Minute Meditations offers an ideal way to highlight the insights and reflections from our best-selling authors. Sometimes these are newly released titles; other times they’re gems hiding in our rich backlist. Pulling out a paragraph that can stand alone as a complete thought has been a favorite task. Whether the day’s meditation offers comfort, challenge, an “aha” moment, or a reminder of a familiar insight, you can be sure it will give you something to ponder throughout the day.

Here are some of the favorites from 2023:

To stand still is to practice Sabbath—meaning literally to rest. To stop. To savor uncluttered time. To be gentle with yourself. And yes, to waste time with God. The bottom line? I’m no longer chasing what I assume will fill empty spaces in order to make me something I am not. Replenishment begins here: “I am enough.” In our Western mindset, living in the present becomes a staged event—staged to be “spiritual,” as if this is something we must orchestrate or arrange. No wonder we sit stewing in the juices of our self-consciousness (“Am I present? What am I doing right or wrong?”), all the while missing the point.—Terry Hershey, Stand Still: Finding Balance When the World Turns Upside Down

We have to remember that how we do anything is how we do everything. How we do this moment is how we are going to do the next moment. If we’re bored to death with this moment, we’re going to be bored to death with the next moment. We have to be awake right now, and we can be awake through silence. It is not a matter of being more moral but of being more conscious—which will eventually make us much more moral. What it means to be vulnerable before a moment is to give it the power to change us. If we do not give another person, animal, event, situation, or emotion the power to influence us, to change us, then we are not intimate with the moment, not vulnerable before the only reality we have. In many ways, intimacy before the moment, vulnerability in the presence of all reality, is the very definition of spirituality.—Richard Rohr, Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation

Clare offers two extraordinarily important lessons. The first is obvious. It is the recognition of how important women—and this woman in particular—are to the Franciscan story. The second is more subtle. It is the lesson that Clare’s importance stems from the fact that she was the recipient of a powerful charism of her own—a gift bestowed by the Spirit of the Lord and given to her in a fullness and forcefulness that was hers alone. That charism, matched with the equally full and forceful charism of Francis, created something akin to nuclear fission. It unleashed a mighty power of example and of hope for people who wanted to live the authentic Christian message. Too often we suppose that our study and imitation of these great saints is a sure path to our own beatitude. Her story shows us that what matters is not the effort to “draw down” from the spiritual wealth of others whom we admire as though only a supplicant’s sharing of another’s gift can make us good. What she shows us is that we need only have the courage to unlock what is within us, to spend our days powered by the graced anointing that we already possess.—Margaret Carney, OSF, Light of Assisi: The Story of Saint Clare

The journey of prayer for Franciscans is the discovery of God at the center of our lives. We pray not to acquire a relationship with God as if acquiring something that did not previously exist. Rather, we pray to disclose the image of God in which we are created, the God within us, that is, the one in whom we are created and in whom lies the seed of our identity. We pray so as to discover what we already have––“the incomparable treasure hidden in the field of the world and of the human heart.” We pray not to “ascend” to God but to “give birth to God,” to allow the image in which we are created to become visible. We pray to bear Christ anew. In prayer, therefore, we discover what we already have, the potential for the fullness of life, and this life is the life of Christ.—Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

The journey forward into God is a journey backward to an original innocence we never fully recover but where a sort of semi-paradise happens when love turns into charity. This is the highest of all loves, which Christ defined as the love of God and the love of neighbor, the total love of God leading to true love of neighbor and the true love of neighbor leading to the love of God. Love God and do as you will, says St. Augustine, for love is its own commandment. That is how St. Francis took it and lived it. He sinned, as all humans do, but after his conversion, he always knew when he had sinned because Love’s commandment drew him back to the divine love that underpinned everything he was and did. It was not so much fear of punishment that motivated Francis but rather his commitment to him whom he loved, Jesus Christ. To separate oneself from Christ would be the sin for Francis. If he feared anything, it would have been that he would betray Christ, the love of his life. And Francis held fast to his commitment to Christ to the very end of his life.—Murray Bodo, OFM, Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis

Merry Christmas to you and yours!