Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

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Minute Meditation – The Heart Longs for God

Spiritual desire is the longing of the heart for relationship with God that brings happiness and peace. Francis of Assisi was a passionate person, a dreamer, a lover and a person of desire. When he felt his desire filled in hearing the gospel, he found the answer to his deepest longings and changed his life accordingly. He became a follower of Christ. Francis’ life shows us that we must be attentive to our desires if we are to find the fulfillment of our lives in God.

— from the book Franciscan Prayer

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – God Feeds Us with Loving Kindness

Food freely given exacts from us a promise to go beyond its selfish reception to the unselfish realm of deep gratitude. There we commit ourselves to give to others what we have received. My food mentors—grandmother and mother—cooked not because their sense of dignity depended on others’ opinions of them but because they knew that treating tablemates to the best they could offer was the backbone of every family and nation. Though ingratitude and indifference might have come to their table, it disappeared when they left it. Poured forth from previously pursed lips was a litany of gratitude complemented by what these good souls always wanted to see: sighs and smiles of contentment.

—from the book Table of Plenty: Good Food for Body and Spirit
by Susan Muto 

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Appreciate the Simple Things

We need to reawaken the art and discipline of what it means to “taste and savor.” Instead of swallowing our food almost whole, we may have to ruminate upon it as we ought to do with a favorite text. When a dish is as delightful to see as it is to eat, it ought not to embarrass us to ask for a second helping. Rather than rushing to leave the table, we may discern that slower eating is as necessary for bodily nourishment as slower reading is for spiritual enlightenment.

—from the book Table of Plenty: Good Food for Body and Spirit 
by Susan Muto

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Minute Meditation – Blessed Are All the Saints

Jesus left no formal religious rule for his followers. The closest he came was his proclamation of the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers….

Francis took to heart this spiritual vision and translated it into a way of life. In various ways, other saints before and since have done the same. But for many men and women since the time of Francis, his particular example has offered a distinctive key to the Gospel—or, as Pope Francis might say, “a new way of seeing and interpreting reality.” Among the central features of this key: the vision of a Church that is “poor and for the poor”; a resolve to take seriously Jesus’s example of self-emptying love; the way of mercy and compassion; above all, a determination to proclaim the Gospel not only with words but with one’s life.

—from the book The Franciscan Saints by Robert Ellsberg

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Minute Meditation – Freedom in God

A good spirituality achieves two huge things simultaneously: It keeps God absolutely free, not bound by any of our formulas, and it keeps us utterly free ourselves and not forced or constrained by any circumstances whatsoever, even human laws, sin, limitations, failure, or tragedy. “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free!” as Paul writes (Galatians 5:1). Good religion keeps God free for people and keeps people free for God. We cannot improve on that.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – The Body Doesn’t Lie

To keep our bodies less defended—to live in our bodies right now, to be present to others in a cellular way—is also the work of healing past hurts and the many memories that seem to store themselves in the body. The body never seems to stop offering its messages. Fortunately, the body never lies, even though the mind will deceive us constantly. Zen practitioners tend to be well trained in seeing this. It is very telling that Jesus usually physically touched people when he healed them; he knew where the memory and hurt were lodged: in the body itself.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – Reconnecting Head, Heart, and Body

If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence. Those who can be present with head, heart, and body at the same time will always encounter the Presence, whether they call it God or not. For the most part, those skills are learned by letting life come at us on its own terms, and not resisting the wonderful, underlying Mystery that is everywhere, all the time, and offered to us too. “God comes to us disguised as our life,” as I have heard Paula D’Arcy say so beautifully in her talks and retreats.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – God Conquers Our Evil with Good

God resists our evil and conquers it with good, or how could God ask the same of us?! Think about that. God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change; God loves us so that we can change. Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. Love is not love unless it is totally free. Grace is not grace unless it is totally free. You would think Christian people would know that by now, but it is still a secret of the soul.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – Sweet Surrender

We have been graced for a truly sweet surrender, if we can radically accept being radically accepted—for nothing! “Or grace would not be grace at all” (Romans 11:6)! As my father Francis put it, when the heart is pure, love responds to Love alone and has little to do with duty, obligation, requirement, or heroic anything. It is easy to surrender when we know that nothing but Love and Mercy are on the other side.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – Mutual Forgiveness

Only mutual apology, healing, and forgiveness offer a sustainable future for humanity. Otherwise, we are controlled by the past, individually and corporately. We all need to apologize and we all need to forgive or this human project will surely self-destruct. No wonder almost two-thirds of Jesus’s teaching is directly or indirectly about forgiveness. Otherwise, history winds down into the taking of sides, deep bitterness, and remembered hurts, plus the violence that inevitably follows. As others have said, forgiveness is to let go of all hope for a different or better past. It is what it is, and such acceptance leads to great freedom, as long as there is also accountability and healing in the process. Nothing new happens without apology and forgiveness. It is the divine technology for the regeneration of every age and every situation. The “unbound” ones are best prepared to unbind the rest of the world.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr