Presence.

During a brief (and recently rare) encounter with my Creator, I became enthused: "At last! Contact with You! Now you can solve all these problems I have..." And I began to list them. They were all noble struggles--dealing, of course, with matters of heroic virtue and the various ways in which I was trying flex my saintly muscle.

But then, I had one of those quiet moments. No. There were no answers. He didn't give me my marching orders or a list of directives. He was simply there.

Presence. Communion with He Who Is.

And then, suddenly, that was all I needed. Him.

All I need to fulfill His will is Him. In obedience to what He sends, I dwell constantly with Him and move with Him from moment to moment, decision to decision. If I can accomplish one thing, what joy in His presence. If I fail at another thing, what joy in His mercy.

Which made today's meditation from Magnificat so beautiful. Nothing can replace this truth:

"We, the ordinary people of the streets, know very will that as long as our own will is alive, we will not be able to love Christ defninitevly. We know that only obedience can root us in his death. We would envy our religious brothers and sisters if we too could not 'die to ourslves' a little more each day.

"However, for us the tiny circumstances of life are faithful 'superiors.' They do not leave us alone for a moment; and the 'yeses' we have to say to them follow continuously, one after the other.

"When we surrender to them without resistance we find ourselves wonderfully liberated from ourselves. We float in Providence like a cork on the ocean owaters ....

"When we thus become accumstomed to giving up our will to so many tiny things, we will no longer find it hard, when the occasion presents itself to do the will of our boss, our husband, our parents. And our hope is that death, too, will be easy." ~Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel (d. 1964)

Image here.