God of My Dai­ly Routine (7)
Plea­sures and Disappointments 

Is a tired and dis­il­lu­sioned heart any clos­er to You than a young and hap­py one? Where can we ever hope to find You, if nei­ther our sim­ple joys nor ordi­nary sor­rows suc­ceed in reveal­ing You to us? Indeed, our day-to-day plea­sures seem some­how espe­cial­ly designed to make us for­get about You, and with our dai­ly dis­ap­point­ments it’s no bet­ter: they make our hearts so sick and bit­ter that we seem to lose any tal­ent we ever had for dis­cov­er­ing You. 

O God, it seems we can lose sight of You in any­thing we do. Not even prayer, or the Holy Sac­ri­fice, or the qui­et of the clois­ter, not even the great dis­il­lu­sion with life itself can ful­ly safe­guard us from this dan­ger. And thus, it’s clear that even these sacred, non-rou­tine things belong ulti­mate­ly to our rou­tine. It’s evi­dent that rou­tine is not just a part of my life, not even just the great­est part, but the whole. Every day is ​“every­day.” Every­thing I do is rou­tine, because every­thing can rob me of the one and only thing I real­ly need, which is You, my God. 

Rah­n­er, Karl. ​“Encoun­ters with Silence.” In Spir­i­tu­al Clas­sics: Select­ed Read­ings on the Twelve Spir­i­tu­al Dis­ci­plines. Edit­ed by Richard J. Fos­ter and Emi­lie Grif­fin. New York: Harper­One, 2000
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