"Hi Jesus, It's Me, Jim."

25/10/2023

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, October 29th, 2023:
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Psalm 18

R. I love you, O Lord, my strength.

I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the source of my salvation, my stronghold.

R. I love you, O Lord, my strength.

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.

R. I love you, O Lord, my strength.

The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation, Great triumphs he gives to his king, and shows steadfast love to his anointed.

R. I love you, O Lord, my strength.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

The longer I walk the Christian path of discipleship, the more I am drawn to simplicity.

I remember a story that a beloved priest and spiritual director of mine told in a homily several years ago. He recalled visiting Jim, a parishioner who was in palliative care. Jim had been a faithful Catholic for many decades, but now that he was nearing the end of his life, he began to worry that his simple faith was not enough.

“Father,” Jim said earnestly, “Don’t get me wrong, I am a praying man. But in my youth, when I had a young family and a busy career, I didn’t have time for long visits to the Church during the week. So when I drove by the parish on my way home, I found myself popping into the side door just long enough to look at the tabernacle and say, ‘Hi Jesus, it’s me, Jim.’ And sometimes that’s all I had time for.”

Then this priest paused his homily, with a gentle smile on his face, and said, “The peace on Jim’s face as I suggested that he was soon going to hear the words, ‘Hi Jim, it’s Me, Jesus,’ and then meet his lifelong friend face-to-face… that peace was not of this world.”

Since hearing that homily, I’ve taken up the practice of “pop-ins.” I’m blessed to work a few days a week in a parish. While I don’t always have time for a holy hour, I can find a few moments to step inside the sanctuary, look to the tabernacle, and say, “Hi Jesus, it’s me. I love you.”

Prayer does not always have to be complex in order to be profound. We don’t all work next door to a Eucharistic chapel, but we can all take simple moments in our day to practice the presence of God, emmanuel, who is with us at each moment. There are a thousand ways to do so.

We can memorize a line or two of Scripture, so that the Holy Spirit can use it to remind us to say hi to One who loves us. The words of the psalmist today are profound in their simple trust and would be easy to memorize: “I love you, O Lord, my strength.” “I call upon the Lord… so I shall be saved.” “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer.

We can pray the Jesus Prayer during a commute or while doing dishes.

We can keep a small font of holy water by the front door and bless ourselves as we enter and exit our homes.

When we see a person panhandling on a street corner, we can treat them with love, recalling the words of Mother Teresa: “In the poorest of the poor, we see Jesus.”

We can make the sign of the Cross as we pass by a Catholic Church, remembering Jesus’ Real Presence there. We can practice the pop-in, just to say hi to the One who loves us so faithfully.

And none of this has to be complicated. In fact, it’s more likely to be sustainable in our lives when it’s simple.

Today, choose one simple, heartfelt way to invite Jesus into your day and attempt to practice it for one week. See how different life feels when you practice the presence of God.

Let us pray: Hi, Jesus, it's me. I love you, O Lord, my strength.

Becca O'Hara

5 Comments

Alana

25/10/2023 07:40:46 am

Amen! Thank you Becca! Thank you for the reminder that it doesn’t need to be long or complicated. I think of how delighted I am and loved I feel when I receive a spontaneous text or phone call from a friend - And I trust God delights in and for us when we seek Him and I am always blessed so abundantly in return when I remember to take those moments to refocus my gaze on Him and the Eternal in the midst of my day. Lord, help me to focus on You and the Eternal more. Help me to live more and more in Your Presence so that You can use me to help others come to know You more. Amen. 😊🙏🏻💕xo

Becca

25/10/2023 12:59:31 pm

Beautiful, Alana. I love your point — we accept simple, short expressions of love from each other, why wouldn't God delight in the same from us?? Lovely thought!

Lori

25/10/2023 10:28:44 am

Becca, thank you for the permission to pray simply. Last weekend I felt shame drop into me as friends spoke about the need to break up their holy hour into two segments, and they were disclosing this as though they had sinned. I wondered: if their prayer is not acceptable to God, what does He think of mine? What’s true is that there are many ways to prioritize God in our lives, just as you’ve said. And there are many ways to make each moment “a prayer”. I’m so deeply grateful for the with-us-ness of our God, giving us access to connect with Him in the here and now.

Hi Jesus, it’s Lori. I love You O Lord, my strength.

25/10/2023 12:57:36 pm

Yes, exactly. Thanks for your vulnerability Lori.

There was a season in my young adult life where my prayer looked completely different than it does today — long, beautiful holy hours, frequent daily Mass, spiritual direction — but this same very wise spiritual director I had back then was adamant that I know how much my prayer would change in different states of life. Now that I'm married with two kids under 3, it's a very, very different story, but I don't think that my prayer is "worse" now than it was then (though sometimes it objectively is worse... but that's only when I'm NOT praying!). I have had to rely on this kind of simple, frequent prayer more in these recent years and I'm learning about the presence of God in a very different way than I did when I was a young adult, you know? God has different graces for different seasons. No need to dwell on guilt, just simplicity, surrender, and love.

26/10/2023 07:33:33 am

I so appreciate what the two of you are saying. And I too believe our God, who is outside of time and knows our hearts even better than we know ourselves, blesses us abundantly when we seek Him - as long as we seek Him and keep gazing on Him - whatever the specifics of that might happen to look like at any particular moment or stage in our life. A friend of mine says “God plays the long game with all of us” and like any life-long friendship I believe there will be times when you might not be able to have as much time together, but that doesn’t mean your love for each other diminishes - in fact often that’s when the desire to spend time together grows and you appreciate any time you have together even more. God is using all things for our good. Thanks be to God for that! Thank you both for sharing so beautifully and vulnerably. 😊🙏🏻💕xo