Daily Reflection – Because He First Loved Us
Minute Meditation – An Ocean of Sublime Grace
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
//Franciscan Media//
Daily Reflection – Discover the Ways Your Family Needs to be Loved
Daily Reflection – We Become What We Love
Minute Meditation – Christ is the Reason for Creation
The Franciscan tradition maintains that Christ is the primary lover of the infinite love of God—the whole reason for creation is Christ. Jesus, we might say, is the “big bang” of the human potential for God because in his unique person, he realized the created capacity for God. As the Christ, the Anointed One of God, Jesus is God-with-us, the human One who mediates our relationship with God for all eternity. What happened in Jesus, however, must take place in all humanity (and creation) in order for the fullness of Christ to be realized, that is, in order for transformation of all created reality in God to be fulfilled. We might say that Jesus is the Christ but Christ is more than Jesus because Christ is all of humanity and creation as we are intended to be in the risen One, Jesus the Word incarnate, who is our permanent openness to the mystery of God’s infinite love.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective, by Ilia Delio, OSF
//Franciscan Media//
Daily Reflection – Wisdom of Fulton Sheen
Minute Meditation – God’s Humble Love Lives in Us
The fullness of the mystery of Christ is completed in humanity; thus, it depends on us human beings and our participation in the mystery of Christ. Because the non-human material world depends on us humans for its completion in God, it, too, is part of the mystery of Christ but can only participate in this mystery in and through the human person. How does this relationship between Christ and humanity relate to the humility of God? Well, if God bends over in love for us in and through the Word incarnate, then we who are little “words” must bend over in love for one another and for all creation if the universe is to find its fulfillment in Christ. God’s humble love must live in us through grace and freedom.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF
Meditation of the Day – Sin Robs Us of Grace
“Let us recognize with lively faith and with the help of the Holy Ghost the great evil of sin, which robs us of grace. Then we shall immediately detest it with all the power of our soul and banish it from our heart. We shall detest it because, in depriving us of grace, it deprives us of the highest good and of the possession of God and make us worthy of the most severe punishment from His hands. We shall detest it still more because by sin we commit the greatest wrong and the greatest offense against the Author of Grace. For after we have been called through grace to be children of God, we offend Him not merely as our Supreme Lord and Master, to whom we owe unlimited service and respect, but as our most loving Father, our best Friend, the most tender Spouse of our soul. We despise the ineffable love with which He embraces us and return the basest ingratitude for His inestimable gifts and blessings. We disgrace Him and insult His name by dishonoring the name of His children and by showing ourselves unworthy of Him. We tear loose from His bosom the soul that He loved as the apple of His eye and considered as the jewel and joy of His heart. We rend the heavenly robe of innocence and sanctity with which He had clothed us and presented us to the whole Heaven. Like Judas, we desert Our Lord and Saviour, who by grace has numbered us among His friends and loved ones. What pain we inflict on the tender heart of our heavenly Father, how deeply we offend and wound it!”—Fr.Matthias J. Scheeben, p. 345
//Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – Truth Sees God
“Truth sees God, and wisdom contemplates God, and from these two comes a third, a holy and wonderful delight in God, who is love.”
— St. Juliana of Norwich
//Catholic Company//
Minute Meditation – Triumph of the Cross
Jesus was free because he was rooted in the love of God and, therefore, humble. Ultimately, Jesus was free enough to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sake of God’s truth. Humbly rooted in love, Jesus was free to die on a cross. And in that freedom, God’s freedom of love was revealed, the love that brings about a new future. The cross signifies to us that if we are free enough to love then we are free enough to die, and if we are free to die then we are free to live. As long as we are in relation to a God who is freedom-in-love, then death will be part of our journey. For every distance of separation from God must be overcome by death, by giving up isolated existence for a greater union. Finite human life longs for fulfillment of relationship, for union, and only death can remove the veil that separates us from the infinite love of God. Yes, freedom is the gift of love but love prevails in freedom. Violence, suffering and death do not have the last word in God. The last word is love.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF
//Franciscan Media//