Minute Meditation – God’s Mercy Transforms Us
One of Pope Francis’s favorite themes is mercy. He writes, “God’s mercy transforms human hearts; it enables us, through the experience of a faithful love, to become merciful in turn. In an ever new miracle, divine mercy shines forth in our lives, inspiring each of us to love our neighbor and to devote ourselves to what the Church’s tradition calls the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. These works remind us that faith finds expression in concrete everyday actions meant to help our neighbors in body and spirit. On such things will we be judged.”
Again and again Jesus shows that God is merciful, loving, waiting to give us everything that is good. “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” We read a passage like this one from Matthew’s Gospel ,and we can’t believe that it’s that easy. But the revelation of the Gospels is that our God is bigger and greater and more loving and trustworthy than even the best human being we have known. Once we realize the great truth in this, we let God’s mercy overflow to everyone we meet.
—from the book The Hope of Lent: Daily Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek
//Franciscan Media//
Daily Meditation – Ask and It Shall Be Given
“In the spiritual life there are two great principles which should never be forgotten: Without grace we can do nothing; with it we can do all things. Sometimes it anticipates our desires; ordinarily, God waits till we ask for it. This is a general law thus expressed by Our Lord: ‘Ask, and it shall be given to you.’ Prayer is, therefore, not only a precept, it is a necessity. God places the treasure of His graces at our disposal, and its key is prayer. You desire more faith, more hope, more love; ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.’ Your good resolutions remain sterile, resulting always in the same failures: ‘ask, and it shall be given to you’. Precepts are numerous, virtue painful, temptation seductive, the enemy ruthless, the will weak: ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.'”— Rev. Dom Vitalis Lehodey p. xv
Daily Reflection – Ask Him
