Daily Reflection: Judging Someone’s Heart
Minute Meditation – Saint Francis of Assisi
Francis lived in a God-filled world. For the pilgrim of Assisi, the heavens declare the glory of God—and so do sparrows, wolves, and worms. Our cells and souls reflect divine wisdom and are constantly being energized and replenished, even inspired by God. In a God-saturated world, synchronous events populate our days, if our spirits and senses are open. Around each corner is a burning bush or a ladder of angels for pilgrims of the sprit. But, more than that, God wants us to move from mysticism to activism, midwifing and giving birth to God’s vision in our personal lives and public responsibilities. Synchronicities abound for those who live prayerfully, asking for guidance and then listening to God’s wisdom moving through their lives.
Francis believed in divine synchronicity and saw it as essential in the spiritual adventure. Surely it was synchronous that Francis showed up at the church of San Damiano and then listened to the guidance he received. No doubt it was synchronous for Francis to notice a leper as he traveled the roads of Umbria. Mortified and disgusted by leprosy, Francis may have wished to pass by on the other side of the road. But God’s still, small voice told him to stop, reach out, and embrace the man with leprosy. Both the man with leprosy and Francis were transformed in that moment. But, when Francis looked back as he continued the journey, the man with leprosy had disappeared. Francis wondered if the man was Christ in disguise; as he embraced the leper, was he embracing Jesus?
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
Meditation of the Day – January 30, 2021: Time
“What is time, with regard to myself? It is my present and actual existence. Past time, or my past existence, is no longer anything, as far as I am concerned; I can neither recall it, nor change anything in it. The time to come, or my future existence, has not yet arrived, and perhaps never will arrive. I does not depend on me; I cannot count on it … No one is ignorant of these two simple truths, but very few draw from them the conclusions they ought to draw … This present moment, or this actual existence—from whom do I hold it? It is He who has preserved my existence from one instant to another, and who is preserving it at this present moment. Will He preserve it for me in the moment that shall immediately follow this one? I do not know; and nothing in the world can give me the assurance of it. Why has time been given to me? So that by it I may merit a happy eternity. I shall live forever: faith teaches me this; my reason even assures me of another life. The desire of immortality is implanted in the depths of my heart, and this desire, which God Himself has planted there, can never be frustrated of its object. I am, then, born for eternity, but this eternity will be happy or wretched … My fate for all eternity depends, then, on the use I make of time, and since neither the past nor the future is in my own power, it is quite true to say that my eternity depends always on the present moment. Now, at this present moment, what is my state? Would I like to die just as I am now?” — Fr. Jean Nicholas Grou, p. 82-83
Daily Reflection – He Never Misses a Thing
Minute Meditation – Charting the Journey
Questions had lured me to take this pilgrimage to Assisi. Not only questions related to the lectures I would be giving to my fellow pilgrims in Assisi but questions about my own vocation and service. At retirement age, but still professionally active, healthy, and vital, I felt a new stirring. Francis’s life challenged me to look beyond the narrow circle of self-interest to embrace a vision of world loyalty that would encompass my family and the nation
but expand to include the whole earth. I needed to translate my love for my grandchildren into care for vulnerable, starving, and imprisoned children across the globe and in my own nation. I needed to chart a way of life that would promote planetary healing for generations to come.
I needed to journey inward to build the foundation of the outward journey of faithful discipleship and ministry. I needed to reach out to the marginalized and forgotten from a quiet and energetic spiritual center. It was important for me to find the right balance between restlessness and peace, prophetic critique and conciliatory healing.
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
Meditation of the Day – January 29th
“Prayer, considered as petition, consists entirely in expressing to God some desire in order that He may hear it favorably; a real desire is, therefore, its primary and essential condition; without this, we are merely moving the lips, going through a form of words which is not the expression of our will; and thus our prayer is only an appearance without reality. The way, then, to excite ourselves to pray, to put life and fervor into our prayer, and to make of it a cry which, breaking forth from the depths of the soul, penetrates even to heaven, is to conceive the real desire mentioned above, to excite it, to cherish it; for the fervor of our prayer will be in proportion to the strength of the desire we have to be heard; just as what we have but little at heart we ask for only in a half-hearted way, if even we ask it at all; so what we desire with our whole soul we ask for with words of fire, and plead for it before God with an eloquence that is very real.”— Rev. Dom Lehody, p. 4-5
Minute Meditation – Answer Found in Walking
I am a walker. Indeed, walking is one of my favorite pastimes. I rejoice in sunrise while striding on the beach near my home or through urban landscapes when I’m traveling on business. I delight in an afternoon saunter with my wife, Kate, and our goldendoodle, taking in the beauty of
Cape Cod as my dog gallops across the beach. Knowing my love for walking, a dear friend once gave me a glass paperweight, inscribed with Augustine’s words: solvitur ambulando, “it will be solved in the walking.” Movement awakens novel visions and stimulates creative thinking. It’s difficult to hold onto old ideas when you’re on the move. Walking becomes the place of possibility, intimacy, and service. God is our companion as we venture toward new horizons.
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
Meditation of the Day – January 28th
“God cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our doctrine reveals. Sinner or saint He loves and cannot well help Himself. Magdalen in her sin, Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference between her position made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the love of the Father and the Son. Whatever I do, I am loved. But then, if I sin, am I unworthy of love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. Nor can God love me for what I am, since, in that case, I would compel His love, force His will by something external to Himself. In fact, really if I came to consider, I would find that I was not loved by God because I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God’s having loved me.”— Fr. Bede Jarrett, p. 51
Minute Mediation – January 27th, 2021
The first day of my pilgrimage to Assisi was dawning and I wanted to get the lay of the land and reorient my spiritual GPS after three hectic days of sightseeing in Rome. No one stirred, not even a stray cat or dog in search of bounty from a trash can, as I passed the majestic Basilica di San Francesco, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the abbey of San Pietro, and the Basilica di Santa Chiara. Too early even for morning mass, I walked the cobblestones and heard sounds of a new day dawning. As I gazed at the verdant Umbrian countryside in the distance, my imagination went back
to a simpler time. I visualized the hilltop village eight centuries ago, without lights or power, phones or internet, insular and isolated, a place where most of its citizens lived and died without traveling more than day’s walk from their Umbrian birthplace. In the still, crisp morning, I experienced the simplicity of a time before climate change, global travel, the novel coronavirus, and the 24/7 news cycle. For a split second, I forgot the machinations of political leaders and the spirit of unrest that has enveloped the globe as I pondered the journey of another pilgrim like myself, trying to make sense of his own inner stirrings and the challenges of his own time and place and looking for a way of life that would nurture his spirit and serve the world. I was looking for a world-affirming way to become a mystic activist for our time.
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
Meditation of the Day – January 27, 2021
“Prayer is, as it were, being alone with God. A soul prays only when it is turned toward God, and for so long as it remains so. As soon as it turns away, it stops praying. The preparation for prayer is thus the movement of turning to God and away from all that is not God. That is why we are so right when we define prayer as this movement. Prayer is essentially a ‘raising up’, an elevation. We begin to pray when we detach ourselves from created objects and raise ourselves up to the Creator.”— Dom Augustin Guillerand, p. 91