Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery? Job was clearly expressing feelings that we all face at times. He speaks of a sleepless night. Feelings of a loss of hope. Months of misery. Everyone wants to seize the day. But as Irish novelist John McGahern says: “There is nothing more difficult to seize than the day!” Why? Fr. Rolheiser writes that we have an incredible naivete about this. For example, a young man once wrote to Rainer Marie Rilke complaining that he wanted to be a poet, but his daily life offered little in the way of inspiration. His life was not the stuff of poetry, he complained: too much drudgery, too many pressures, life in a small village. How could he write poetry out of such life? He concluded by saying that he envied Rilke’s life as an admired poet, living in a big city and meeting exciting people. Rilke wasn’t exactly sympathetic: “If your daily life seems poor to you,” he replied, “then you aren’t poet enough to call forth its riches. For a poet, there are no uninteresting places, no uninteresting life.” The day is there to be seized. Every season, whether chronological, cultural, or religious, brings with it a particular spirit, mood, and feeling that we sometimes capture and sometimes miss. The same is true for the various periods of the day – morning, noon, early afternoon, late afternoon, evening, and night. Each has its unique light and impact on our feelings, and (speaking in metaphor) its unique angels who carry its special grace. For example, the light of the morning greets us differently than the light of the late afternoon. Thus, the angels of sunrise impact us differently than those of sunset. To seize the day is to meet these angels and let them bless us. Many things keep us from meeting the angels of the hour – preoccupation, tiredness, distraction, heartache, anger, daydreams, stress, hurriedness. It’s easy to miss a particular season and even easier to miss an ordinary morning, afternoon, evening, or entire day. What do we do so as not to miss them? We need to pray. Simply put: If we don’t pray on a given morning, that omission doesn’t offend God. We don’t owe God our prayers. It’s a gift, not a debt owed. But, if we miss praying some morning, there is, as our experience makes evident again and again, the real danger that we will also miss the morning.