Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

Posted on

Minute Meditation – God at the Center

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.” —Romans 8:28

Instinctively every human being has a hunger for God because each of us has a hunger for happiness. Most of us have discovered that all those things we thought would make us happy might have for a while but faded and kept us searching. St. Augustine wrote of his search: “You have made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Your heart, your life, and mine have a deep capacity for limitless, infinite, pure, irrevocable love. No human being or beings can satisfy that deep yearning. Only God can fill it with his infinite, gentle, unconditional, eternal love. Human interpersonal relationships are great gifts from God. We need the love of others, but we must keep God at the center. We must look to God for that deep peace, happiness, and security that only God can give and not expect it from another limited, imperfect human being. Only God is perfect; humans are not. In daily, peaceful prayer, God continues to fill that capacity. Keep God at the center, and he will put the puzzle of life together for you.

Lord, call me often to prayer and reflection so I can keep you at my center. Amen.

—from the book Three Minutes with God: Reflections and Prayers to Encourage, Inspire, and Motivate
by Monsignor Frank Bognanno

Posted on

Minute Meditation – The Anchor of Hope

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” —Hebrews 11:1

The writer of the Book of Psalms sums up his reason for hope in Psalm 56:9–11: “This I know, that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise, … in God I trust; I am not afraid.” There you have it. The person who believes and trusts in God, in my observation, has far less fear because he or she senses God’s presence, care, and protection. In the Scriptures, hope is visualized as an anchor. By hope we are anchored to Christ, so we don’t go adrift. He comes to us spiritually to be our anchor amid the storms of life. Be open to him.

Lord, it is so easy for me to drift. Be my anchor. Amen.

—from the book Three Minutes with God: Reflections and Prayers to Encourage, Inspire, and Motivate
by Monsignor Frank Bognanno

Posted on

Minute Meditation – Finding Happiness

“You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy.”—Psalm 16:11

Eleanor Roosevelt once said something that is very true: “Happiness is not something that we can directly acquire. It’s a by-product of something else. It seeps into our consciousness and emotions when we choose to do that right thing, the best thing.” We basically become happy when we do our best as parents or at work, or when we reach out to help someone, or fulfill our responsibilities, whether others notice it or not. Then suddenly, strangely, we are happy. Don’t go after happiness directly. It will elude you. Just try to be the best version of yourself. Do everything with peace and for the right reason and happiness will be there as a by-product.

Lord, teach me to live with love and happiness will follow. Amen.

—from the book Three Minutes with God: Reflections and Prayers to Encourage, Inspire, and Motivate
by Monsignor Frank Bognanno

Posted on

Minute Meditation – The Importance of Small Things

“It [the mustard seed] is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs…”—Matthew 13:32

St. Francis de Sales wrote, “Even little actions are great when they are done well.” Anything we do for the right reason makes those small tasks great. Try always to have love for others, family, business, and a healthy love for oneself. Don’t sell short those small tasks that fill most of your days. Create a habit of looking for those simple things around the house, at work, or in the neighborhood that can be done simply, quietly, and with the power of great love. Don’t pass up the opportunities that are always there! Start with that small task in front of you now.

Lord, help me to see the value in small tasks. Amen.

—from the book Three Minutes with God: Reflections and Prayers to Encourage, Inspire, and Motivate
by Monsignor Frank Bognanno

Posted on

Minute Meditation – What’s Your Hurry?

Patience can be in short supply at this time of year, when everyone is too busy. Technology has speeded up our lives to the point that we notice when our internet connection is sluggish or the person in front of us in the grocery checkout has too many coupons. We don’t even know why we’re in such a hurry. We’ve begun to value speed for its own sake. And yet the things that really matter in life still take time and patience. We can’t speed up the growth of plants or animals or babies. We can’t speed up the time time it takes for healing, whether it’s our bodies or our spirits. And all these things are well worth the wait. Instead of hurrying, we need to find ways to nurture ourselves and one another during the waiting time. The refrain of Advent is “The Lord is near.” Sometimes it’s hard to believe this. We don’t get the answers we want when we pray, or at least we don’t get them immediately. This season can help us wrestle with the waiting time. While we wait for the perfection of the world in the second coming of Christ, we have the mystery of the Incarnation to guide us in making our world a little more ready. We can appreciate the small signs along the way to that perfect time and place. People of earlier generations were far more aware of the slow growth of nature. We can learn a valuable lesson in patience from observing the small signs of growth. Take a walk today and notice not the bare branches of the trees but the terminal buds that signal next spring’s leaves.

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

Posted on

Minute Meditation – An Ocean of Divine Love

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

Posted on

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

//Franciscan Media//

Posted on

Minute Meditation – One Who is Mercy

Without the true sacred, we are all at one another’s mercy and subject to one another’s whimsical judgments. Under the true sacred, we are at the mercy of One Who Is Mercy. No wonder Jesus gave all his life to proclaim such a monumental liberation! Humanity has been waiting for such freedom with Messianic hope. It is the only way out of our revolving hall of mirrors, our own war of all against all, and is rightly called salvation. For Jesus, God’s judgment is good news for the nations—and for the individual too. How different this is than how most of us think about judgment.

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

//Franciscan Media//

Posted on

Minute Meditation – Conversion is an Unlearning

Jesus’ teaching is summarized in one line: “The time is fulfilled, and the Reign of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). Conversion is not a learning as much as it is an unlearning. Conversion is an unlearning that comes like a dove descending (see Mark 1:10) once the old world order is unmasked and the Great Lover is revealed. No wonder we had to use phrases like falling from a horse, scales falling from our eyes (see Acts 9:18), and the crowing of the cock (Luke 22:61).

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

//Franciscan Media//