Eventide & Altar

You show me the path of life; fullness of joy in your presence, pleasures at your right hand forever. The psalm is the prayer of the person who has chosen - who has said the Lord is my allotted portion and my cup and has kept the Lord before them at all times. The path of life is shown to the one who has made the choice.

Elijah prays one sentence: Lord answer me that this people may know you are God and that you have brought them back. The prayer is not for himself. It is for the people who are standing between two options without choosing. The fire falls for their sake. The Lord is God becomes thinkable again because the fire made it undeniable.

Do not think I came to abolish. I came to fulfill. The fulfillment is the completion of what the Law was always moving toward - the love of God and neighbor that the commandments were always pointing at. In the evening of life the commandments that have been kept and taught are the path of life that was being walked. Fullness of joy in his presence is the destination.

The Glorious Mysteries trace the fulfillment - the resurrection is the fire that falls and confirms the Lord is God, the ascension is the path upward, the Spirit at Pentecost is the presence in which there is fullness of joy. Pray them tonight as a meditation on what the fulfillment of everything looks like.

• For those who have been straddling and need the fire to fall, that the Lord would answer so they may know who God is, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who have kept the commandments and taught them faithfully for decades, that the greatness promised to them would be their experience, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that is the fullness of what the Law was always pointing toward, we pray to the Lord.

You show me the path of life; fullness of joy in your presence. Name one specific moment this week when you have been aware of that fullness in his presence - a moment in prayer, in the Eucharist, in creation, in another person. Rest in it tonight.