Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

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Minute Meditation – Working Out Life’s Meaning

When we give our lives for the sake of empowerment of the other, we embrace the paradox that is central to every paschal journey. This is not death pursued for its own sake, nor is it suffering for the sake of suffering. It is the daily cross we are all asked to undertake to rid our world of the meaningless suffering largely caused by the blindness that is unable to see the enduring paradox on which all life flourishes. Whether we engage the paradox on the grand cosmic scale or consider its application to our individual lives, the challenge is equally daunting. The first hurdle we need to negotiate is the persistent indoctrination of dualistic splitting, dividing life into the binary opposites of earth versus heaven, matter versus spirit, body versus soul. The illumination of truth does not belong to the clarity of the polar opposites but to the gray area in between, where, day in and day out, we work out the meaning of life.) This is where the real stuff happens. Here is where we encounter afresh our inherited patriarchal, dualistic, and imperialistic wisdom and face the disturbing truth that deeper meaning evolves elsewhere— in the restless, pulsating throes of an evolving universe ever inviting us to new horizons, ever risky, yet persistently creative!

—from the book Paschal Paradox: Reflections on a Life of Spiritual Evolution, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, page 73

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Minute Meditation – Empowering Companions

Jesus belongs to a reality greater than his individual self and therefore would also include himself in the command that we should seek first the new companionship (Matthew 6:33). Jesus, therefore, may be viewed as the primordial disciple of this new empowering dispensation, with all humans called to be co-disciples—not for but with Jesus. As co-disciples we are called to be friends and not mere servants. And there are no privileged power positions in this new dispensation, wherein unconditional love is the primary driving force. Knowing that we are loved unconditionally, then we are called to serve all others—humans and nonhumans alike—with something of that same unconditional love with which we ourselves are loved. Finally, the word earthing reminds us unambiguously that it is in and with creation at large that we seek to foster and uphold the power of unconditional love.

—from the book Paschal Paradox: Reflections on a Life of Spiritual Evolution, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, page 49

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Minute Meditation – Befriending the Great Paradox

The language of paradox is written all over creation. It is there for us to read and discern. When we do attend to it, it seems to make life more tolerable, more bearable; dare I suggest, more meaningful. When we fail to attend, we expose ourselves to forces that can be cruel and devastating. Apparently, we do have a choice. The big problem, however, is that the choice seems to lead in directions that are alien to our imperial Western consciousness, to our rational ways of perceiving and acting, to our prized sense of being in control of the contingent nature of the world we inhabit. To opt for the other choice feels like betraying or abandoning all we have worked so hard for, all that constitutes the very foundations of a civilized world.

—from the book Paschal Paradox: Reflections on a Life of Spiritual Evolution, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, page 72

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Minute Meditation – A Daily Challenge

Stability has never featured strongly in my life; the older I become the more I encounter daily challenges to integrate change and new perspectives. Observing the natural world we inhabit, the plant, the tree, and the animal never remain the same. Everything grows, unfolds into ever new ways of being. We can’t control such change; indeed, the only authentic response we can make is to learn to flow with it. In the change we experience around and within us, there is another inescapable dimension: decay, decline, and death. Such disintegration is not an evil, nor is it the consequence of sin stated in Romans 6:23, but it is a God-given dimension of all creation. Without the disintegration and death of the old there can be no true novelty. The ability to let go of that which previously sustained us is a perquisite for embracing the new that morphs into further growth and development.

—from the book Paschal Paradox: Reflections on a Life of Spiritual Evolution, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, page 5

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Minute Meditation – Empowering Grace of God

We are birthed into life in the empowering grace of our creative God, and our collaborative responsibility with that God is to birth anew the nature that has birthed us. In this co-creative process, there is no room for patriarchal power or manipulation. It is our sense of belonging that defines our true nature and our God-given identity. That to which we belong defines the very essence of our adult selves. Therefore, God’s will for humans—and for all creation—is to exercise an agency of co-creation: to bring about on earth a greater fullness, the evolutionary complexity I described in chapter one. We are meant to be an engaged and involved species, adult people serving an adult God, in the ever-evolving enterprise of our magnificent universe. Seeking to escape to a life hereafter makes no evolutionary sense anymore; in fact, it never did for our ancient ancestors.

—from the book Paschal Paradox: Reflections on a Life of Spiritual Evolution, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, page 25

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Minute Meditation – A Friend

The next twenty-one years were a time of total dedication to serving the sick and the poor in the burgeoning city of the Midwest, Detroit, Michigan. Sent by the superiors to be the assistant to Br. Francis Spruck, monastery porter for over twenty-five years, Solanus soon became the one friar whom everybody wanted to see.… Poor Br. Francis, who was provincial tailor and porter at the same time, had hoped that the new porter would lessen his work at the office. Now, as Solanus became more and more known, the doorbell rang constantly. The friars finally put a sign over the bell, “WALK IN.”

The fame of Solanus spread by word of mouth all over the city. When people were sick or in difficulty, the word was, “Go see Father Solanus.” He was everybody’s friend, and like a good friend he was always available. On a typical day at the monastery office, all the chairs lined up around the room would be occupied. People patiently waited a turn to speak with Solanus, who sat at a plain desk in the center of the room. Sometimes he would be interrupted by the telephone on his desk. He would turn his attention to the caller, always with patience and equanimity. Every visitor was important to Solanus. He never hurried anyone. With complete attention he patiently listened to each tale of concern for a sick child or parent or friend. Gently he would speak of God’s love and how God turns trials to blessings. He would try to share his own deep faith and trust in God with the person before him.

—from the book Gratitude and Grit: The Life of Blessed Solanus Casey,
by Brother Leo Wollenweber, OFM Cap, page 43

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Minute Meditation – Sustained in Christ

Faith requires perseverance. It often grows in stages. Sometimes we fall. Sometimes we walk away. So often, we must crawl. Whether we consciously admit to it or not, our faith—our life in Christ—has sustained us throughout the ups and downs of our lives. It has sustained us in moments of new life and in death, at times of sickness, and at those times when we struggle to give meaning to painful situations.

— from the book Meeting God in the Upper Room: Three Moments to Change Your Life,
by Monsignor Peter J. Vaghi

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Minute Meditation – Strength of Conviction

Dear God, we ask that you hear our Lenten prayer of praise, surrender, and petition. We praise you for the many gifts that you have given us. We surrender our control, seeking to follow Jesus’s model of humility, while striving to love as he loved us. We recognize that suffering comes with love, that great love and great suffering can transform us, but that neither experience is necessarily easy. We offer our petition to you, praying that we might have the strength of our convictions, the hope of our faith, and the joy of that hope when times are difficult. May we always place our trust in you and commend our whole selves to your care. In doing so, may we always proclaim, in word and deed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done! Amen.

—from the book The Last Words of Jesus: A Meditation on Love and Suffering,
by Daniel P. Horan, OFM, page 93

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Beginnings and Endings

It can be difficult to tell the difference between beginnings and endings. Perhaps one of the strongest lessons in Jesus’s words from the cross is that we must not be as concerned about our time as we are about God’s time. In God’s time beginnings and endings are one in the same, because God’s time is not so much a matter of minutes, hours, and days as it is about a way of living in the world. The way we mark the passage of our life is not the same way that God marks our time. It is when washing the feet of others, the giving of ourselves for the sake of our brothers and sisters, that we live according to God’s time.

—from the book The Last Words of Jesus: A Meditation on Love and Suffering 
by Daniel P. Horan, OFM, page 79

//Franciscan Media//

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Daily Meditation – Our Evil Thoughts

“With regard to evil thoughts, there may be a twofold delusion. God-fearing souls who have little or no gift of discernment, and are inclined to scruples, think that every wicked thought that enters their mind is a sin. This is a mistake, for it is not the wicked thoughts in themselves that are sins, but the yielding or consenting to them. The wickedness of mortal sin consists in the perverse will that deliberately yields to sin with a complete knowledge of its wickedness with full consent. And therefore St. Augustine teaches that when the consent of the will is absent, there is no sin. However much we may be tormented by temptations, the rebellion of the senses, or the inordinate motions of the inferior part of the soul, as long as there is no consent, there is no sin. For the comfort of such anxious souls, let me suggest a good rule of conduct that is taught by all masters in the spiritual life. If a person who fears God and hates sin doubts whether or not he has consented to an evil thought or not, he is not bound to confess it, because it is morally certain that he has not given consent. For had he actually committed a mortal sin, he would have no doubt about it, as mortal sin is such a monster in the eyes of one who fears God that its entrance into the heart could not take place without its being known. Others, on the contrary, whose conscience is lax and not well-informed, think that evil thoughts and desires, though consented to, are not sins provided they are not followed by sinful actions. This error is worse than the one mentioned above. What we may not do, we may not desire. Therefore an evil thought or desire to which we consent comprises in itself all the wickedness of an evil deed.”
—St. Alphonsus Liguori, p. 142-143

//Catholic Company, 3/22/2022//