Minute Meditations

Compassion in Times of Transition

Living in a transitional age is scary: It’s falling apart, it’s unknowable, it doesn’t cohere, it doesn’t make sense, it’s all mystery again, and we can’t put order in it. Yet there is little in the biblical revelation that ever promised us an ordered universe. The whole Bible is about meeting God in the actual, in the incarnate moment, in the scandal of particularity, and not in educated theories—so much so that it is rather amazing that we ever tried to codify and control the whole thing.

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No Dream Is Perfect

No dream is perfect, no way the only way, no direction irreversible by God, whose way is the way of reversal, as Mary’s son soon will make clear when he leaves her and Joseph in the lurch at the age ...
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Holiness Is Living in God’s Grace

One misconception about the mystics is that they are singularly holy people, set apart from us ordinary Christians by their holiness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mystics are singular and different because of their mystical experiences, their visions, ...
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Saint Isidore: Good Work Is Like a Prayer

It is in work that we find the test of our relationship to the creation because work is the question of how we will use the creation. For Wendell Berry, work done well brings us into a wholeness and cooperation ...
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Holding onto the Resurrection

None of us humans, not even Mary, can hold onto glory. The ordinary passages through life and death continue as they did for Mary after meeting her son as the Risen Lord following the Resurrection. The mystic, however, has indeed ...
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Praying with Mary

As with every true prayer, the Magnificat does just that: it magnifies the Lord, focuses on the Almighty, who does great things among us, the One whose name is holy. We begin to change when our own plans scatter us, bring ...
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Truth Is Lived through Charity

If the mystic is one who experiences in an extraordinary way the intimacy with God offered to everyone, then Mary is the model and pattern of the mystical life. She literally carried God in her womb and gave birth to ...
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