Monday of the 4th
Week of Lent
March 16, 2015 8:30am
So, there is this royal official,
probably not a Jew and maybe a person of no faith.
He asks Jesus to come down to his
home and heal his son, who is near death.
He trusts Jesus.
And when Jesus tells him that his
son will live, he again trusts Jesus and leaves to go home.
That trust in the Lord is part
of, maybe the essential part of what it means to believe.
I came across an excerpt from
Thomas Merton.
Merton was a Trappist monk, a
contemplative, and wrote some of the most inspiring spiritual writings of the
twentieth century.
Merton offers a prayer of trust
in God, and here is what he prays.
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am
following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though
I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in
the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.”
I find that to be a wonderfully
inspiring prayer of trust in God.
I hope you do too.
May it help us to trust in the
Lord, as the royal official does in today’s gospel.
