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THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Thought for the Day # 52 - Wednesday, May 6, 2020

“Spiritual hygiene”

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Do you take the time to pray?

We are talking about personal hygiene, and that is important. We are talking
about mental hygiene, and that also is important. But there is also spiritual
hygiene, taking the time to pray.
Even if we have put it in our schedule, it is probably part of the experience of
all of us as human beings that when the time comes to pray, all of a suddenly
there are a thousand things to do! Prayer somehow is the simplest thing but at
the same time it is the most complicated because it is free time, it is a moment
when we stop and leave everything to put ourselves in the presence of God. It
is a spiritual struggle to put oneself in the presence of God. We are held back
by many legitimate concerns in our lives and we easily forget the primacy of
God. We forget how important it is to be rooted in God, to be in bond with
God.

It is not always easy to get up in the morning. It might have been the case for
today. Yet, no matter how much we talk about personal or mental hygiene, we
still have to get up!

You might not want to get up or you might not have the strength to get up!
Even when you are in bed and you are unable to get up, you still can pray. You
might say: “Lord, lift me up!” “Lord, help me! “And even if it is perhaps the
last thing that you can do, pray. When we pray the Lord does not separate our
prayer from other dimensions of our lives. The Lord gives us the strength to
get up, gives us the strength to love, gives us the strength to take the means for
bodily hygiene and mental hygiene. He really becomes like a source in our life,
He becomes a source of our humanity.

Collection of texts by the Most Rev. Christian Lépine 63