61 Minutes

I know it’s the same title as the last one!  Cut me some slack, will ya!  I had just sat down and was beginning to enjoy the published work, and then some emails came around, and then some book signings and then some calls.  I don’t know how to respond to the statements really, because they weren’t negative; on the contrary, they were very positive.  But most of the statements were similar to each other.  Three statements made their way to my ears on more than one occasion.  The first is one of the greatest compliments I could have received:  “I can hear you speaking when I read the book.”  Great.  Never mind my grammatical errors or rough speech and colloquialisms, it was accepted as a spoken text.  Others would complement the book and say they liked it; so much that they didn’t wait from week to week, but read the whole thing.  That’s a fine statement, but it usually had another clause attached:  “When’s the next one coming out?” 

The title of this book is still “61 minutes”.  We are all called, as priests, to make a holy hour, or spend 60 minutes in front of the Blessed Sacrament, in the presence of God each day.  I would find myself praying for maybe fifty minutes, and I would receive nothing in the way of inspiring thoughts or insights.  Because I wasn’t getting anything, I would be tempted to leave early.  But if I stayed, I found over time that it was usually the fifty-eighth or fifty-ninth minute that God chose to enlighten me.  I had to be faithful.   

Yep, it’s the same title.  In fact that last paragraph was cut and pasted from the other book.  Some people were suggesting new titles:  “62 minutes”; “another 61 minutes”; “over an hour”, etc.  I decided to remain with the same title, because in principle it is the same.  The only thing that has changed with my holy hour is the time of day.  I started making a holy hour at night.  Judging by the Jewish way of keeping time, that is the beginning of the next day anyway.  Instead of beginning in the dark and leaving as the sun is breaking over the horizon, I now begin my holy hour with the dusky glow through the stained glass, and end in the darkness of night. 

This book focuses on the year of Luke.  Luke’s gospel is some of the most eloquent Greek prose you will read (provided you can read Greek) and so I really try to delve into the original language of the text.  The beauty of the language is overshadowed, however, by the story of the Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Testament. 

Luke begins this first volume stating very clearly what he wants to do:  to write an orderly account for you…that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed (Luke 1: 3-4).  He wants to show us why we should believe, and what, we have to hope for.  His gospel is often called the Gospel of women, of the poor, and of prayer.  Not a few times do we see Jesus going off to pray by himself, and most often it occurs right as the crimson sun sinks into the horizon.  These hours comprise part of the hidden life of Jesus as well.  These were hours of communion with his Father, during which he gained strength for the tests that would come.