The saints teach us much about ordering our days around Christ
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
We celebrate the feast of St. Gregory the Great on Sept. 3. He started his career as a powerful Roman politician and became prefect of Rome (the chief city administrator) at the age of 30. Then he renounced secular life and rule and entered a monastery. He began again, with a new path and project: conforming his life more closely to Christ.
This week, we observe a series of beginnings. It’s the beginning of September! We begin to read St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. We begin to read from the Gospel of Luke (and we’ll keep reading him until Advent starts). We hear about the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (Luke 4). We hear about the call of Peter and Andrew, along with James and John, how they, like St. Gregory, left their old life behind and began a new path and project (Luke 5). This week, many of us will be witnesses, in one way or another, as former Auxiliary Bishop Mark Rivituso is installed as archbishop of Mobile and formally begins his ministry there.
Let’s reflect, for a moment, about beginnings. The Letter to the Colossians says that Christ Himself “is the beginning.” What might it mean to take that seriously? I’m not saying everyone needs to get up and leave their secular occupations behind. But I wonder: What it would look like to start rebuilding our days around Christ, to look at our days and say — with St. Paul — “in Him all things hold together?”
Let’s be honest, “the beginning” — the first thing, the first thought, the first motivation for getting out of bed — for a lot of people on many days is … coffee! Or maybe it’s work. Or maybe it’s a sporting event. Whatever it is, what would it be like to wake up and have our first thought and motivation be: “Jesus, what are you asking me to do for you and with you today?” Or maybe, as we get older: “Jesus, what are you asking me to endure for you and with you today?”
Of course, we won’t be perfect at that project at the beginning! Neither was St. Peter; neither was St. Gregory. But is that a reason not to begin, not to try?
St. John Paul II once addressed the prospect this way: “You will fail. But that is no reason to lower the bar of expectation. Get up, dust yourself off, seek reconciliation and forgiveness, and go forward, more attuned to the grace of God in your life.” That’s both consoling and challenging!
A few years ago, someone took the words of Blessed Bruno Lanteri — founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary — and compiled them into the Litany to Begin Again. Here are some of its lines: “That I may begin each day … That I may begin every day … That I may begin with holy tenacity … That I may rise immediately and begin again … That I may always, and in every moment, begin again.”
As we turn the page into September and observe the many beginnings of this week, let’s not be afraid to begin again to make Christ the center of our lives.
