Memento Mori

This has been a rough few weeks and I am exhausted, so instead of driving all the way home to pick Bill up, and then to church for Stations of the Cross, we decided to just stay home and pray them together. The booklets that I have are the prayers of St. Alphonsus Liguori (appropriate I guess because we live in a house built by a man named Alphonso). I used to use them with my PRE students, and, I think, with my youngest daughter and granddaughter, so I'm very familiar with them, but sometimes you see something in a familiar text that you seem not to have noticed before.

I mentioned in the reflections on the Stations that I wrote a couple of years ago that the Fifth Station is my favorite because I relate to Simon. I carry the cross with reluctance, but am, mercifully, changed by that portage nonetheless. As I read the prayer for that station tonight, I realized that I must not have ever paid much attention to the words before.

My most sweet Jesus, I will not refuse the cross as the Cyrenian did; I accept it, I embrace it. I accept in particular the death that Thou hast destined for me, with all the pains which may accompany it.

Now that is a scary prayer, especially as my death, however it may come, seems to be approaching very swiftly. Sometimes I wonder how the authors of these prayers had the courage to commit prayers like these to paper. It's silly to think of it that way, though. I'm not actually asking  for a horrible, painful death, I'm just saying that whatever comes, I will accept as coming from the Lord. 

And then there's the end of the prayer which I pray several times a day all during the year. 

I love Thee, Jesus my love. I repent of ever having offended Thee. Never permit me to offend Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always, and then do with me as Thou will. 

It's all contained in that prayer anyway--life and death--whatever comes. It just isn't spelled out in such stark detail.

 I read somewhere yesterday that Lent is more than half over now, and since Easter is three weeks from Sunday, I guess that must be right. I'm not quite ready for Easter because I keep hoping to somehow get Lent right, although I'm not really sure what I mean by that and for all I know I'm already getting it right, and maybe sometime in the next three weeks I'll really mess it up. But even if I do, I know Easter will come.

On that note, I see by my Current Moon app that the moon is a waning crescent, only 4% of full. Soon it will disappear, but then it will began to wax again, and when it's full, it will be the first full moon after the Spring equinox, the harbinger of Easter Sunday.

AMDG

P.S. And you can watch it happen right here on my sidebar, or maybe even go outside and watch.

P.P.S. Now it occurs to me that if it is more than halfway through Lent, I have managed to post something everyday for more than half of Lent, even if one day was a sort of cheat. I'm pretty surprised.