Minute Meditations
Love Is Never Abstract
Love can never be general or abstract—it is only concrete and particular. What we know of other loves we know by analogy because as a creature I must live in the limits of my love. I cannot love forests in general any more than I can love people in general. As the essayist Charles D’Ambrosio has put it, “If you can love abstractly, you’re only a bad day away from hating abstractly.” For love to work, it must be anchored in the particular or else it is likely to simply float along with the changing currents of emotion.
Peter's Denial Is Twofold
In John’s Gospel, before Jesus predicts Peter’s denial, Peter says to him, “I will lay down my life for you” (John 13:37). Peter has not yet come face-to-face with his own weakness, his own limitations. He is so sure that ...
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The Mystery of the Trinity
One of the gifts in my life for which I am most grateful is the way I was taught about the Blessed Trinity. Others have told me that, early on, they got the message that God’s Trinity is a mystery ...
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Pope Francis Reflects on the Rosary
Here I would like to emphasize the beauty of a simple contemplative prayer, accessible to all, great and small, the educated and those with little education.
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God Always Waits for Us
Maybe someone among us here is thinking: my sin is so great, I am as far from God as the younger son in the parable, my unbelief is like that of Thomas; I don’t have the courage to go back, ...
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Saint Francis and the Crucified Christ
When you look at Saint Francis, you see the Crucified Christ whose presence within Francis was so real and so intense that the very wounds of Christ Crucified broke forth in his body, revealing to the whole world that here, ...
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Praised be God through Sister Death
Saint Francis knew, it seems, the inner power God invested in the words that sprang up spontaneously from his gratitude for the assurance of God’s kingdom. Then when Father Francis came to die, he sang the final stanzas of his Canticle, ...
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