Tag: Heart

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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

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation: God is Ever-Faithful

When the heart rebels and says, “I will reach out for love wherever it may be found,” and the mind echoes, “Yes, and I will not see,” and the conscience says, “I don’t care anymore,” then memory rises like a bright and redeeming sun and says, “Yes, but you have been here before and God saved you in the nick of time. God comes if you ask just one more time, remember?” And again it is memory that cries aloud, “God is faithful and will not abandon those who trust in God.” And the past is made present through memory’s alchemy. This saves us time and again, and we praise and thank God who gives us the past to make the present a wise and redemptive future.

— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Forgive and Begin to Live

Until we learn to forgive deeply and sincerely, we remain only on the threshold of real union with God, we remain essentially imprisoned and unfree. In the course of a lifetime, we gradually accumulate countless little resentments which, if allowed to grow, become big hates and seemingly insoluble differences. If, however, we do not allow these jealousies and hatreds to grow, but instead try always to purify our hearts, we enter into the mystery of love, the mystery of God. We have so much to forgive: life, maybe, certainly those who have hurt us and even ourselves (perhaps most of all, ourselves). Often we are hardest on ourselves and need to forgive ourselves for failing, for being less perfect than we would like to be. God forgives us much more readily than we forgive ourselves, and this inability to forgive ourselves is the cause of much of our pain and inability to grow. Forgive, then, and we will begin to live. 

— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Morning Offering – We Must Pray Without Ceasing

“We must pray literally without ceasing— without ceasing—in every occurrence and employment of our lives . . . that prayer of the heart which is independent of place or situation, or which is rather a habit of lifting up the heart to God as in a constant communication with Him.”
— St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

//Catholic Company//