It is time....

Today Benedict calls us to arise, to open our eyes to the light that comes from God:

Run while you have the light of life,

so that the darkness of death may not overtake you.

There is urgency here. Wake up. Listen now. Begin today. Follow the way.

What a challenging way to begin the morning!

Sister Joan immediately recognizes one of our most persistent habits: postponement. We admire the discipline of others. We wonder where they find their resolve. We tell ourselves that someday we too will pray more faithfully, listen more carefully, live more deliberately, love more generously.

But Benedict will not allow us the comfort of someday.

Sister Joan puts it beautifully:

We are called daily to center ourselves where the 

God we are seeking is seeking us. Listen today. Start now.

Begin immediately to direct your life to that small, clear voice within.

Every morning we awaken and almost instinctively ask, “What time is it?”

Benedict asks us to hear that question differently.  What time is it? It is time to awaken. It is time to remember who we are. It is time to become the person God is calling us to become.

John Mark Comer would recognize Benedict’s urgency immediately. We cannot simply admire Jesus or agree with his teaching. We must arrange our lives around following him—learning to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and live as Jesus lived. A rule of life exists precisely because our deepest intentions so easily disappear beneath the distractions of an ordinary day.

Augustine knew something about postponement. For years he stood at the threshold of conversion wanting God—but not quite yet. His great discovery was that the God for whom he had been searching was already present, nearer to him than he was to himself. 

The moment of grace was not tomorrow. It was now.

Luther would remind us that this awakening is not simply an achievement of willpower. We rise because grace has already come looking for us. Every morning is another beginning, another return to the Gospel, another opportunity to receive again what we could never manufacture for ourselves.

And so Benedict tells us to run toward the light—Scripture in hand, heart awake, attentive to the presence of God in every person and every moment.

We are called to pray.

We are called to listen.

We are called to care for one another and for the community entrusted to us.

We are called to become what we profess to believe.

Not someday.

It is time.