Meditation for May 27, The Present Moment

A yeung girl who died in 1934 at the age of twenty-four, and who was at that time preparing for her Normal School entrance examination, wrote in her notes to encourage herself to be generous with God each day:

The present moment is the bread and wine, the species under which God comes to us.

Yes, each moment that I live, if it is offered to God, brings God to me. A soul in grace who lives holily, enriches at every moment the divine life she possesses. Ruysbroeck, a great Flemish spiritual writer, observes very justly that each degree of grace in us is as a new visit from God; it is the same as God's first entrance into our soul.

Do I recognize in the present moment, God's visit to my soul?

"My God, grant me devotion to Your Holy Will working in me at every moment. Quicken my faith that I may recognize You under the guise of the hours as they slip by. Teach me that none of the little things I do for You are insignificant; if I only knew how to see all the grandeur with which You endow them by transforming them into divine actions. Since there is as much of You as of me in all that I do, even much more of You than of me, teach me to do everything with You."

In his Contemplation for Obtaining Love, St. Ignatius invites us to consider that in each gift from God, He is singularly active and freely gives Himself to us. I wish to apply that same thought to every successive moment of my time. Can there be anything more precious than the present moment? I must sound the depths of the divine riches it brings to me. It is a world of wealth in itself.
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)