In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here.

That you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence.

I ask your pardon for my sins

and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My immaculate mother, St. Joseph, my father, and Lord,

my guardian angel, and to seed for me.

As we center attention on Jesus Christ,

we ask for the grace, Lord, to see the value of the ordinary Christian life in the middle of the world, but not as one more alternative,

let alone a bit of a consolation prize that were not Franciscans or friars or nuns or priests. And perhaps one of us here praying as a bus driver or a teacher or business man or a hairdresser.

In fact, the clock of time has turned literally first circle where we find ourselves in the same situation, perhaps the word predicament, would be

more accurate of a society totally paganized, indifferent towards Christ, not through ill will,

but they never had an opportunity to know him. indifferent towards Christ, not through ill will.

But they never had an opportunity to know him.

How are they going to follow Jesus, unless someone teaches them, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans chapter 10.

And we find ourselves amid a hedonistic culture, violent culture, a culture of anti-truth,

that we soften that description with the phrase moral relativism.

The ordinary Christian in the middle of the world is, in fact, the true hope of the church.

Things have changed, and I'm old enough to harken back to perhaps over a half a century ago when I

my age was in single digits people marvel that I actually was six or seven or eight years old once upon a time.

Now you have to make an act of faith.

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