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“Where there is no obedience there is no virtue, where there is no virtue there is no good, where there is no good there is no love, where there is no love, there is no God, and where there is no God there is no Paradise.”
— St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
//Catholic Company//
The things and people we cling to imprison us; the things and people we love free us. The most liberating experience of all is to love something or someone and not at the same time want to control the object of our love. True love allows the other his or her own freedom; yes, even desires that freedom; and in return the lover is free to love more and more selflessly. If I am willing to love you and let you go whenever and wherever you wish, we are both free and our love grows. Otherwise, need and dependence replace love, and we grow tired of what all of this is costing us emotionally. Some learn this basic fact of life, and they become the saints we all know. Others never do learn it, and they are constantly caught in webs of their own making, unable to break loose and enjoy the freedom of the children of God.
— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
God has called each of us to a special service of love and sharing. Most of the time that service is rendered in our ordinary, everyday living, but somehow we fail to see this fact and are constantly looking elsewhere to find ourselves. We think that our real call from God, our real identity, is just around the next corner, that surely God has something other in mind for us than the commonplace demands of our own families and friends, of our own neighborhood, our own town. And because of this attitude, we miss the real opportunities to discover who we really are, and we fail to grow to the stature in Christ that God intends for us. Jesus grew to manhood and holiness in the carpenter shop at Nazareth learning to live with and to love his parents, relatives and neighbors. We grow in love and holiness in the same way.
— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
We begin to pray well as soon as we realize that complete detachment is never an accomplished fact. It is never realized completely, nor perhaps should it be. But in the process of trying to be reasonably detached, we pray. And prayer becomes more intense the more aware we are of our entanglements with things and people that distract us from God. This is not to say that things and people are not good. They are. But something has happened somewhere along the line; call it original sin or anything you like. The fact remains that most of our heartaches come from exaggerated attachments. It sounds old-fashioned to use words like “detachment,” but our experience tells us daily that we are not really free and that there must be someone to love who transcends the need to be loved, a lover who invites rather than demands our love.
— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Selflessness and material generosity flow from and into spiritual freedom. And this free spirit leads us unerringly out of ourselves to God who is perfect freedom and in whom and for whom we move with the uninhibited freedom of a child. We become aware that we are children of a God who loves us with a Father and Mother’s love, and everything we do becomes a gift for God, to please and thank God for being who God is to us. Gradually, the negativism and disapproval of life’s persistent critics means little at all when compared to our determination to do the will of the One who made us and redeemed us. Even our occasional ignorance of what that will is, is purified in our intention to do it as best we can.
—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
The love of God. How little it is understood or believed. So many people do not believe that they are loved or loveable. And yet God sent the Son to identify with each one of us in an unbelievable act of love. Perhaps that “unbelievable” is why many can’t believe. Maybe it is incredible that we are so wonderful in God’s eyes that God would go this far to impress upon us our own worth. But if we can accept the fact of this love of God for us, we regain our self-respect and dignity and walk free as sons and daughters of God.
—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
When God allows sorrow and affliction to come into our lives, God always has a timetable different from ours. God asks us to bear our cross for a certain period of time and nothing we try to do seems to lift that cross from our shoulders entirely until we are transformed and God is ready to elevate us to a new level of love. What I am mainly talking about here are those little neuroses and disabilities and anxieties that come into our lives and which we try desperately to understand and rid ourselves of, sometimes for years on end. And then one day they are no longer there and we find ourselves ready to meet life, more humble and trusting in the goodness and providence of God.
— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//