Stations of the Cross – #14: Jesus is Placed in the Tomb
Daily Reflection: Judging Someone’s Heart
Minute Meditation – Saint Francis of Assisi
Francis lived in a God-filled world. For the pilgrim of Assisi, the heavens declare the glory of God—and so do sparrows, wolves, and worms. Our cells and souls reflect divine wisdom and are constantly being energized and replenished, even inspired by God. In a God-saturated world, synchronous events populate our days, if our spirits and senses are open. Around each corner is a burning bush or a ladder of angels for pilgrims of the sprit. But, more than that, God wants us to move from mysticism to activism, midwifing and giving birth to God’s vision in our personal lives and public responsibilities. Synchronicities abound for those who live prayerfully, asking for guidance and then listening to God’s wisdom moving through their lives.
Francis believed in divine synchronicity and saw it as essential in the spiritual adventure. Surely it was synchronous that Francis showed up at the church of San Damiano and then listened to the guidance he received. No doubt it was synchronous for Francis to notice a leper as he traveled the roads of Umbria. Mortified and disgusted by leprosy, Francis may have wished to pass by on the other side of the road. But God’s still, small voice told him to stop, reach out, and embrace the man with leprosy. Both the man with leprosy and Francis were transformed in that moment. But, when Francis looked back as he continued the journey, the man with leprosy had disappeared. Francis wondered if the man was Christ in disguise; as he embraced the leper, was he embracing Jesus?
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
Saint of the Day – January 30th
St. Martina of Rome (d. 228 A.D.) was born to a noble Roman family and orphaned at a young age. She was zealous in the practice of her faith, remained a virgin, and, in preparation for the Christian persecutions sweeping the city, gave much of her inheritance to the poor. She was martyred under Roman Emperor Alexander Severus.
According to the accounts of Martina’s martyrdom, she was discovered praying in a church and was arrested by Roman soldiers. She was ordered to pay homage to the pagan gods, which she refused. She was then cruelly tortured over several days. She was raked with iron hooks and scourged, and when a bright light enveloped her, some of her torturers were converted to the Faith amid her fervent prayers. She was then taken to the temple of Diana to be forced to offer sacrifice, but at her presence the temple’s demon left with a scream. They next tried to throw her to a lion (it showed no interest in her) and to burn her alive, but she would not catch fire. Finally, she was beheaded.
St. Martina’s feast day is January 30.
Meditation of the Day – January 30, 2021: Time
“What is time, with regard to myself? It is my present and actual existence. Past time, or my past existence, is no longer anything, as far as I am concerned; I can neither recall it, nor change anything in it. The time to come, or my future existence, has not yet arrived, and perhaps never will arrive. I does not depend on me; I cannot count on it … No one is ignorant of these two simple truths, but very few draw from them the conclusions they ought to draw … This present moment, or this actual existence—from whom do I hold it? It is He who has preserved my existence from one instant to another, and who is preserving it at this present moment. Will He preserve it for me in the moment that shall immediately follow this one? I do not know; and nothing in the world can give me the assurance of it. Why has time been given to me? So that by it I may merit a happy eternity. I shall live forever: faith teaches me this; my reason even assures me of another life. The desire of immortality is implanted in the depths of my heart, and this desire, which God Himself has planted there, can never be frustrated of its object. I am, then, born for eternity, but this eternity will be happy or wretched … My fate for all eternity depends, then, on the use I make of time, and since neither the past nor the future is in my own power, it is quite true to say that my eternity depends always on the present moment. Now, at this present moment, what is my state? Would I like to die just as I am now?” — Fr. Jean Nicholas Grou, p. 82-83
Morning Offering – The Voyage
“In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life’s different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship but to keep her on her course.”
– St. Boniface
Daily Reflection – He Never Misses a Thing
Minute Meditation – Charting the Journey
Questions had lured me to take this pilgrimage to Assisi. Not only questions related to the lectures I would be giving to my fellow pilgrims in Assisi but questions about my own vocation and service. At retirement age, but still professionally active, healthy, and vital, I felt a new stirring. Francis’s life challenged me to look beyond the narrow circle of self-interest to embrace a vision of world loyalty that would encompass my family and the nation
but expand to include the whole earth. I needed to translate my love for my grandchildren into care for vulnerable, starving, and imprisoned children across the globe and in my own nation. I needed to chart a way of life that would promote planetary healing for generations to come.
I needed to journey inward to build the foundation of the outward journey of faithful discipleship and ministry. I needed to reach out to the marginalized and forgotten from a quiet and energetic spiritual center. It was important for me to find the right balance between restlessness and peace, prophetic critique and conciliatory healing.
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
Saint of the Day – January 29th
St. Aquilinus of Milan (d. 1015 A.D.), also known as St. Aquilinus of Cologne, was born to a noble family in Bavaria, Germany. He received his education in Cologne, Germany and was ordained to the priesthood. He was offered the bishopric of Cologne, but turned it down in order to be a missionary priest and itinerant preacher.
Aquilinus traveled through various European cities fighting against the dangerous and spreading heresies of the Cathars, Manichaeans, and Arians. He was also known to work miracles by healing people from disease, especially during a cholera epidemic. He eventually settled in Milan, Italy, and was so effective in his preaching against the Arian heretics that they stabbed him to death and threw his body in the city sewer. His body was recovered and buried in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, in a chapel which now bears his name. His feast day is January 29.
Meditation of the Day – January 29th
“Prayer, considered as petition, consists entirely in expressing to God some desire in order that He may hear it favorably; a real desire is, therefore, its primary and essential condition; without this, we are merely moving the lips, going through a form of words which is not the expression of our will; and thus our prayer is only an appearance without reality. The way, then, to excite ourselves to pray, to put life and fervor into our prayer, and to make of it a cry which, breaking forth from the depths of the soul, penetrates even to heaven, is to conceive the real desire mentioned above, to excite it, to cherish it; for the fervor of our prayer will be in proportion to the strength of the desire we have to be heard; just as what we have but little at heart we ask for only in a half-hearted way, if even we ask it at all; so what we desire with our whole soul we ask for with words of fire, and plead for it before God with an eloquence that is very real.”— Rev. Dom Lehody, p. 4-5