Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

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Minute Meditation – Seeking Safe Refuge

The Holy Family were refugees from a corrupt political situation and an unstable ruler. No matter how much Matthew focuses on the way this flight into another country fulfilled passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, the fact is they were fleeing for their lives. Pope Francis never misses an opportunity to remind us of this reality. In caring for today’s refugees from the many war-torn places around the globe, we are caring for the least of God’s people, and the end of Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that in doing so, we are caring for Christ himself. We may wish that our religious experience could take place in some sort of bubble, protected from the political divisions and ideological arguments that blare into our lives from the media. But Jesus was clearly born into a world of politics and ideology, of power struggles and armed conflicts. We can learn from him that our loyalty is ultimately to the kingdom of God and to the truth, not to any one political point of view. Pray to the Holy Family to watch in a special way over today’s refugees that they might find a place of safety and peace and perhaps one day return to their homes and families.

—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek

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Minute Meditation – Follow the Star

I love going out in the yard in the winter to look at the stars. The clear, cold air makes them seem brighter. Different stars are visible in the winter than at other times of the year. As the constellations wheel overhead, there’s a sense of vast possibility in the universe, but also a sense of permanence. The sun, the moon, the stars, and our own earth travel through time and space but there’s nothing random about those movements. Each has an orbit, an appointed path to travel. Our lives, too, have an appointed path. We move through the seasons of the year, and the seasons of a lifetime. Sometimes it seems as though the only constant is constant change. But the eternal feasts of the Christmas season remind us that the eternal keeps our feet grounded on the earth and our eyes fixed on God’s star, the plan God has for each of our lives.

—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections with Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Celebrate God’s Creation

Our holiday celebrations often keep us indoors. In northern climates, this might be partly because the cold and snowy weather makes going outside a difficult and even unpleasant experience. We hurry from house to car and then into another warm house. In warm climates, the heat finds us scurrying between air conditioned buildings. But creation—including the weather— is a gift to be celebrated, not something simply to be controlled and altered. We lose our sense of wonder in nature when we become too absorbed in the structures of everyday life. Most of us have jobs and other responsibilities that keep us indoors. The people of the Bible lived much closer to the land than we do today. Navigating by the stars was something they did as a matter of course. Jesus’s parables reflect a deep knowledge of flocks, fields, and fishing. We can understand these stories better if we grow in our awareness of creation. Pope Francis, like his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, calls us to read God’s presence not only in our holy books but in the holiness of the world around us, plant and animal as well as human.

—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – God Desires to Dwell in Everyone

Teresa of Avila’s theology offers an elevated, enticing vision of the human capacity for God. At the outset of The Interior Castle, she wrote: “It is a shame and unfortunate that through our own fault we don’t understand ourselves or know who we are—that is loved by God.” Spiritual self-knowledge includes both positive and negative qualities. It does not mean simply gathering information about ourselves, but seeing ourselves truly in the light of God which brings about humility, repentance, and joy.

— from Accidental Theologians: Four Women Who Shaped Christianity
by Elizabeth Dreyer

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Minute Meditation – Judging Makes Love Impossible

Without a forgiveness great enough to embrace even the obscure side of things, we are burdened (and I do mean burdened) with our own need to explain and to judge everything. Who is right now? Who was wrong there? These are eventual and important moral questions, but we cannot, we dare not, lead with them. If we do, we make love and compassion impossible. This is the centrality, and yet unbelievability, of Jesus’ words, “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1).

—from the book Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount
by Richard Rohr, OFM

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Minute Meditation – Living the Gospel in Daily Life

Groups of penitents existed before the Franciscans, and from the beginning, Francis and his brothers identified themselves as penitents from Assisi. Many individuals in these penitent groups desired to be associated with Francis and the brothers, and from this emerged what might be called the Franciscan penitential movement and eventually the Third Order. In a spontaneous response to Francis’ teaching about conversion, members of every social class were moved to a change of heart, to renounce sin and turn away from worldly concerns to serve the Lord in all states of life: cleric, religious, and lay. As Francis and the brothers reached out to them with admonitions and instructions on how to live the Gospel, groups of devout souls began to gravitate to the churches where the friars were located, turning to them for counsel, seeking a deeper understanding of the spiritual life.

The preaching and example of St. Francis exercised such a powerful attraction for people throughout Italy that many of the laity began to desire a deeper experience of God. Because they were bound by family responsibilities, Francis encouraged them to begin leading a Gospel-rooted life in their own homes or places of work, thus inspiring a new “third order” for the universal salvation of all people. Francis admonished them to live simply within the bonds of marriage, or singly, and to love and serve the Lord by serving their neighbor and participating more fully in the life of the Church.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

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Minute Meditation – Gospel Poverty

Francis believed that without God we are nothing, and his rejection of wealth and power was a statement of his total dependence on God, the giver of all gifts, whose overflowing love is beyond our comprehension and who, as a Provident Father, is lavish in bestowing gifts on his children. Francis identified with the poor because he understood his own poverty, and he knew that without God he was utterly empty and could do nothing without God’s help. In renouncing his father’s wealth and his own patrimony he was free to be truly dependent on God. This was the source of his profound peace and joy. For Franciscans today, material poverty is not the greatest concern but rather an acknowledgment that their “poverty of being” is essential. Poverty exists first in the heart, or it doesn’t exist at all.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

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Minute Meditation – Filled with God’s Grace

Mary knew who she was to the very depth of her being. She said yes to God and because of that, the world was turned upside down, or perhaps was finally righted. Mary’s is her testimony to the way God intended the world to be from the beginning. Because she said yes, a new creation would be revealed to the world. This woman at the heart of the Advent season is a remarkable role model for us. We might not realize it, but we, too, are filled with God’s grace, even if that grace is clouded and obscured by sin. Mary may have been born knowing who she was, but we are given many opportunities to learn the marvelous truth that we are sons and daughters of God. At times, we mistake humility for inferiority, but in truth humility means knowing who we are, with all our strengths and weaknesses, gifts and gaps. Our job is to clear away those things that keep us from saying yes to God. If we focus only on what’s missing, we miss the beauty that’s already there. As we become more and more clear, we better reflect and magnify the Lord who has given us all that we have, made us all that we are (and can be). And here, too, we can learn from Mary. Again and again, the Gospels tell us that she treasured everything in her heart, pondering the meaning of the angel’s words—and later those of her precocious child. She must have spent long days and even sleepless nights wondering where his adult path would lead him. But through all of ponderings, she knew in her heart that she could trust the God to whom she had said yes. How do you show forth the glory of God to those around you? Pray these words with Mary: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. (Luke 1:46–47) We’ll never be asked to do what Mary did. Her role in salvation history was unique. But God asks us to have her openness to those things that we are called to do. Take some time even in this hectic week to reflect on your life—past, present, and future—and listen for how God is asking you to make things right in your little corner of the world.

— from the book Simple Gifts: Daily Reflections for Advent  
by Diane M. Houdek

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – God’s Wondrous Deeds

Zechariah and Elizabeth prayed throughout their married lives for the Lord to bless them with children. To have those prayers answered when it seemed far too late for them to be fulfilled must have seemed at first like a cruel joke, a message that was too little and too late. We can understand Zechariah’s doubting the angel’s word. Even if Elizabeth bore a child at such an advanced age, he couldn’t imagine seeing that child grow up and fulfill the destiny promised by the angel. In spite of the face that he had been a holy priest all his life, serving daily in the Temple, this promise seemed too far beyond his ability to believe. It may have been a relief for Zechariah and Elizabeth to withdraw from the busyness of Temple life for a time, he in his imposed silence, she in the wonder of the new life growing in her womb. In the face of great mystery, silence might be the only authentic response. And too often the chatter of outsiders and the gossip of those who only half understand what’s going on can be wearing and stressful. We live in a world where the most intimate sides of people’s lives can be broadcast to the world, with or without their consent. We forget that everyone has a right to privacy and personal time away from prying eyes and babbling gossip. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but technology has vastly enlarged the concept of the village gossip. The pain of infertility is something that many people struggle with, often privately and silently. We need to guard against making assumptions (even judgments) about couples with no children. Allow people to share the intimate details of their lives if and when they choose. There are many good and personal reasons for choosing to raise children, just as there here are many other ways to be fruitful and life-giving. Sometimes silence is indeed golden. Read the story of the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5–25) and reflect on the many emotions the characters must have experienced. What memories from your own life does this story awaken?

—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections from Pope Francis 
by Diane M. Houdek

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – We Are Only Given This Day

What if we could place a meal on the table differently and then hear, finally, the simple things—laughter, rain, and the smell of the sea? What if the dark is spilling the impossible blue on each one who passes by, breaking our hearts open until we see that everything gleams with light—until we are no longer able to “pass by like a dream?” A single sentence, a single word keeps turning life over. We are only given this day.

— from the book Stars at Night: When Darkness Unfolds as Night
by Paula D’Arcy

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