Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Writing devotions and reflections is seldom as easy as it looks. (Yeah, I know, cue the tiny violin.) I always start with a short prayer before I open up the readings, asking the Lord to provide the message He wants me to share. And many times, whether it’s for Your Daily Tripod or other publications and sites for which I write, when I look at the readings, I pray a second or third or fourth time: Really? There’s something in this for me to share, someone who’s basically self-taught through the Holy Spirit and a whole lot of reading and study? Then eventually, words come. It’s like any other ministry; sometimes my best effort seems satisfactory to me, sometimes it doesn’t, but I take comfort in the fact that I have tried to do what He desires.
Today, however, was not one of those days. I knew as soon as I looked at the readings what I was supposed to say. Spend some time 
today with the first lectionary reading, Ephesians 2:12-22. It opens with these beautiful words: “You were at that time without Christ.” The letter’s author, be it Paul or one of his admirers, knows what it is like to be without Christ, to be adrift morally, spiritually, emotionally. The tone is tender, not accusatory. The passage goes on to include phrases such as “For he is our peace;” “you are no longer strangers and sojourners;” and “through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord.”
As I write this, the Synod of Bishops on Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment is in its last week. Catholics around the world are reeling from recent disclosures about sexual abuse and alleged cover-ups. Social media is aflame with this bishop or that priest or this Catholic news organization accusing the other of lies and sensationalism.
But rising above all that earthly buzzing and despair for me is the memory of when I was without Christ, not just in the thirty-three years I was away from the Church, but yesterday when I was less than Christlike to that person whose request at work on top of everything else I had to do drew a sharp response, or the day before when the woman at the bank was rude to me so I was even ruder back to her. Without Him, I am alienated not only from the body of Christ but also from Him and the Father. With Him, I have hope. And that is what matters most, not the buzzing and despair.
