Teach Me to Love This Hidden Day

Cell, Altar, Furnace

“Your Father who sees in secret.”

Gospel of Matthew 6:6

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“Lord, teach me to love this hidden day.”

This prayer is clean. It asks for no escape.

It does not say remove the burden.

It says teach me love.

Many want another life. Another place. Another hour. Few receive God because they refuse the day in front of them.

The fathers fled to the desert. Some are given a room, a house, a sickbed, an aging parent, a narrow routine. If received rightly, these become desert enough.

Cell

The cell is the place where a man meets himself.

No applause.

No movement.

No disguise.

There impatience appears. Murmuring appears. Vanity appears. Hunger for consolation appears.

Stay there.

He who runs from the cell runs from knowledge of himself.

Remain, and the room becomes a gate of heaven.

Altar

The altar is where something burns.

Not grand offerings.

A postponed plan.

A sleepless night.

The same request answered again.

The errand done unseen.

Prayer without sweetness.

Service without thanks.

Lay these there.

God receives what the world cannot see.

Furnace

The furnace is hot because falsehood resists death.

You thought you needed freedom.

You needed purity.

You thought you needed recognition.

You needed humility.

You thought you needed a larger life.

You needed a deeper heart.

So the hidden day burns what cannot enter the Kingdom.

Hard Saying

Do not wait to love life later.

Later is the devil’s country.

Love this day.

This interruption.

This weakness.

This obscurity.

The man who rejects small obediences dreams of great holiness and dies empty.

Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ,

who sanctified hidden years,

make this room a cell,

this labor an altar,

this sorrow a furnace.

Teach me to love this hidden day.