“In tribulation immediately draw near to God with confidence, and you will receive strength, enlightenment, and instruction.”
— St. John of the Cross
Morning Offering – Draw Near to God
Minute Meditation – What is Refuge?
What exactly is refuge? It’s vastly different than shelter. Refuge is deeper, scarier. The stakes are higher when you need refuge. Shelter is from temperatures dropping and the chance of rain. You can probably make it through without shelter. But without refuge, you’re vulnerable and truly alone. Refuge is wind blowing the cedars as far as they will bend, thunder that jolts you and an absolutely black night that has suddenly fallen. And you’re running toward home. The need for it is deeper in the body. When you find shelter, you can calmly peer out. But the need for refuge makes you look within. I could never add up the number of hours I’ve spent alone staring out the window at that void. Those are the deepest darkest loneliest hours. I feel that darkness filling me, as I am part of it. In you, Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame (Ps 31:1). When I remember to say a prayer, it comes as a cluster of stars on the periphery, and I’m not quite sure I even saw any green sparkle, but I try again. A Hail Mary. A Jesus Please. I can’t even call that relief “embers” because embers stay awhile. When I cannot sleep because I am reliving some conflict I endured that day, one I feel I cannot undo, when I’m imagining some future event which I fear is going to flood me with more heartache and sink me, and God, at last, finds me in the dark, I fall asleep, and when I wake up, I don’t know at what point I finally let that refuge enclose me. The psalms are all about the contrasts in our lives. Like a riveting black-and-white photo, there’s gradations: vivid cool to dramatic warm to dramatic cool. Refuge honors the challenge of the silver tone moments turning to noir.
— from the book What Was Lost: Seeking Refuge in the Psalms
by Maureen O’Brien
//Franciscan Media//
Saint of the Day – March 9th
Saint Frances of Rome (1384 – March 9, 1440
Frances’ life combines aspects of secular and religious life. A devoted and loving wife, she longed for a lifestyle of prayer and service, so she organized a group of women to minister to the needs of Rome’s poor.
Born of wealthy parents, Frances found herself attracted to the religious life during her youth. But her parents objected and a young nobleman was selected to be her husband.
As she became acquainted with her new relatives, Frances soon discovered that the wife of her husband’s brother also wished to live a life of service and prayer. So the two, Frances and Vannozza, set out together—with their husbands’ blessings—to help the poor.
Frances fell ill for a time, but this apparently only deepened her commitment to the suffering people she met. The years passed, and Frances gave birth to two sons and a daughter. With the new responsibilities of family life, the young mother turned her attention more to the needs of her own household.
The family flourished under Frances’ care, but within a few years a great plague began to sweep across Italy. It struck Rome with devastating cruelty and left Frances’ second son dead. In an effort to help alleviate some of the suffering, Frances used all her money and sold her possessions to buy whatever the sick might possibly need. When all the resources had been exhausted, Frances and Vannozza went door to door begging. Later, Frances’ daughter died, and the saint opened a section of her house as a hospital.
Reflection
Looking at the exemplary life of fidelity to God and devotion to her fellow human beings which Frances of Rome was blessed to lead, one cannot help but be reminded of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, who loved Jesus Christ in prayer and also in the poor. The life of Frances of Rome calls each of us not only to look deeply for God in prayer, but also to carry our devotion to Jesus living in the suffering of our world. Frances shows us that this life need not be restricted to those bound by vows.
Saint Frances of Rome is the Patron Saint of:
Motorists
Widows
Meditation of the Day – God Has a Plan
“When one is given the Spirit of wisdom, one is able to perceive God’s fingerprints upon the wonders of the world. One is able to see the pattern God has established in history (world history, faith history, and even our own personal history). This should leave us with a sense of comfort, for it means that life is not chaotic. God has a plan.” — Rev. Jude Winkler, OFM, p.62
//The Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – Everyone Who Breathes Has a Mission
“Realize it, my brethren; —every one who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random; . . . God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, He lodges it in the body, one by one, for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us; we are all equal in His sight, and we are placed in our different ranks and stations, not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labor in them for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also.”
— St. John Henry Newman
Minute Meditation – No Boundaries in the Heart
The psalms keep teaching me that to be emotionally and spiritually whole, there’s no drawing lines inside the human heart. It’s like my students keep showing me. We can feel it all. Rejected and radiant. I think the psalms show our inner lives are a celestial place, a Milky Way, and as John Muir wrote about everything being connected, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
— from the book What Was Lost: Seeking Refuge in the Psalms
by Maureen O’Brien
//Franciscan Media//
Saint of the Day – March 8th
Saint John of God (March 8, 1495 – March 8, 1550)
Having given up active Christian belief while a soldier, John was 40 before the depth of his sinfulness began to dawn on him. He decided to give the rest of his life to God’s service, and headed at once for Africa where he hoped to free captive Christians and, possibly, be martyred.
He was soon advised that his desire for martyrdom was not spiritually well based, and returned to Spain and the relatively prosaic activity of a religious goods store. Yet he was still not settled. Moved initially by a sermon of Saint John of Avila, he one day engaged in a public beating of himself, begging mercy and wildly repenting for his past life.
Committed to a mental hospital for these actions, John was visited by Saint John, who advised him to be more actively involved in tending to the needs of others rather than in enduring personal hardships. John gained peace of heart, and shortly after left the hospital to begin work among the poor.
He established a house where he wisely tended to the needs of the sick poor, at first doing his own begging. But, excited by the saint’s great work and inspired by his devotion, many people began to back him up with money and provisions. Among them were the archbishop and marquis of Tarifa.
Behind John’s outward acts of total concern and love for Christ’s sick poor was a deep interior prayer life which was reflected in his spirit of humility. These qualities attracted helpers who, 20 years after John’s death, formed the Brothers Hospitallers, now a worldwide religious order.
John became ill after 10 years of service, but tried to disguise his ill health. He began to put the hospital’s administrative work into order and appointed a leader for his helpers. He died under the care of a spiritual friend and admirer, Lady Ana Ossorio.
Reflection
The utter humility of John of God, which led to a totally selfless dedication to others, is most impressive. Here is a man who realized his nothingness in the face of God. The Lord blessed him with the gifts of prudence, patience, courage, enthusiasm, and the ability to influence and inspire others. He saw that in his early life he had turned away from the Lord, and, moved to receive his mercy, John began his new commitment to love others in openness to God’s love.
Saint John of God is the Patron Saint of:
Booksellers
Firefighters
Heart Patients
Hospitals
Nurses
Printers
Sick
Meditation of the Day – No Man Comes to the Father But by Him
“I would, then, that I could convince spiritual persons that this road to God consists not in a multiplicity of meditations nor in ways or methods of such, nor in consolations, although these things may in their own way be necessary to beginners; but that it consists only in the one thing that is needful, which is the ability to deny oneself truly, according to that which is without and to that which is within, giving oneself up to suffering for Christ’s sake . . . For progress comes not save through the imitation of Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no man comes to the Father but by Him.”— St. John of the Cross, p. 91
Morning Offering – Happiness Can Only be Achieved by Looking Inward
“Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward and learning to enjoy whatever life has, and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.”
— St. John Chrysostom
Minute Meditations – God of Spirit and Truth
Jesus leads the Samaritan woman to a sweeping and usually unnoticed concluding vision: “Open your eyes and see! The fields are shining for the harvest, the reaper can collect his wages now, the reaper can already bring in the grain of eternal life! The reaper and the sower can rejoice together” (4:35–36). You can hear Jesus’ excitement at the possibilities. Why? Partly because it is all happening now! The word already or now is used three times in the passage, and the phrase “sower and reaper together” conflates any notion of time between action and reward. The sowing is the reaping. 60 You could also say that he is the reaper and she is the sower, and whatever is happening is happening right now. He has leapt beyond all boundaries of time, morality, and religion to announce a universal and gratuitous victory for God and for humanity that is taking place in the present tense! This really is great stuff, which could still reform Christian pettiness and division, or any notion of the Gospel as a reward/punishment system that comes after death.
“God of Spirit and Truth, expand my mind, but even more my heart to receive your great and universal good news. I know that no change of heart happens without a change of mind, and no change of mind happens without a change of heart. Get me started in one place or the other!”
— from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//