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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Luigi Gioia.

Good morning.

One of the greatest challenges of our lives is learning to deal with our anxiety.

I like to think of it as the engine of a car.

All goes well as long as the engine produces just the amount of energy required to produce the right speed. If, for any reason, you start pressing on the accelerator while the clutch is on neutral the engine starts generating more energy than needed, it becomes noisy, burns fuel uselessly, and sometimes revs up.

Anxiety is the surplus of energy we need to face challenges which are real and present.

The problem starts when the challenges are only potential or imaginary or in a distant future. There is nothing present here and now on which to pour this surplus of energy - we can’t relax, and sleep evades us.

In these cases Jesus’ advice is simple: are you anxious about something? Look at the birds of the air and consider the lilies of the field

This might be a metaphor but I take it literally.

It takes just few seeds on the window sill and whenever I feel anxious I can divert my attention on the birds coming and going with growing confidence.

They teach me that there is joy in simply being alive.

Our Father in heaven has given us creation as a prompter: it keeps suggesting to us that we can afford to stop worrying about tomorrow for a little.
Anxiety will come back of course but so will the birds on my window sill.

Let us pray

Give us eyes O Lord to see the peace you want to give us. Give us hearts willing to trust you and rest in your love.

Amen.

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