Indulge me a moment as I recount a story from my younger days: In my youth, I was a martial arts student under the tutelage of a wise and clever instructor. During a particularly rigorous season of training this instructor noticed his students stealing glances at the big clock on the wall. As the training was grueling, some may even call it brutal, it was understandable: the students were trying to gauge their strength against the time remaining. Others were simply trying to see how much longer they needed to survive. This displeased the instructor. His students should be focused entirely on the task at hand. Allowing one’s mind to wander to the future amounted to nothing more than a distraction. In combat this could result in one’s demise.
Rather than confront the students directly, the instructor did something to this day I still think was brilliant. He covered the clock on the wall with a huge banner that had one word printed boldly in black against a white background. The word was, “NOW”.
In reflecting on my story, I thought what a wonderful lesson for every Catholic. All too often we worry and fret about things in the future. This is not what we are called to. The Sermon on the Mount makes that clear. Jesus says, “Enough then of worrying about tomorrow. Let tomorrow take care of itself. Today has troubles enough of its own” (Matthew 6:34).
Worrying about the future is a waste of time. One reason this is true is because we actually have no power to work in the future. We only have power to work in the present. Focusing too much on the future robs us of the energy to effectively deal with the moment we are actually in. Perhaps that is part of the appeal to fretting about the future. When we fret about the future, we unwittingly abdicate the power we have to work in the present. Perhaps it is our unconscious way of refusing to take full responsibility of what we have been actually authorized to handle, this the present moment.
To teach us to be aware of this problem and to train us out of it, The Master teaches us to pray for our daily bread. Notice it is not a prayer for today’s bread as well as bread for the following week, or the month or year. It is needs for the present moment with which we are to concern ourselves. This prayer reminds us that the future is in His hands, and in recognizing this, we are invited to trust. This is a radical call to trust in His providential care.
The process of cultivating this radical trust can be long and arduous. Knowing this, the Church, in her wisdom, offers us the same solace that Christ offered his apostle John while John watched his friend dying on the cross. I speak of the Mother of God. Mary’s maternal care of us is forever trustworthy. Also, Mary’s prayer, the Hail Mary, is a particular prayer that, I think, offers a specific help to this problem.
Note that in this prayer we are permitted to ask for Mary’s intercession during two pertinent moments. We ask her intercession for the NOW as well as in the hour of our death. It is as if Our Lady, knowing our proclivity to fret about the future, in her maternal care directs us to “fret” about the only moment in the future that really counts, our death. Of course, the NOW and the hour of our death are two moments that are inextricably linked. The hour of our death is the moment when all the choices we have made in the NOW culminate in our judgement. That judgement, of course, will result in either everlasting happiness in heaven or in everlasting torment in hell. And so, Our Lady extends her maternal care into that moment by promising to be there by our side, praying for us.
So, Christian, the next time you are asked what time it is, instead of looking at the clock, simply exclaim, “The time NOW!”
