Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

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Minute Meditation – The Great Reconciler

I believe that Jesus is the great reconciler. Picture two lines, one going vertically, the other going horizontally: That’s the cross. Pioneer psychologist Carl Jung stated that Jesus was killed in an “agonizing suspension between irreconcilable opposites.” Whenever we try to hold opposite energies together—liberal/conservative, masculine/feminine, right/wrong, black/white, anything that’s conflictive—we are going to get crucified.

When viewing the cross, picture a collision of opposites, the coming together of opposing energies, both of which invariably think they’re the whole truth. Paul saw this clearly, thirty years after Jesus died: “God wanted all fullness to be found in him and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through his death on the cross” (Colossians 1:19–20).

—from the book Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount
by Richard Rohr, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Outsiders Have a Head Start

The most unsettling aspect of his alternative wisdom, and perhaps the most consistent, is that the outcast is in the head-start position, precisely because he or she has been excluded from the false sacred system—the only game in town. Jesus thus begins with a most incredible statement: The poor are the blessed ones! (See Matthew 5:3.) Life has already freed them from the lie that the rest of us cannot see. They are potentially turned around and given a symbolic advantage in hearing the truth: “I tell you, tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the Reign of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). If the system is a mess, those outside of it are at a significant advantage.

—from the book Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount
by Richard Rohr, OFM

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Minute Meditation – Entertaining Angels Unaware

We are encouraged to welcome strangers, for by doing so, many people have entertained angels unaware (see Hebrews 13:2). As Jesus put it in his only description of the final judgment, “in so far as you did this to one of the least of these, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). I wonder what else could save us from our fear and accusation of one another, except one whose judgments are both upside-down and true—and whose mercy is everlasting. Fortunately, they are one and the same, a God who is both sanctuary and stumbling stone (see Isaiah 8:14).

—from the book Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount
by Richard Rohr, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Right Relationship is Key

Jesus is teaching that right relationship is the ultimate and daily criterion. If a social order allows and encourages, and even mandates, good connectedness between people and creation, people and events, people and people, people and God, then we have a truly sacred culture: the Reign of God. The world as it would be if God were directly in charge would be a world of right relationship. It would not be a world without pain or mystery, but simply a world where we would be in good contact with all things, where we would be connected and in communion. Conversely, the work of the Evil One is always to separate, divide, and throw apart (dia-bolical).

Right relationship is all about union and communion, it seems, which means that it is also about forgiveness, letting go, service, and lives of patience and simplicity. Who can doubt that this is the sum and substance of Jesus’ teaching? He makes right relationship desirable, possible, and the philosopher’s stone by which everything else is to be weighed and judged.

—from the book Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount
by Richard Rohr, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Identity, Justice, and Community

We will not appreciate Jesus’ loyalty to the Law and the Prophets if we do not accept his deeper understanding of freedom. I’m afraid that the cry of the French Revolution, “Liberty, equality, and fraternity,” has formed us much more than the Jesus Revolution. His cry might instead be “Identity, justice, and community.” Think about the difference. We also tend to think of freedom as freedom of movement and the liberty to choose between options. This is surely a good and important freedom. There is no indication that the great spiritual teachers, Jesus included, see it as essential, however. They seem to recognize that the world of preferences and possibilities does not of itself lead to wisdom, truth, or even depth of experience. In fact, in the spiritual life, the rule seems to be that less is more. There is almost no correlation between the number of options and the amount of truth or goodness that one attains.

—from the book Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount
by Richard Rohr, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – A Compelling Tradition

The Franciscan tradition is more than eight hundred years old, with followers from many walks of life. Understanding the rich history of St. Francis and his early brothers and sisters in the context of a fascinating and complex religious movement can greatly enhance our understanding of this thirteenth-century saint, his impact on medieval society, his enduring influence on our contemporary world, and his universal appeal to all faiths. St. Francis of Assisi, as a patron and model in living the Gospel, is a hero for our times. His humble yet charismatic personality is as dramatic today as it was for his own day, even as it continues to change the world.

The Franciscan intellectual tradition and the compelling story of Francis of Assisi seem to have a never-ending fascination for scholars, novelists, dramatists, screenwriters, and storytellers of every age, language, and culture. It is my hope that this text can provide the vocabulary to effectively communicate Franciscan values and insights to followers of this saint. In the last ten years we have experienced rapid changes in our world, Church, society, politics, and cultural realities. But the human heart does not change in its fundamental longing for peace, kindness, justice, friendship, and heroes who inspire us to seek the good and to love and serve God in one another. St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi have universally touched hearts by always breathing new life into these dreams in every age.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – A Universal Call to Holiness

In the thirteenth century the religious movement that Francis of Assisi inspired emphasized minority, poverty, penitence, and work with the poor and marginalized. It began as a lay movement, and Francis called himself a “Lesser Brother,” never intending to become a priest in the Church. In the plan of God, Francis became an instrument to revitalize Christianity in the Middle Ages, inspiring men and women, clerics and laity, single and married, wealthy and poor. Francis, by his example and preaching, invited everyone to respond to God’s universal call to holiness by embracing a penitential life focused on living the Gospel.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Lives Marked by a Spirit of Joy

The Lesser Brothers became a fraternity open to all, living lives of prayer, penance, and penitential admonition. They used songs, hymns, exhortations, and example, making them clearly different from other penitential movements of the period. In choosing to be marginal they embraced humility, accepted hostility, and demonstrated compassion for the destitute in society. Their lives were marked by a spirit of joy, and in the life of Francis and the brothers, many began to recognize a mirror of Christ. Francis and his companions became a new reality in thirteenth-century society, not only through the personal charisma of Francis, but through the inspiring lived example of the fraternity. People noted the correlation between what they said and what they did, their spirit of penance, refusal of money, and inner joy.

Unlike many of the local clergy, Francis and the lesser brothers spoke to the hearts of their listeners in terms that they could understand, inspiring them to embrace a penitential conversion and to follow this authentic example of living a Gospel life.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – A Life of Intimacy with Christ

Clare of Assisi did not follow a traditional path to religious life. She was deeply influenced by the preaching and example of St. Francis and the Lesser Brothers and by the poverty and humility of their lives as they imitated Christ in the Gospels. Clare’s understanding of her vocation was rooted in a life of great intimacy with Christ and a commitment to complete and unmitigated poverty. When she left her home to become a follower of the Gospel life as lived by Francis and his companions, she used his model with the women who joined her after they were settled in the convent at San Damiano.

St. Clare has the distinction of being the first woman in history to write a Rule of Life for religious women at a time when convents for women followed strictly prescribed forms of enclosure and demanded individual dowry provisions for continued sustenance of each monastery. In writing her own Rule, Clare was breaking new ground in the Church by holding to her belief that she was called by God to this very demanding expression of Gospel life. Regis Armstrong writes in Clare of Assisi: Early Documents that she had “a startling sense of individual freedom that was based on [her] experience of the maturity of her sisters.” Clare’s insistence on papal approval to protect her Form of Life—including the “Privilege of Poverty”—not just as a privilege but as a right forged a new understanding of religious vocation in the life of the Church.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Living the Gospel in Daily Life

Groups of penitents existed before the Franciscans, and from the beginning, Francis and his brothers identified themselves as penitents from Assisi. Many individuals in these penitent groups desired to be associated with Francis and the brothers, and from this emerged what might be called the Franciscan penitential movement and eventually the Third Order. In a spontaneous response to Francis’ teaching about conversion, members of every social class were moved to a change of heart, to renounce sin and turn away from worldly concerns to serve the Lord in all states of life: cleric, religious, and lay. As Francis and the brothers reached out to them with admonitions and instructions on how to live the Gospel, groups of devout souls began to gravitate to the churches where the friars were located, turning to them for counsel, seeking a deeper understanding of the spiritual life.

The preaching and example of St. Francis exercised such a powerful attraction for people throughout Italy that many of the laity began to desire a deeper experience of God. Because they were bound by family responsibilities, Francis encouraged them to begin leading a Gospel-rooted life in their own homes or places of work, thus inspiring a new “third order” for the universal salvation of all people. Francis admonished them to live simply within the bonds of marriage, or singly, and to love and serve the Lord by serving their neighbor and participating more fully in the life of the Church.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//