A very wise Jesuit priest once listened to me talk about how I pray and asked me, “Where is the focus of your prayer – on you or on God?” I realized that I often prayed for what I wanted from God but rarely prayed to find out what God wanted from me. My focus was on solving my own problems rather than asking how I could serve God, but that question helped me to refocus my prayers, at least for the moment.
Today’s gospel is much the same lesson: two men are praying in the temple. The Pharisee in his prayer spends most of his time congratulating himself for being better than everyone else. The other man, a tax collector, is so humbled before God that he can say nothing more than, “Be merciful to me, a sinner.” Which one am I most like? I squirm uncomfortably at this question.
Do I live my life as someone who is focused on God and others or is my main vision in life directed on my needs and my own happiness? I can sense it in my life when I move away from the God-centered life. Things are out of balance. I am aware of every annoyance of my husband, I have little patience with my kids and mostly I am aware of ME and how everyone else has an impact on me.
Today in my Lenten journey, I want to try not to be centered on myself. Today I want to trade places in the temple. I want to take off the Pharisee’s flashy robes of my own arrogance and embrace the humility of the tax collector. I don’t want to make myself the center of my day.
This feels like an impossible task some days and my first instinct is to wonder how I can ever accomplish it alone. Then I remember the tax collector in the temple, bow my head and ask for help.
Maureen McCann Waldron
The most important part of my life is my family – Jim my husband of 47 years and our two children. Our daughter Katy, a banker here in Omaha, and her husband John, have three wonderful children: Charlotte, Daniel and Elizabeth Grace. Our son Jack and his wife, Ellie, have added to our joy with their sons, Peter and Joseph.
I think family life is an incredible way to find God, even in (or maybe I should say, especially in) the most frustrating or mundane moments.
I am a native of the East Coast after graduating in 1971 from Archbishop John Carroll High School in suburban Philadelphia. I graduated from Creighton University in 1975 with a degree in Journalism and spent most of the next 20 years in corporate public relations in Omaha. I returned to Creighton in the 1990s and completed a master’s degree in Christian Spirituality in 1998.
As our children were growing up, my favorite times were always family dinners at home when the four of us would talk about our days. But now that our kids are gone from home, my husband and I have rediscovered how nice it is to have a quiet dinner together. I also have a special place in my heart for family vacations when the kids were little and four of us were away from home together. It’s a joy to be with my growing family.
Writing a Daily Reflection is always a graced moment, because only with God’s help could I ever write one. I know my own life is hectic, disjointed and imperfect and I know most of us have lives like that. I usually write from that point of view and I always seem to find some sentence, some word in the readings that speaks right to me, in all of my imperfection. I hope that whatever I write is in some way supportive of others.
It’s an incredibly humbling experience to hear from someone who was touched by something I wrote. Whether the note is from someone across campus or across the world, it makes me realize how connected we are all in our longing to grow closer to God.
