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Meditation of the Day – Always be Impartial and Just in Your Deeds
Minute Meditation – At Home with Angels and Beasts
We humans belong to both realms, the realm of the senses and a realm that goes beyond them. This stretches us. To avoid the tension of this stretching process we are apt to settle for half of our rightful inheritance. Still, our human birth gives us a dual citizenship. Only by claiming both realms as home can we avoid the polarization of our human consciousness. Our noblest task is to make the most of this creative tension. If we neglect what goes beyond our senses, we sink below animals. But if we deny being animals and neglect or reject our senses, we clip the very wings on which we are meant to rise to higher spheres. Unless we claim our dual citizenship and are at home with both angels and beasts we become alienated from both, alienated from what is truly human; we become—in Christopher Fry’s apt image, “Like a half-wit angel strapped to the back of a mule.”
— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Life, by Brother David Steindl-Rast
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – Christ is the Reason for Creation
The Franciscan tradition maintains that Christ is the primary lover of the infinite love of God—the whole reason for creation is Christ. Jesus, we might say, is the “big bang” of the human potential for God because in his unique person, he realized the created capacity for God. As the Christ, the Anointed One of God, Jesus is God-with-us, the human One who mediates our relationship with God for all eternity. What happened in Jesus, however, must take place in all humanity (and creation) in order for the fullness of Christ to be realized, that is, in order for transformation of all created reality in God to be fulfilled. We might say that Jesus is the Christ but Christ is more than Jesus because Christ is all of humanity and creation as we are intended to be in the risen One, Jesus the Word incarnate, who is our permanent openness to the mystery of God’s infinite love.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective, by Ilia Delio, OSF
//Franciscan Media//
Meditation of the Day – Prayer is the Duty of Every Moment
“Prayer is the duty of every moment. We ought always to pray, said our Lord. And what He said, He did; therein lay His great power. Action accompanied His words and corresponded with them. We must pray always in order to be on our guard. Our life, both of body and soul, our natural and supernatural life, is like a fragile flower. We live surrounded by enemies. Ever since man rejected the Light that was meant to show him the way, everything has become for us an obstacle and a danger; we live in the shadow of death.”— Dom Augustin Guillerand, p. 9
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Minute Meditation – Christ at the Heart of the World
While Francis did not live in an age of globalism, he did live in a society of class distinctions. Through his life in Christ he came to see that Christ cannot be limited to a single human person; rather, Christ encompasses the whole creation. Nowhere is this more evident than in his Canticle of the Creatures. By entering into the heart of Christ, Francis found Christ at the heart of the world. The life of Francis indicates to us that to be a Christian is to find Christ in every person and living creature, and to be in union with Christ is to experience God’s goodness throughout creation, not just in a church. Christ, the risen incarnate Word of God, encompasses the whole creation.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF
Meditation of the Day – Nothing You Can See is Truly Good
“You have never begrudged the martyrs their triumph but rather trained them for it. And so I am asking you to be consistent with the lessons you teach them. Just beg for me the courage and endurance not only to speak but also to will what is right, so that I may not only be called a Christian, but prove to be one. For if I prove myself to be a Christian by martyrdom, then people will call me one, and my loyalty to Christ will be apparent when the world sees me no more. Nothing you can see is truly good. For our Lord Jesus Christ, now that he has returned to his Father, has revealed himself more clearly. Our task is not one of producing persuasive propaganda; Christianity shows its greatness when it is hated by the world.”— St. Ignatius of Antioch, p. 194
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Minute Meditation – God’s Humble Love Lives in Us
The fullness of the mystery of Christ is completed in humanity; thus, it depends on us human beings and our participation in the mystery of Christ. Because the non-human material world depends on us humans for its completion in God, it, too, is part of the mystery of Christ but can only participate in this mystery in and through the human person. How does this relationship between Christ and humanity relate to the humility of God? Well, if God bends over in love for us in and through the Word incarnate, then we who are little “words” must bend over in love for one another and for all creation if the universe is to find its fulfillment in Christ. God’s humble love must live in us through grace and freedom.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF
Meditation of the Day – Sin Robs Us of Grace
“Let us recognize with lively faith and with the help of the Holy Ghost the great evil of sin, which robs us of grace. Then we shall immediately detest it with all the power of our soul and banish it from our heart. We shall detest it because, in depriving us of grace, it deprives us of the highest good and of the possession of God and make us worthy of the most severe punishment from His hands. We shall detest it still more because by sin we commit the greatest wrong and the greatest offense against the Author of Grace. For after we have been called through grace to be children of God, we offend Him not merely as our Supreme Lord and Master, to whom we owe unlimited service and respect, but as our most loving Father, our best Friend, the most tender Spouse of our soul. We despise the ineffable love with which He embraces us and return the basest ingratitude for His inestimable gifts and blessings. We disgrace Him and insult His name by dishonoring the name of His children and by showing ourselves unworthy of Him. We tear loose from His bosom the soul that He loved as the apple of His eye and considered as the jewel and joy of His heart. We rend the heavenly robe of innocence and sanctity with which He had clothed us and presented us to the whole Heaven. Like Judas, we desert Our Lord and Saviour, who by grace has numbered us among His friends and loved ones. What pain we inflict on the tender heart of our heavenly Father, how deeply we offend and wound it!”—Fr.Matthias J. Scheeben, p. 345
//Catholic Company//
Minute Meditation – Triumph of the Cross
Jesus was free because he was rooted in the love of God and, therefore, humble. Ultimately, Jesus was free enough to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sake of God’s truth. Humbly rooted in love, Jesus was free to die on a cross. And in that freedom, God’s freedom of love was revealed, the love that brings about a new future. The cross signifies to us that if we are free enough to love then we are free enough to die, and if we are free to die then we are free to live. As long as we are in relation to a God who is freedom-in-love, then death will be part of our journey. For every distance of separation from God must be overcome by death, by giving up isolated existence for a greater union. Finite human life longs for fulfillment of relationship, for union, and only death can remove the veil that separates us from the infinite love of God. Yes, freedom is the gift of love but love prevails in freedom. Violence, suffering and death do not have the last word in God. The last word is love.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF
//Franciscan Media//
Meditation of the Day – The Furnace of Infinite Love
