Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

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Meditation of the Day – Humility

“Once, while I was wondering why Our Lord so dearly loves the virtue of humility, the thought suddenly struck me, without previous reflection, that it is because God is the supreme Truth and humility is the truth, for it is the most true that we have nothing good of ourselves but only misery and nothingness: whoever ignores this, lives a life of falsehood. they that realize this fact most deeply are the most pleasing to God, the supreme Truth, for they walk in the truth.”— St. Teresa of Avila, p. 175-6

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Minute Meditation – Our Hearts Listen and Respond

To have a place of solitude is an inestimable gift. It makes it easy to let the heart expand, to let the senses wake up, one by one, to come alive with fresh vitality. Yet, whatever our circumstances, we need to somehow set aside a time and a place for this kind of experience. We tend to overlook the close connection between responsiveness and responsibility, between sensuousness and social challenge. Outside and inside are of one piece. As we learn to really look with our eyes, we begin to look with our heart also. We begin to face what we might prefer to overlook, begin to see what is going on in this world of ours. As we learn to listen with our ears, our heart begins to hear the cry of the oppressed. 

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Lifeby Brother David Steindl-Rast

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Meditation of the Day – The Charity and Compassion of the Blessed Virgin

“What are we to say of the charity and compassion of the Blessed Virgin, who for nine months bore, and still carries in her heart, the only Son of God, the uncreated charity which knows no bounds? If, as often as we approach a fire, we are affected by its heat, have we not reason to believe that whoever approaches the heart of the Mother of Mercies, ever burning with her most ardent charity, must be profoundly affected in proportion to the frequency of his petitions, the humility and confidence in his heart?”— Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, p.151

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Minute Meditation – Taste and See

Since every thing, every person, every situation comes from the God who speaks, the whole world is Word by which we can live. We need only “taste and see how good God is.” We do this with all our senses. Through whatever we taste or touch, smell, hear, or see, God’s love can nourish us. For the one creating and redeeming Word is spelled out to us in ever new ways. God who is love, has nothing else to say in all eternity but “I love you!” And God says this in ever new ways through everything that comes into being. And we “eat it all up”; as we might say of a book, “I devoured it, cover to cover.” We assimilate this food and it becomes our life. We live in its strength. We become Word.

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Lifeby Brother David Steindl-Rast

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Daily Meditation – By Accepting Our Sufferings, We Spare Ourselves Much Harder Ones

“By accepting the sufferings ‘offered’ by life and allowed by God for our progress and purification, we spare ourselves much harder ones. We need to develop this kind of realism and, once and for all, stop dreaming of a life without suffering or conflict. That is the life of heaven, not earth. We must take up our cross and follow Christ courageously every day; the bitterness of that cross will sooner or later be transformed into sweetness.”— Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 49

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Minute Meditation – Prayer and Action

There surely is a world of difference between the prayer of action and that of silence or word. Here it is not by listening and responding, not by diving down into silence, but by acting, by doing, that I communicate with God. Whatever I can do lovingly can become prayer of action.  Nor is it necessary that I explicitly think of God while working or playing. Sometimes this would hardly be possible. While proofreading a manuscript, I better keep my mind on the text, not on God. If my mind is torn between the two, the typos will slip through like little fish through a torn net. God will be present precisely in the loving attention I give to the work entrusted to me. By giving myself fully and lovingly to that work, I give myself fully to God. This happens not only in work but also in play, say, in bird-watching or in watching a good movie. God must be enjoying it in me, when I am enjoying it in God. Is not this communion the essence of praying?

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life by Brother David Steindl-Rast

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Minute Meditation – Our Heart is a Sensitive Receiver

Our heart is a highly sensitive receiver; it can listen through all our senses. Whatever we hear, but also whatever we see, taste, touch, or smell, vibrates deep down with God’s song. To resonate with this song in gratefulness is what I call singing back. This attitude of prayer has given great joy to all my senses and to my heart. A completely different inner world of prayer where I also feel at home is one to which silence opens the door—silence, not only as perceived by the ears, but also a quietness of the heart, a lucid stillness inside, like the stillness of a windless midwinter day.

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Lifeby Brother David Steindl-Rast

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Minute Meditation – Opening Our Eyes to Meaning

Happiness and a meaningful life are inseparable. You may know people who appear to have whatever good fortune can give and are nevertheless desperately unhappy. And there are others who in the midst of raw misery are deeply at peace and—well, genuinely happy. See if you can find where the difference lies. When we go deep enough, we find that the happy ones have found the one thing which the others are lacking: meaning in life. But we should not call meaning a “thing.” It is, in fact, the one reality in our life which is nothing. Nor should we say that someone has found meaning, as if, once found, meaning could be safely kept for darker days. Meaning must be constantly received, like the light to which we must open our eyes here and now, if we want to see.

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Lifeby Brother David Steindl-Rast

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Meditation of the Day – Our Ears are Filled with Racket

“When we come into church from the outside our ears are filled with the racket of the city, the words of those who have accompanied us, the laboring and quarreling of our own thoughts, the disquiet of our hearts’ wishes and worries, hurts and joys. How are we possibly to hear what God is saying? That we listen at all is something; not everyone does. It is even better when we pay attention and make a real effort to understand what is being said. But all this is not yet the attentive stillness in which God’s word can take root. This must be established before the service begins, if possible in the silence on the way to church, still better in a brief period of composure the evening before.”— Msgr. Romano Guardini, p. 17

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Minute Meditation – An Ocean of Sublime Grace

We may read volumes and volumes on the art of swimming, yet we’ll never understand what swimming is like unless we get wet. So we may read all the books ever written on the love of God and never understand loving unless we love. Where love is genuine, belonging is always mutual. It is like submerging ourselves into an ocean of sublime grace.

— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life by Brother David Steindl-Rast

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