Yesterday, as I mentioned in a letter how I wished I could make a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament more often, a phrase sprang to my mind that I had forgotten: the Sacrament of the Present Moment. I believe this phrase originated with de Caussade. One might also say merely the duty of the present moment, but that would be to forget about the incarnational presence of Christ in each moment.
For Christ comes to us not just in the Eucharist, not just in the Scriptures, not just in exceptional signs and visions, but in each and every moment and in all that happens to us. After all, He is everywhere and in everything. We often speak those concepts intellectually without understanding with our hearts how He is constantly pouring Himself out for us, as is the nature of love. Yet that is the reality. I daresay we would die if we could truly see Him fully in each moment, for none can see the face of God and live.
It is that awareness of the Sacrament of the Present Moment that keeps us present to things and people around us. It sets us free to live fully each moment.
I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly, said Christ. (John 10:10.)
Saint Joseph must have lived most faithfully in that vein, for he responded so promptly to the workings of grace and the Holy Spirit. Although so much of his life was hidden and shrouded in silence, that hiddenness and silence speak strongly of a life lived in adoration of the Sacrament of the Present Moment.
How much peace Joseph must have found in adoring the Omnipotent God in the smallest of circumstances. It is no wonder then that he should have been chosen to serve as the foster-father of the Incarnate God and as the husband of the one who uttered her absolute fiat to the will of God in all circumstances, who certainly saw with the eyes of faith her Lord in every twist and turn of her earthly pilgrimage.
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