“Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading.”
— St. Isidore of Seville
Morning Offering – Prayer Purifies Us & Reading Instructs Us
Saint of the Day – February 17th
The Story of the Seven Founders of the Servite Order
Can you imagine seven prominent men of Boston or Denver banding together, leaving their homes and professions, and going into solitude for a life directly given to God? That is what happened in the cultured and prosperous city of Florence in the middle of the 13th century. The city was torn with political strife as well as the heresy of the Cathari, who believed that physical reality was inherently evil. Morals were low and religion seemed meaningless.
In 1240, seven noblemen of Florence mutually decided to withdraw from the city to a solitary place for prayer and direct service of God. Their initial difficulty was providing for their dependents, since two were still married and two were widowers.
Their aim was to lead a life of penance and prayer, but they soon found themselves disturbed by constant visitors from Florence. They next withdrew to the deserted slopes of Monte Senario.
In 1244, under the direction of Saint Peter of Verona, O.P., this small group adopted a religious habit similar to the Dominican habit, choosing to live under the Rule of St. Augustine and adopting the name of the Servants of Mary. The new Order took a form more like that of the mendicant friars than that of the older monastic Orders.
Members of the community came to the United States from Austria in 1852 and settled in New York and later in Philadelphia. The two American provinces developed from the foundation made by Father Austin Morini in 1870 in Wisconsin.
Community members combined monastic life and active ministry. In the monastery, they led a life of prayer, work and silence while in the active apostolate they engaged in parochial work, teaching, preaching, and other ministerial activities.
Reflection
The time in which the seven Servite founders lived is very easily comparable to the situation in which we find ourselves today. It is “the best of times and the worst of times,” as Dickens once wrote. Some, perhaps many, feel called to a countercultural life, even in religion. All of us are faced in a new and urgent way with the challenge to make our lives decisively centered in Christ.
Meditation of the Day – What God Wants of Us
When I See No Way..
//Anything & Everything Country//
Prayer of Saint Therese de Lisieux
Minute Meditation – Prayer in Solidarity
Throughout my life, I have focused on prayer as a symbol of solidarity, because prayer is grounded in the profound interdependence of life. Our prayers of gratitude remind us that no one is self-sufficient. Our gifts and talents emerge from our relationships —the persons and institutions that have supported us, as well as the earth’s bountiful providence—that inspire and undergird any achievement on our part. From this perspective, the self-made person is the most pitiable precisely because they, in their lonely individualism, think they can go it alone without any help from God or their fellow creatures. This sense of self-sufficiency collapses when we face a health crisis, death of a life companion, a professional setback, a pandemic, or the realities of aging and mortality. Prayer links us with all creation. Our gratitude inspires relationship and connection. Recognizing that we are truly one in spirit and flesh with all creation, we are inspired to move from self-interest to global concern. We discover that in an interdependent universe, others have been the answers to our prayers, coming along at the right time to provide comfort and counsel, and that we can be the answer to others’ prayers, sharing the gifts we have received so that others might flourish in body, mind, spirit, and relationships.
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
//Franciscan Media//
Daily Meditation – Ask and It Shall Be Given
“In the spiritual life there are two great principles which should never be forgotten: Without grace we can do nothing; with it we can do all things. Sometimes it anticipates our desires; ordinarily, God waits till we ask for it. This is a general law thus expressed by Our Lord: ‘Ask, and it shall be given to you.’ Prayer is, therefore, not only a precept, it is a necessity. God places the treasure of His graces at our disposal, and its key is prayer. You desire more faith, more hope, more love; ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.’ Your good resolutions remain sterile, resulting always in the same failures: ‘ask, and it shall be given to you’. Precepts are numerous, virtue painful, temptation seductive, the enemy ruthless, the will weak: ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.'”— Rev. Dom Vitalis Lehodey p. xv
The Other Serenity Prayer
Meditation of the Day – January 29th
“Prayer, considered as petition, consists entirely in expressing to God some desire in order that He may hear it favorably; a real desire is, therefore, its primary and essential condition; without this, we are merely moving the lips, going through a form of words which is not the expression of our will; and thus our prayer is only an appearance without reality. The way, then, to excite ourselves to pray, to put life and fervor into our prayer, and to make of it a cry which, breaking forth from the depths of the soul, penetrates even to heaven, is to conceive the real desire mentioned above, to excite it, to cherish it; for the fervor of our prayer will be in proportion to the strength of the desire we have to be heard; just as what we have but little at heart we ask for only in a half-hearted way, if even we ask it at all; so what we desire with our whole soul we ask for with words of fire, and plead for it before God with an eloquence that is very real.”— Rev. Dom Lehody, p. 4-5
Morning Offering
“When we pray, the voice of the heart must be heard more than the proceedings from the mouth.”
– St. Bonaventure
