Minute Meditations

In recognizing his vocation to live the Gospel, Francis knew that he could no longer identify himself with the wealthy and powerful of his day.

The beauty of being human is to turn to our spiritual ancestors, to cherish what they left behind, what remains.

The meek are blessed precisely because they recognize their dependence on the generosity of God and creation.

Saints rejoice in their common humanity, knowing that God’s word becomes flesh in fallible and ambivalent persons like ourselves.

As Bonaventure writes, God is “totally submerged in the waters from the sole of the foot to the top of the head…. [God] appeared to you as your beloved cut through with wound upon wound in order to heal you.”

The first Franciscans believed that God was in the world, actively shaping human experience, and inspiring birds’ songs and wolves’ howls.