During the Mass, there are a couple of good “one liners” that the presiding priest interjects between the main body of the Lord’s Prayer (Catholic version) and the last sentence, “for Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory…. (Lutheran version, right before we release the hand of our neighboring parishioner). The Presider, sort of, free-lances with a few lines and connects the two versions with a variety of Vatican acceptable rhetoric. This one stands out for me, “deliver us from all anxiety …”.
Anxiety is like a tasteless, odorless chemical substance that we never really notice. Everyone breathes oxygen, right? But there’s also nitrogen mixed into our atmosphere and no one ever mentions it, even though it’s always present. Because we don’t recognize anxiety as evil, we unknowingly let it seep in and make us miserable. I suppose most folks are numb to the fact that anxiety is evil. It’s not obvious and sneaks up on us, but it is very evil in how it cripples our thinking and our peace of mind. It moves in and takes up residency like an undetected stow-away or like a wood tick hitch hiking a free ride, meals included, while sucking life one sip at a time, totally un-noticed.
Everyone has varying degrees of anxiety, all of them are bad. So what do we do? This may seem too simple, but let’s start with praying the Lord’s Prayer and insert the “anxiety one liner” consciously, to meet the evil head on. Better yet, meditating on a Rosary would also block out anxiety.