds me, that makes my life feel small. Let me know that my own life is enough, that I need not make an assertion of myself, even as the whole world beckons this of me from a million electronic screens. Give me the grace to sit at peace inside my own life.
Still my anxiety, my heartaches, my worries and stop me from always being outside the present moment. Let each day’s worries be sufficient unto themselves.
Still my unrelenting need to be busy all the time, to occupy myself, to be always planning for tomorrow, to fill every minute with some activity, to see distraction rather than quiet.
Still my heart so that I may know that you are God, that I may know that you create and sustain my every breath, that you breath the whole universe into existence every second, that everyone, myself no less than everyone else, is your beloved, that you want our lives to flourish, that you desire our happiness, that nothing falls outside your love and care, and that everything and everybody is safe in your gentle, caring hands, in this world and the next. (Source: Angelus, In Exile)
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Fr. Rodel “Odey” Balagtas is the pastor of Incarnation Church in Glendale, California.
