Minute Meditations – Franciscan Media

The Nature of Hope

Albert Haase, OFM — Tue, 13 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

Hope is not a feeling, sentiment, or affect. It is not a starry-eyed assurance, cheery conviction, or buoyant confidence. Nor is it passive optimism that, despite the situation, bullishly predicts, “It’s all going to work out.” It is beyond security and peacefulness. Hope cannot be bought or taught. It can only be received and awakened. Saint Francis instinctively knew this when, seeking discernment before the San Damiano crucifix, he prayed, “And give me…certain hope….” The seed of hope is planted by God and celebrates the gratuity of grace. It is a gift, a blessing that strangely breaks ground and sprouts only during times of desperation, despair, despondency, and disaster—when the soul is parched.

—from the book Soul Training with the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis
by Albert Haase, OFM

Born to Eternal Life

Albert Haase, OFM — Mon, 12 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

The Peace Prayer concludes with a simple reminder: “For it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” More than a mere summary of the prayer’s second stanza with its call to kenotic selflessness, this verse points to the resurrection, the foundation of Christian hope knitted into the very sinews of every deciduous ash, aspen, beech, birch, cherry, elm, and hickory tree. Perhaps the ancient Greeks and Romans had intuited God’s revelation in the book of nature: the Olympic crown, the perishable wreath referred to by Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, was woven of evergreen laurel branches, perhaps foreshadowing the imperishable crown of eternity. Life never ends. Never.

—from the book Soul Training with the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis
by Albert Haase, OFM

God of Overflowing Love

Ilia Delio, OSF — Sun, 11 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

The goal of prayer is to make Jesus Christ alive in the believer. To bring Christ to life is the way to peace. Prayer is that relationship with God, the longing of the human heart for God, and God’s longing for us. Franciscan prayer is about relationship with a God of overflowing love. It is discovering the God of love at the center of our lives and of our world and finding the truth of our identity in God. To enter into this relationship one must be a person of desire. God does not force us into a relationship of love but freely gives us the grace to respond to his invitation of love. Spiritual desire is the longing of the heart for relationship with God that brings happiness and peace. Francis of Assisi was a passionate person, a dreamer, a lover and a person of desire. When he felt his desire filled in hearing the gospel, he found the answer to his deepest longings and changed his life accordingly. He became a follower of Christ. Francis’ life shows us that we must be attentive to our desires if we are to find the fulfillment of our lives in God.

—from the book Franciscan Prayer
by Ilia Delio, OSF

Prayer Lifts Us Up

Ilia Delio, OSF — Sat, 10 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

An understanding of prayer in the Franciscan tradition, that is, the spirituality of prayer, can offer new vitality to Christian life today because it is a path of relationship with God that strives to live in the fullness of the Incarnation. It is a path that can enkindle the fire of Christian life by lifting us out of the doldrums of mediocrity and complacency and draw us into the mystery of Christ. Franciscan prayer is dynamic because it is about participation in the mystical Body of Christ. Prayer in this tradition is decisively incarnational; it is centered on the person of Jesus Christ.

—from the book Franciscan Prayer
by Ilia Delio, OSF

Dance with the Spirit

Megan McKenna — Fri, 09 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

Why would God summon us to be disciples of his beloved Son? In the words of a Sufi master: “I chose to call you because you need it more than the others!”

Mark’s Gospel calls us, as community and Church who need it more than others, and who are so reluctant and slow to put out into the deep of discipleship. We tread the circle of the Good News of God in the world, circling home through the heart of this beloved Son, home with all the Father’s children. As we go, we learn a new step or two in the Spirit’s way of dancing home, around and around and around. Amen.

—from St. Anthony Messenger’s “Mark: The Gospel of Conversion“
by Megan McKenna

Hatred Is a Virus

Christopher Heffron — Thu, 08 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

We cannot rewrite history—though it is our duty to learn from it. And there is a legacy for us to fall back on. On June 12, 1941, in an address to the Allied delegates, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had this to say of Adolf Hitler and the evil his party was spreading like a virus: “We cannot see how deliverance will come or when it will come, but nothing is more certain than that every trace of Hitler’s footsteps, every stain of his infected, corroding fingers will be sponged and purged and, if need be, blasted from the surface of the earth.”

May that legacy of antisemitism suffer the same fate.

—from St. Anthony Messenger’s “A Legacy of Hate“
by Christopher Heffron