Embodying today’s response “My soul is thirsting for the living God,” I watched a beautiful and humbling scene at Mass recently.  

I was seated on the main floor of the church and my eye was drawn up into the balcony.  Sunlight was streaming through a skylight in the roof, forming a beam of crisp, focused, bright light.  Then I noticed a little girl in a white dress.  She was probably about 6 years old, and she held her father’s hand as she reached out and stretched her little body toward the light, standing on her tiptoes on the pew, trying with a single focus to touch the light.  She caught the light first with her hand and then it illuminated her face and she glowed – both in the beauty of the sun and gloriously from within.

I thought to myself, she thinks she is touching God.

I also thought to myself, how amazing it is to see her belief in action, boldly reaching for God with her entire body.  She acted as children do, without shame or self-awareness, so that she could experience God in a tangible way.  I was humbled by her faith, and inspired by her apparent certainty that this was God and she could know Him directly.

The little girl in the white dress reminded me to long for God with the faith of a child and to do so boldly without shame or self-censorship. I was humbled by her confidence, and I prayed for the ability to follow her example with an open heart reaching with my whole self for a more personal connection to our living God.