Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“When your days have been completed and you rest with your ancestors,
I will raise up your offspring after you,
sprung from your loins,
and I will establish his kingdom.”

(2 SAMUEL 7:12)

“Someday you will have to face your Maker! We’ve all heard that phrase. The hour will come when we will stand before God with no place to hide, no room to rationalize, and no excuses to offer for our weaknesses and sin. We will stand in a searing light, naked and exposed, and all we ever did, good and bad, will stand with us in that light. That prospect, however vaguely felt, makes for a dark corner in every person’s mind.

But searing judgment of our souls is meant to be a daily occurrence, not a single traumatic moment at the end of our lives. We are meant to bring ourselves, with all our complexities and weaknesses, into God’s full light every day. Genuine prayer brings us into that searing light.   

We are meant to face God like this every day, not just at the moment of our death. So we should set aside time each day to put ourselves into God’s presence without words and without images, where – naked, stripped of everything, silent, exposed, hiding nothing, completely vulnerable – we simply sit, full face, before God’s judgment and mercy.
 

By doing this, we will preempt any traumatic encounter at the time of our death and, more importantly, we will begin – here and now – to enjoy more fully God’s emphatic embrace” (27).