Minute Meditations

Learning Spiritual Discipline

Joan Chittister, OSB January 16, 2020

In the spiritual life, we are meant to prod our souls to regular discipline so that in doing so our hearts will be softened to serve those whom Jesus served. The gentle Jesus wants clean hearts from us, not sacrifice; deep down basic commitment, not simply blue ribbons for winning the spiritual marathons we’ve run to make ourselves feel holy.

The Soul Desires, Loves, and Lets Go

Richard Rohr, OFM January 13, 2020

An ego response is always an inadequate or even wrong response to the moment. It will not deepen or broaden life, love, or inner laughter. Your ego self is always attached to mere externals, since it has no inner substance ...

God Desires Our Happiness

Richard Rohr, OFM January 12, 2020

How helpful it is to see sin, like addiction, as a disease, a very destructive disease, instead of merely something that was culpable, punishable, or “made God unhappy.” If sin indeed made God unhappy, it was because God desires nothing ...

Success Isn't Everything

Richard Rohr, OFM January 11, 2020

I cannot pretend to understand God, but this is what I see: People who have moved from seeming success to seeming success seldom understand success at all, except a very limited version of their own. People who fail to do ...

Love Responds to Love

Richard Rohr, OFM January 9, 2020

We have been graced for a truly sweet surrender, if we can radically accept being radically accepted—for nothing! “Or grace would not be grace at all”! (Romans 11:6). As my father, St. Francis, put it, when the heart is pure, ...

The World Is Pregnant with God

Ilia Delio, OSF January 8, 2020

Reading the Book of Life gave Francis new meaning to the world around him. He began to read the Book of Life in the book of the world because the Book of Life gave him “insight”—new vision. He read the ...

Christ Is the Book of Life

Ilia Delio, OSF January 7, 2020

Christ is the Book of Life. Somehow we still do not read this book properly. We buy lots of books hoping to find the answers to our many questions of life; yet, we do not know how to read this ...