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THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Thought for the Day # 58 - Tuesday, May 12, 2020

“God is First”

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We are still in a pandemic, in confinement. Even if we are at the beginning
of a re-opening, which is being carried out unevenly, cautiously, have you
noticed how we human being have complexity, our own contradictions? We
are facing this throughout this confinement.

On the one hand, we humans like to think that we are self- sufficient. We
don’t need others. Yet our lives are filled every day with moments when we
experience the need for others! If we live in a house, we needed the various
skills of others to build it! Even though we may have built it ourselves, we
needed materials that were produced by others! Every day in order to eat, as
we have to eat, we need those who work the land for our food, those who trans-
port food. We need others to survive. That need manifests itself in a thousand
ways every day!
Because we are in ‘confinement’ mode, we are rediscovering ourselves, we
are rediscovering the members of our family, but at the same time after a few
weeks, we are realizing that we also need others, that we need to meet, that we
need to build projects together, that we need to be able to see and touch each
other. In other word, we really need the others.

It is difficult for the human being to recognise that he needs others, a kind
of paradox in fact, but at the same time there is something that is even more
difficult to come to terms with,-that we need “the Other.” We need God. One
of the fruits that we can hope for from this pandemic, from this ordeal that we
are going through together, is the renewal within us of an awareness that we
need God, that God is first, that God is the source of everything.

Collection of texts by the Most Rev. Christian Lépine 69