Daily Reflection – Where We Spend Our Time
Minute Meditation – Reconnecting Head, Heart, and Body
If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence. Those who can be present with head, heart, and body at the same time will always encounter the Presence, whether they call it God or not. For the most part, those skills are learned by letting life come at us on its own terms, and not resisting the wonderful, underlying Mystery that is everywhere, all the time, and offered to us too. “God comes to us disguised as our life,” as I have heard Paula D’Arcy say so beautifully in her talks and retreats.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
Daily Reflection – When the Heart Says “Yes”
Minute Meditation – Our Heart is a Sensitive Receiver
Our heart is a highly sensitive receiver; it can listen through all our senses. Whatever we hear, but also whatever we see, taste, touch, or smell, vibrates deep down with God’s song. To resonate with this song in gratefulness is what I call singing back. This attitude of prayer has given great joy to all my senses and to my heart. A completely different inner world of prayer where I also feel at home is one to which silence opens the door—silence, not only as perceived by the ears, but also a quietness of the heart, a lucid stillness inside, like the stillness of a windless midwinter day.
— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Lifeby Brother David Steindl-Rast
Meditation of the Day – Always be Impartial and Just in Your Deeds
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Morning Offering – Grant Me, O Lord
“Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas
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Morning Offering – Prayer is a Surge of the Heart
“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”
— St. Therese of Lisieux
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Morning Offering – His Name Softens the Heart
“The name of Jesus, pronounced with reverence and affection, has a kind of power to soften the heart.”
— St. Philip Neri
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Meditation of the Day – His Heart Overflows with Great Mercy
“My Heart overflows with great mercy for souls, and especially for poor sinners. If only they could understand that I am the best of Fathers to them and that it is for them that the Blood and Water flowed from My Heart as from a fount overflowing with mercy. For them I dwell in the tabernacle as King of Mercy. I desire to bestow My graces upon souls, but they do not want to accept them. You, at least, come to Me as often as possible and take these graces they do not want to accept. In this way you will console My Heart. Oh, how indifferent are souls to so much goodness, to so many proofs of love! My Heart drinks only of the ingratitude and forgetfulness of souls living in the world. They have time for everything, but they have no time to come to Me for graces.”— St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, p. 367
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Minute Meditation – Hearts on Fire
Franciscan prayer, lived to its full, is to set the human heart on fire. It is to transform one’s body into a body of love and one’s actions into actions of love. In this transformation is the fire that can set the earth ablaze — the fire of light, peace, justice, unity and dignity. It is to see the wounds of suffering humanity and bind them with mercy and compassion. It is to see and feel for all creation — to love by way of self-gift. It is to live in the mystery of Christ, the mystery of God enfleshed.
— from the book Franciscan Prayer by Ilia Delio, OSF
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