Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

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Minute Meditation – The Way to Spiritual Freedom

Selflessness and material generosity flow from and into spiritual freedom. And this free spirit leads us unerringly out of ourselves to God who is perfect freedom and in whom and for whom we move with the uninhibited freedom of a child. We become aware that we are children of a God who loves us with a Father and Mother’s love, and everything we do becomes a gift for God, to please and thank God for being who God is to us. Gradually, the negativism and disapproval of life’s persistent critics means little at all when compared to our determination to do the will of the One who made us and redeemed us. Even our occasional ignorance of what that will is, is purified in our intention to do it as best we can.

—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

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Daily Meditation – Most of Us Are a Minus Sign

“There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what he wanted her to be and what she is, and that is his own mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written.”— Archbishop Fulton Sheen, p. 15

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Minute Meditation – The Healing Power of God

How hard it is to slow down and let the healing happen when the very sickness is a fear of slowing down, of not being able to function as well as we could, of paralysis of will. Healing is most impossible when we cannot forget the sickness long enough for healing to start. Rarely do we realize the healing power that is going on inside us. We do not notice it because we mistake it for something else, we mistake it for an evil. If we have learned to enter into prayer, then we see with new eyes and hear with new ears. And what we perceive is that what we previously thought was surely some scourge of Satan in our lives, is in fact the healing hand of God leading us through the fire of suffering in order to purify and heal what only suffering can heal.

—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

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Minute Meditation – The Need for Courage

Someone once told me he had taken up skydiving because he had no reason for not doing it except that he was afraid, and he did not want to start not doing things simply because he was afraid.  How much good is left undone and how many dreams and hopes are shattered for lack of courage? Fear can steal into our lives so subtly that we might not even recognize it at first. We may think it prudence at first, or good sense. But ultimately it shows its ugly head for what it is, a killer and a paralyzer of action and of the fulfillment that comes from doing. 

—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Meditation of the Day – God Has Loved You From Eternity

“Thus, brethren, God has loved you from eternity, and through pure love, he has selected you from among so many men whom he could have created in place of you; but he has left them in their nothingness, and has brought you into existence, and placed you in the world. For the love of you, he has made so many other beautiful creatures, that they might serve you, and that they might remind you of the love which he has borne to you, and of the gratitude which you owe to him.”— St. Alphonsus Liguori, p. 218

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Minute Meditation – You Are Loved

The love of God. How little it is understood or believed. So many people do not believe that they are loved or loveable. And yet God sent the Son to identify with each one of us in an unbelievable act of love. Perhaps that “unbelievable” is why many can’t believe. Maybe it is incredible that we are so wonderful in God’s eyes that God would go this far to impress upon us our own worth. But if we can accept the fact of this love of God for us, we regain our self-respect and dignity and walk free as sons and daughters of God. 

—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

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Minute Meditation – Leaning on God

I lean on God but from time to time I feel that I am leaning on air. That happens when I start putting God out there somewhere too far removed from me. When I remember that God dwells in me and in all my brothers and sisters in Christ, then that leaning becomes substantial again and God takes flesh in those around me whom I can see and hear. We are the body of Christ, and he has no other visible body here and now. God is Spirit who has become enfleshed in Jesus and Jesus takes on flesh and bone in us through the same Holy Spirit. When we lean on one another, we are building up the body of Christ. We are strengthening our own weakness by acknowledging that we are only a part of the whole body and that we need all the other members if we are going to function correctly and appreciate our own worth. 

— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

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Minute Meditation – Reconciliation and Healing

One of the deepest sources of joy is the awareness of healing taking place inside us. When we have been ill or depressed or confused and afraid, we pray mightily for deliverance. And then one day we notice that something is happening, that our health of mind or body is returning. And this steady growth of strength and peace within us is like a new birth, a new chance to live again. Gradually and imperceptibly we are being made whole, and then there comes a moment when we realize that something wonderful has happened to us. What before seemed impossible is now possible and what was previously so difficult is now somehow easier. 

— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Those Little Crosses We Carry

When God allows sorrow and affliction to come into our lives, God always has a timetable different from ours. God asks us to bear our cross for a certain period of time and nothing we try to do seems to lift that cross from our shoulders entirely until we are transformed and God is ready to elevate us to a new level of love. What I am mainly talking about here are those little neuroses and disabilities and anxieties that come into our lives and which we try desperately to understand and rid ourselves of, sometimes for years on end. And then one day they are no longer there and we find ourselves ready to meet life, more humble and trusting in the goodness and providence of God. 

— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

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Minute Meditation – Loving the Unlovable

Like Saint Francis, when we let God lead us among those who are seemingly repulsive, our love eventually makes them beautiful and they become a source of sweetness and joy to us. This is not because we are patronizing them or “doing good” but because we are changed inside and begin to see people as they really are in God’s sight. Our vision is cleared of our own prejudices and dim perception. For only love opens our eyes to what is really there. The tragedy of those who don’t have charity is that they project their own failures and ugliness onto others and think that the evil and imperfection inside is really outside them and resides in people and situations they can’t stand. And that is what it means to be spiritually blind. It’s hard to see anything but splinters when there’s a beam in your own eye.

— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

//Franciscan Media//