Minute Meditation – Follow the Star
I love going out in the yard in the winter to look at the stars. The clear, cold air makes them seem brighter. Different stars are visible in the winter than at other times of the year. As the constellations wheel overhead, there’s a sense of vast possibility in the universe, but also a sense of permanence. The sun, the moon, the stars, and our own earth travel through time and space but there’s nothing random about those movements. Each has an orbit, an appointed path to travel. Our lives, too, have an appointed path. We move through the seasons of the year, and the seasons of a lifetime. Sometimes it seems as though the only constant is constant change. But the eternal feasts of the Christmas season remind us that the eternal keeps our feet grounded on the earth and our eyes fixed on God’s star, the plan God has for each of our lives.
—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections with Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek
//Franciscan Media//
Morning Offering – The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
“Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself, ‘Who could be the Master of these beautiful things?’ I felt a great desire to see him, to know him and to pay him homage.”
— St. Josephine Bakhita
//Catholic Company//
Minute Meditation – A Wider World of Belonging
It has felt so good to know that I’m being of service to something greater than myself: that I’m giving my best to the people I care about, to the work that is mine to do in the world, to the good of the human family and creation. In other instances, I’ve been the recipient of the largesse of human kindness, or I’ve beheld the beauty of the natural world, freely given—and in it all, I’ve been pulled out of my small, cramped, ego-self into the gift of a greater, more beautiful, more blessed belonging. That’s it, really. In the end, the greatest pleasure isn’t having all our ego-needs met, but instead being drawn out of our ego into a wider world of belonging. We may work to cultivate this kind of self-transcendence, but it is always and ultimately a gift: a gift from others, from brother sun and sister moon and the rest of the created world, and in and through all of these, from the Creator and Giver of all gifts.
— from the book Making Room: Soul-Deep Satisfaction through Simple Living
Kyle Kramer
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – Clear, Precious, and Beautiful
Francis wrote his immortal Canticle of the Creatures while in Clare’s care at San Damiano. The incredible power and poetry of this song has long fascinated all who read, study, or sing it. One word in that poem, written in Umbrian dialect, and written during a time of daily nursing by Clare, catches the eye. It is the word clarite. “Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful” (Canticle, 5). This is the adjective for the stars. They are “clarite et pretiose et belle,”—clear, precious, beautiful. In the long dark time of his illness, was it Clare who was this “pretiose, belle, clarite” companion whose light helped him endure encroaching blindness and searing pain? She had been—and would remain—the North Star for all who wanted to follow his way.
— from the book Light of Assisi: The Story of Saint Clare
by Margaret Carney, OSF
//Franciscan Media//