Now is the Hour of Mercy (and Not Just Because the Baby is Sleeping)

As I type this post the hour of 3 pm has come and gone. Three o’clock: Christians call it the Hour of Mercy because it was the hour when Jesus died. Now is the Hour of Mercy.

But we are also living the Octave of Easter, which lasts from Easter Sunday to Divine Mercy Sunday. This whole week seems permeated with a profound joy and a joyful awareness of the Mercy of God, which St. Faustina identified as His most important characteristic: God reveals Himself and defines Himself in and by His mercy.

So in this week and at this hour I try again to be aware of God’s mercy.

The Hour of Mercy is now--this hour and this week especially. BUT The Hour of Mercy is always Now. And I must remember this, even when 3 o’clock passes, when the Octave of Easter is over, when the Easter Season turns over into Pentecost, when the fire of Pentecost is replaced by…Ordinary Time.

The Hour of Mercy is Now, Now in the ordinary time.

After all, Now is all we have, the hour of decision: “Choose this day whom you will serve.”

"Take no thought for the morrow...Sufficient unto the day..."

Today is the only day we have access to.

Now is the only moment we can choose to love.

I read back over what I have just written and I fear I am becoming "preachy. This is not my intention. Or rather, if I preach, I preach to myself only. If I write, I write to myself, because this is the lesson I am learning. Or (more accurately) this is the lesson I have such difficulty learning, have learned and lost over and over and over again. Must learn once more.

Recently someone asked me what I hoped to “get out of” blogging. I didn't know the answer, and so (partially in defense) I told her what I disliked and feared about blogging. That I fear that blogging is fundamentally self-serving, self-centered, a call for affirmation, fundamentally narcissistic, a revelation of insecurity, etc. etc. This week I have continued to reflect on “what blogging is” and what it should be. What it could be for me. Though I still maintain the dangers of this form of media, I recognize this blog as a possible location of sanctification, where I might begin to work through my weaknesses and defeat my most insidious fault.

That fault being: my inability to be content with Here and Now, my refusal to be silent in this Moment, to be STILL and witness the world as it settles and lifts around me: right here, right now. Now is the Hour of Mercy.

I know I need to defeat this. For I have missed so many hours. Am I missing this now?

Am I missing my child sleeping in the sunlight, her lips, her small tongue?

Missing the gold leaves becoming green?

Missing the clouds and sky with the electric blue, the slate blue, the cerulean, the sea grey, the smoke, the silk, the blinding white?

I don't want to miss my life.

So now, at the Hour of Mercy, I am rededicating this blog to here and now: the life I have been given in this moment. I offer it to you, my Cloud of Witnesses (whoever, wherever you are!) with as much humility as God will grant me.

Jesus I trust in You.