Our Journey in Christ (09/19/2026)

This week has been full. I returned from a long journey back home to care for my mom for a bit. I had a doctor’s appointment that raised a few issues that will mean additional appointments with various doctors. I began a new year as the parish Catechist for the Confirmation candidates. And I am preparing for the start of a 2-month bible study on Acts of the Apostles. Today, all my children and grandchildren gather to celebrate our family birthdays and give thanks for the gift of them in our lives.

Life can be like that, don't you know - slow for a while and then like a pile on. It makes things interesting. It also makes prayer and reflection more essential to our journeys if we want to ensure that our journey is made in faith, buoyed by hope and fueled by love.

My morning and evening prayer times have been longer this week. And as with most of my journeys, I’m keeping a journal to help me sort and help me find within each day the morsels the LORD has strewn before me. Pondering at the end of the day prayerfully, sleeping on it, and then beginning the next day with my prayer journal helps me to notice more the LORD’s presence in my life and His will for me.

If you have known me for long, you know I am a ponderer prone to reflection with a prayer journal to keep track of the times I’ve strayed, the discoveries about the LORD, about others, about life, and about me, and the ways the LORD calls me back. I am also prone to reading my old journals because in doing so I recognize the change in me. When we journey in Christ, we need to anticipate change because He keeps inviting us to change – to conversion. If we don’t see any change in ourselves, we need to double check because somewhere along the way, chances are high that we have parted ways with Christ.

Journeying in Christ is an extended exercise in turning, in re-orienting ourselves to Him who is “the way and the truth and the life.” It is a path marked by conversions, some small, some radical. Journeying with Christ leads us to John the Baptist’s discovery and final testimony of long ago recorded for us in John 3:30, “He must increase, I must decrease.”

We stand at the gateway of a marvelous and beautiful season of change – autumn.  It begins officially in two days. As we step into this season that is part of our LORD’s divine design, let us take cues from it about openness to the LORD’s will as well as the wisdom of the LORD manifested in creation. Let us open ourselves more fully to Christ’s call to turn, to right ourselves in relationship with Him and with our sisters and brothers. Let us embrace conversion, changes of heart and mind, changes of routines and preferences. Let us commit to prayerfully surrendering to Christ’s way, to Christ’s love for us, to decreasing so that He might increase.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.