Tag: shame

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Minute Meditation – God Takes Away Our Shame

Scripture tells us, “God sewed together clothes for them out of the skins of animals and they put them on” (3:21). Surely this is a promise from a protective and nurturing God who takes away their shame and self-loathing. That will become the momentum-building story of the whole Bible, which gradually undoes the common history of a fearsome and threatening deity. God takes away the shame we have by giving us back to ourselves—by giving us God! It doesn’t get any better than that. Human love does the same thing. When someone else loves us, they give us not just themselves, but, for some reason, they give us back our own self, but now a truer and better self. 

— from the book Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr, OFM, page 41

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Minute Meditation – God is Not Afraid of Mistakes

God is not afraid of mistakes, it seems. God knows that God can turn everything around—into good. There are no dead ends in the economy of grace. So, God allows us to play the field and eat of almost all the trees in the garden. This is scary, but Paul, as usual, offers a crescendo statement of the same: “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). Jesus lives it in his climactic forgiving breath (John 20:22), wherein he eternally frees humanity from its shame and guilt. Consider it this way: God’s main problem is how to give away God! But God has great difficulty doing this. You’d think everybody would want God, but the common response is something like this: “Lord, I am not worthy. I would rather have religion and morality, which give me the impression that I can win a cosmic contest by my own efforts.”

— from the book Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr, OFM

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditations – New Beginnings

Clare recalled these new beginnings in later years. That she and her sisters had survived the painful trials of the foundation was not nearly as surprising to her as it was to Francis. “When the blessed Francis saw, however, that although we were physically weak and frail, we did not shirk deprivation, poverty, hard work, trial or the shame or contempt of the world—rather we considered them as great delights, as he had frequently examined us according to the example of the saints and his brothers—he greatly rejoiced in the Lord” (Testament, 27-29). Taking each word of this recollection on its merits, we must imagine that the early years of life in San Damiano were a continual struggle at levels material, social, and spiritual.

— from the book Light of Assisi: The Story of Saint Clare

by Margaret Carney, OSF

//Franciscan Media//