In Praise of the Present Moment

5:45 AM flashes on the Walmart watch my sister gave me nine weeks and 2,000 miles ago. I squint my eyes to the mountain sunrise and walk from my hammock, taking quiet steps along the gravel so as not to mar the near-perfect silence around me. I reach the kitchen and am embraced by arms still heavy from sleep. 

Picking up a coffee mug at random from the bin, I begin to fill it. So many thoughts already move through my mind– I hope I remembered to ask for a new rosary string. Did I tell Father that I mended the humeral veil? It’s been awhile since I wrote home. Did I ask the Seniors to serve Mass already? Who asked for my prayers yesterday? I take one sip of my newly brimming mug and catch sight of the prayer of Saint Faustina that sits in a wooden frame above a jumble of oils and spices. It reads:

“O My God,

When I look into the future, I am frightened,

But why plunge into the future?

Only the present moment is precious to me,

As the future may never enter my soul at all.

It is no longer in my power

To change, correct, or add to the past.

For neither sages nor prophets could do that. 

And so what the past has embraced I must entrust to God.

O present moment, you belong to me; whole and entire.

I desire to use you as best I can.

And although I am weak and small,

You grant me the grace of your omnipotence.

And so I am trusting in Your mercy,

I walk through life like a little child,

Offering You each day this heart

Burning with love for Your greater glory.”

In my time serving as a counselor at Camp Wojtyla, the Lord taught me many things– far too many to cram into a single Faith Feature. However, this prayer distills much of what I learned.

Over the summer, I got a chance to be free from many of the world’s distractions– my phone, the noise of cities, financial worry, and the breakneck pace of modern life. So much of my life was simple– I was supported in body and soul in every necessary way. Yet, I was still burdened by anxiety, regret, and fear, as on that one morning in the kitchen before Adoration. It was in this place of simplicity that the Lord was able to remove these burdens and instruct my heart in joyful acceptance and trust. 

God’s will can be hard to conceptualize. Often we think that God’s will is some grand plan for our future that we have to figure out, which can be paralyzing. I found myself regularly worrying about the future over my summer, wondering what life might be like after camp, wondering if I myself would be different or if I’d feel the same, wondering what senior year would be like, wondering what would come next. 

Anticipation, dreaming, and planning for the future are all good things. Dwelling with fear on a future that does not yet exist is not. Routinely, in my life at camp, the Lord directed me not to “plunge into the future”. 

Learning to dwell in the present came slowly to me, but I found that remaining in what was happening led to more fruitful conversations, more generous service, and deeper prayer. I distinctly remember one visiting priest’s homily at a Mass held outdoors at the mercy of Colorado weather conditions. 

As a borderline deafening wind buffeted us all, my mind wandered and I wished for warmth and the passage of time. Then, as though hushing to listen, the wind stopped, and Father said, “God is only in what’s real.” This sentence, piercing in its truth, changed the way I regarded my everyday tasks and their connection to God’s will. 

My so-called “yays” (the word “chores” was strictly outlawed)—soaking altar linens, picking up trash, cleaning porta-potties, cooking breakfast, and washing dishes—were not meaningless tasks any longer, but a tangible path for encounter with the Lord. I did not have to scour an imaginary future for God’s will, for He was already moving in the one thing “precious to me,” the present: real, raw, and beautiful. The more I internalized this truth, the more loath I was to lose a single mundane moment.

I view each and every memory I have of this summer, good or challenging, with deep gratitude. I could mourn over the fact that this time is slipping into the past, that the marks of this time, the joyful faces and the smell of black coffee in the morning, the vermilion mountain sunsets and the jokes met with side-splitting laughs, are getting harder to remember. Instead,  for possibly the first time in my life, I am learning to be content, dwelling in the knowledge that God is here in the present, flooding my life with the “grace of [His] omnipotence”. Believing in a God Who is good means I must believe that I am right where I need to be. The boring, the difficult, the joyful, and the simple are where God is, if only I look. Thoughts of the past and fears of the future will come and go, but now, this moment, the real, is a sheer gift of the Father that I am called to receive. In every moment, I resolve to stop clinging to the past and grasping for the future, and, “like a child,” reach for the Father instead– for what is required of the receiver of a gift but open hands?