How do you prepare
to meet the Lord?
From the time of
the Book of Wisdom, the faithful have always been seeking – seeking wisdom,
seeking God, seeking an experience of God they have a hard time expressing in
words. Wisdom, the Bible tells us, is
readily perceived by those who love her, and found by those who seek her.
Like the psalmist in Psalm 63, we know that we are incomplete without God – we
are parched, lifeless when we fail to
perceive God’s presence. Indeed, we are
only complete if we perceive that God is there, dwelling with us. The psalmist goes to the temple to gaze on the power and glory of God in the sanctuary; there he blesses God, calling upon God’s name.
He is prepared to meet the Lord.
To love God is to
seek, constantly, actively. It requires
work to make sure your heart is open; a heart open doesn’t happen by
accident. And so we must not only seek
the Lord, we must also prepare to meet him.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins to
emphasize that to love is to be prepared to encounter the Lord in full
awareness of his importance in our lives.
And where better to meet the Lord than in Eucharist, that remarkable
celebration of God’s love? But to
prepare, we need – what else? – wisdom, that we might be able to fully
celebrate God’s love in our lives, present within us. For, as Paul tells the Thessalonians, this is
our ultimate destiny: Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Loving God is our daily work, our constant
job, our unceasing task. Only from a
place of love can we come to Eucharist prepared to worship, and to encounter
the Lord fully cognizant of all he means in our lives. Only when we are in love with the source of
love can we be prepared to meet our Lord.
How do you prepare
to meet the Lord –
to meet him in
Eucharist, and in your life, every single day?
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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