Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Author:Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Preaching the Kingdom

The Prime of Life

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Mark 1:14–15

Can you picture Jesus in the prime of his ministry? Crowds are gathering, and his fame is growing. The people are demanding. This person wants to be healed, that person has questions, and another person simply wants his attention. At the same time, storm clouds are gathering. His success brings critics. Other men are jealous, suspicious, and negative. In the midst of his growing fame, and all the pressures of working at his optimum, Jesus continually takes time to pray. Can you see him distance himself from the crowds?

He’s taking a timeout. He’s slipping away to be alone with God. Only through his prayer/work balance can he continue to preach and minister, because he knows that only through constant contact with his Father will he keep strong, stay focused, and find the energy to pursue his mission to the end.

Think It Through

There are few things more exciting than seeing men and women working at their optimum performance, doing what they do best. Whether it is an athlete, a musician, a mother, a father, a businessman, a nurse, or a doctor — when someone is doing well what he or she loves, you can glimpse real human potential at its zenith. As we enter into the prime of life, we should be at the place where the years of preparation, training, and apprenticeship come to fulfillment. Whatever vocation we have discovered in earlier life has now matured, and we enter into our prime. We are firing on all cylinders. We are living life to the full: giving and creating and producing an abundance from all that we have worked on up to that point.

Unfortunately, life is not always like that. Many of us are disappointed by the midpoint in our lives. Perhaps we had the wrong expectations to start with, or we persevered for a long time in a dead-end job. Maybe we never discovered our true vocation and believe it is too late. Maybe all the great things we wanted for ourselves and our families have not materialized and we taste only the bitterness of failure. At this stage in life, it is easy to give in to despair. Sometimes, instead of the bitterness of despair, we set off on some ill-fated adventure to reclaim our lost youth, or create a fantasy life for ourselves.

What we can’t see in the midst of disappointment and a sense of failure is that even “successful” people experience the same sense of loss at the midpoint of life. If a person has never developed his spiritual life, then the loss he feels at midlife is a hunger for the spiritual. If a man has spent his whole life making money to support his family, and a woman has spent her whole life looking after her

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