In the introduction to this month's Magnificat Rev. Peter John Cameron reprinted the Meditation of the Day for September 12, 2001. It was written by Fr. Walter J. Ciszek who died in 1984 and seems appropriate for recollection today. "How easy it is... for us to become dependent on our routines... Friends and possessions surround us... It is the status quo that... carries us from day to day;... we begin to lose sight of the fact that... behind all these things it is God who... sustains us. We go along, taking for granted that tomorrow will be very much like today, comfortable in the world we have created for ourselves... and give little thought to God. Somehow, then, God must contrive to break through these routines... and remind us once again... that we are ultimately dependent only upon him,... that his we are and that we must look to him and turn to him in everything. Then it is, perhaps, that he must allow our whole world to be turned upside down in order to remind us it is not our permanent abode or final destiny, to bring us to our senses and restore our sense of values, to turn our thoughts once more to him." Fr. Ciszek writes about what he knows, he spent many years in Russian prisons and gulags. JMJ. Mick, SFO