Monday of week 8 in Ordinary Time
Ecclesiasticus 17:20-28 | Psalm 31(32):1-2,5-7 | Mark 10:17-27
Who will praise the Most High in Sheol, if the living do not do so by giving glory to him?
Ecclesiasticus 17:26-27
To the dead, as to those who do not exist, praise is unknown, only those with life and health can praise the Lord.
Have you ever felt dead inside, exhausted from dealing with the troubles and troubled of this world?
When we turn inward, ignoring others in our quest for inner solace and solitude, it’s hard to sing God’s praises. “Leave me alone!” is incompatible with the Holy Spirit’s quiet urging to look anew at that really annoying person we’ve had to suffer for the last couple of hours, the one who just needs a little help and a kind word.
And when we return home in a deflated state, just wanting to collapse poleaxed into bed, it’s really hard to pause before our eyelids slam shut, spending a few minutes contemplating the next day’s scripture, taking precious insight from the Word of God, then briefly thanking Him for our life and health.
And then, one day, we wake up in Hades, waiting in the darkness for final judgement, longing for others to cast some “praise-rays” of light in prayer and thanksgiving, guiltily remembering that we were not among them during our lives.
Will we continue to fill our lives with secular busy-work and fleeting pleasures, wearing ourselves out with frivolity, ambling around like the living dead?
Or will we pause, take stock, rid ourselves of the unnecessary, and make room for God in our lives? Will we spend more time contemplating His plan for us, and executing on it? Will we grant ourselves the freedom that His Word brings, with its illumination of the human condition and how to right it?
The choice, as has so often been said, is ours.