We may compare their task that day with what at times seem to be the humdrum and fruitless duties of our life as Christians.  There are, for example, our daily prayers when we don’t feel a bit like praying, when perhaps God seems so far away as to have no real existence at all.

And yet, as children of our Heavenly Father, we should each morning thank him for the great things in life, things so great that we often take them for granted or let them go unnoticed – for the fact that God has made us in his own image to share his eternal glory; for our health and strength; for our homes and those near and dear to us; for our membership of his Church and for its Sacraments; and above all for Our Lord’s Birth in Bethlehem and death upon the Cross for our sinful and unworthy selves.

So too in the evening we should confess to God the particular ways in which we have failed him during the day and ask his forgiveness.  For so often we ignore God, so often we rebel against him, so often we deliberately disregard what our conscience bids us do and be; and at the end of the day in return for all his goodness to us, the most we can do – and the least we can do – is to bring to him our penitence.