Can ya spare an hour??

At Gethsemane, Jesus was heartbroken when He asked His disciple's could you not keep watch with me for an hour? Jesus gave of Himself, then gave more, and even more. The one time He needed support, He found His disciple's asleep. I imagine there are quite a few mom's and dad's, spouse's and friends that have felt the same way. I give and give and when I need some support from you, there's none.

It is God who gives and sustains life. It is God who blesses our life and pulls us through the hardest of times. It is God who asked Israel to keep holy the Sabbath. The Catechism recalls the Scriptures reflection of the Sabbath as a "day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money." (2172) God asks us to remember the Lord your God and to honor and worship Him just one day a week. Even we as Christians have brought this time to just an hour a week at Mass, (and if we're honest, we may even judge the success of our Sunday worship as getting out of Mass in less than that hour) only to continue our busy life schedule. Do we stop to "smell the roses" anymore or is relaxing and enjoying a day out of the question.

Attendance at Christmas and Easter Masses swell to overflowing, which is not a bad thing but is far from what God asks. In heaven, we will worship God early and often. If one cannot enjoy the worship of God on earth, how will we be happy in heaven? God asked Israel and asks us to remember the blessings God has given and the hope stored up for us in Jesus Christ. God is not going to coerce worship. True worship is from the heart and it happens because it is a priority and actually what on truly wants to do. The Catechism quotes Thomas Aquinas as to the importance of Sunday worship. We render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship "as a sign of his universal beneficence to all." (2176)

Jesus commanded us to share in the Eucharist not for His benefit, but for ours. God commands that we worship Him not for God's benefit, but for our benefit. It is not God who needs us, but we who need God. God becomes the priority of our life when we remember what God gives and continues to give, and just how much we have been forgiven. Our response should be nothing but gratitude and the desire to share and spend time with God...it is our eternal destiny and quest to forever worship God...in our thoughts and in public.