Make my day.

RECENTLY, WHILE TRAVELING OUT from the university giving some lectures, I enjoyed the hospitality of a religious house. In the bathroom, pasted to the mirror, was a little card with the old morning offering ("Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer to Thee . . ."). Just glancing at that old yellowed prayer card brought back a flood of memories. I distinctly remember saying that prayer in unison with my parochial-school class as it was recited over the loud speaker by our principal, before the salute to the flag and the day's announcements more years ago than I really care to count.

The old form of that prayer is not much to my taste today, but the sentiment behind it is not only praiseworthy but carries with it a solid theological and spiritual insight. What that gesture of prayer says, in effect, is that our life itself can be a prayer. Everything we do is under the gaze of God, and, more importantly, when we recognize that in a conscious fashion, we turn every good thing we do into prayer. In other words, our very lives and their rounds of activities have a sacramental value in the sense that they are visible signs of God's sustaining grace in our lives.

The ancient office of morning prayer (lauds) is not only for the praise of God but a consecration of our days to God. The devotional prayer offering the day to God does quite the same thing.

It is a very catholic form of prayer. The idea of "sacramentalizing" our days finds a systematic treatment in the history of our spiritual literature. The Jesuit ideal of doing everything for the glory of God is one expression of it. Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection has written of practicing the presence of God" in our life. Saint Therese of Lisieux, another Carmelite, calls that the "Little Way" - every ordinary thing done as a prayer. Everything ordinary thus becomes extraordinary.

In a certain sense, when we say any prayer By Lawrence Cunningham, teacher of theology at the University of Notre Dame. in the morning, we are making the day an offering. There is, however, something richer about making that offering explicitly overt. It need not be done with the formal prayer I read on the bathroom mirror. It could be done, obviously, in one's own words. However, spurred by the chance encounter with the card on the mirror, I went back to my office and began to thumb through my anthologies of prayer (prayer anthologies are a rich mine of theological insight) and ran across one that seemed wonderful both in sentiment and in language. It dates from the Middle Ages:

Help us this day, O God, to serve thee devoutly And the world busily. May we do our work wisely; give help secretly. Go to our meal with appetite and sit there moderately; Arise temperately, please our friends duly; go to bed merrily and sleep soundly. For the joy of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

In that prayer, one finds love for the good things we take for granted, like food, friendship, and sleep. I also love the sensible sentiments expressed in that prayer: it is a hymn to devotion, energy, prudence, contentment, and, especially, joy.

Chances are that I would have never found those lovely words had not someone, years ago, pasted up the old morning offering on a mirror - which only proves, as the gospel would have it, that the good householder "brings forth old things and new".