Just a dumbass midnight thought, but I’ve been thinking, lately, of the horrifying availability of prayer.  Does no one else have this dread, from time to time, of the offhand remarks we make to God?  Our assurance that He knows us through and through, that He loves us intimately, emboldens us—or at least, emboldens me, occasionally, to assume that He also agrees with my prejudices and predispositions.  So that when this fatuous archbishop, or that overstimulated commentator, pronounces on some issue of the day, I can recline on the breast of the Boss, smirking at how much He and I know what malarkey this all is.  Of course, the Gospel is replete with all sorts of correctives, but every once in a while, that one from Luke 13:25, “I do not know where you are from” really smacks me, even in the wake of a New York Times editorial.

Michael O. Garvey works in public relations at the University of Notre Dame.

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