Day Six
Immediately after receiving a blessing from her cousin Elizabeth (“blessed is she who believed that the Lord’s promises would be fulfilled”), Mary praised God: Magnificat anima mea Dominum (“My soul magnifies the Lord”). What hurts God most is our distrust. To restore a lost love, one must regain one’s trust. But how can trust God as He keeps silent when we suffer in life? We regain our trust in God by praising Him and thanking Him in every circumstance. Our Lady magnified God in thanksgiving, even at Calvary.
The Catholic’s supreme act of thanksgiving is the Holy Mass. Most people who attend Mass regularly, and especially those who can assist at Mass daily, are joyful, thankful, and healthy people. To be healthy, priests must offer the Holy Mass, from the heart, every day. But the Church gives a special treasure to her priests: the breviary.
I began praying the breviary with the Benedictine chaplains in the rustic little chapel my first week at college. This morning, 45 years later, the same morning prayer from the same breviary flooded me with joy. It’s really marvelous how praying the psalms (songs of praise) continues to thrill my heart and even my body when I pray the breviary, five times a day.
Priests often call their breviaries their “wives,” because we are together day and night (for example, I put my breviary under my head for a pillow in backpacking trips). Lamentably, many priests have stopped praying the breviary faithfully, and I am certain that is why they have lost the joy of their vocation. Continual praise and thanksgiving pleases God, and cultivating a spirit of thanksgiving fills our own hearts with joyful energy. That is why the Church requires her priests to pray the psalms five times a day. Find your own way to praise God, early and often, every day.
Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit, fire of mercy. Fill my heart with a faith-filled song of praise and thanksgiving to God for his tender love and mercy!