Notes from the Hours: The Whole Day

One of this morning's intercessory prayers from the Liturgy of the Hours reads, Remain with us the whole day, Lord, let Your grace be a sun that never sets.

It seems rather strange for us to ask God to remain with us the whole day. Of course, God stays with us! He never leaves us for a moment. He is, after all, omnipresent, everywhere all the time, and that means He is always beside each of us, too. Besides, if God left us to ourselves even for a moment, we would simply wink out of existence. We remain in being only because God keeps us that way, sustaining us, present to us at every instant of our lives, from conception on.

Why do we ask God to remain with us, then? What do we actually mean? Perhaps we are really begging God that we may remain with Him. It's so easy to get distracted. Our lives are filled to the gills with busyness, and we lose sight of God in the midst of the daily grind as we dash from one activity to the next and finally crash in exhaustion. God never leaves us, but we leave Him when He ceases to be the center of our lives.

So we ask God to remain with us, to give us the grace to keep Him in our minds and hearts throughout the day. He answers this prayer positively, but we must cooperate by setting aside time to pray, by turning our thoughts to God frequently as we go about our tasks, by listening to Christian music, by keeping sacred pictures and Bible verses in visible places, by remembering that God is always by our side.

He is indeed by our side with His grace, which is a sun that never sets. As we pray the second half our intercession, then, we realize that God's grace always surrounds us but also that we don't always open our hearts to receive it. Our sins, our weaknesses, our inattention, our laziness all put up roadblocks to God's grace, and we choose dimness and darkness, shutting out the light that God wants to give us.

So we pray that we may open up the shutters of our lives and allow God's grace, like bright eternal sunshine, to fill us and warm us and enlighten our every corner.

Remain with us the whole day, Lord, let Your grace be a sun that never sets.