God of all time, you call us out of the ordinariness of our everyday lives to see the world anew in your time. Help us to respond to your call to see in all things: both a completion and a new beginning; both an end and a renewed start; both sadness and joy. While our time marks your death on a cross as an end, your time marks the Transitus from one life to the next. Enflame in our hearts a desire to see in life and death the Transitus and transformation your life, death, and resurrection have brought forth in the world. Your time is a time of fulfillment that makes little sense to the world, for what is logical is replaced by what is kingdom-oriented, and this way of thinking appears as foolishness to the worldly. Help us to live as your fools, willing to announce your kingdom. Give us the strength to keep your time, where relationships take priority and we start over again and again to serve the least among us. Amen.
—from the book The Last Words of Jesus: A Meditation on Love and Suffering
by Daniel P. Horan, OFM
