Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Seventeen Summary

A Sacramental Reality

April 24 – April 29, 2022

Sunday
The sacramental principle is this: Begin with a concrete moment of encounter, based in this physical world, and the soul universalizes from there, so that what is true here becomes true everywhere else too. —Richard Rohr 

Monday
The bread and the wine together are stand-ins for the very elements of the universe, which also enjoy and communicate the incarnate presence.
—Richard Rohr

Tuesday
If Christ is the body of God, which he is, then the bread he offers is also the body of the cosmos. Look deeply and you notice the sunshine in the bread, the blue sky in the bread, the cloud and the great earth in the bread. . . . You eat it in such a way that you become alive, truly alive. —Thich Nhat Hanh

Wednesday
This is the purpose of the sacraments, of the church—to help us see, to point to the bread and wine, the orchids and the food pantries, the post-funeral potlucks and the post-communion dance parties, and say: pay attention, this stuff matters; these things are holy. —Rachel Held Evans

Thursday
Sacramentality is a quality present in creation that opens us up to the Sacred Presence in all things. Sacraments reveal grace.
—Christine Valters Paintner 

Friday
The breath of the Spirit brings out the sacramentality of nature and bestows on it the fragrance of resurrection.
—John Chryssavgis

Week Seventeen Practice

Remembering the Creator

Richard Wagamese (1955–2017) is a beloved Canadian indigenous writer whose life was transformed by returning to his Ojibwe family and culture after being separated from them for most of his young life. In his final book Embers, he shares meditations, reflections, and prayers that came to him during times of ritual and morning silence. He writes:

The words in this book are embers from the tribal fires that used to burn in our villages. They are embers from the spiritual fires burning in the hearts, minds and souls of great writers on healing and love. . . . They are heart songs. They are spirit songs. And, shared with you, they become honour songs for the ritual ways that spawned them. Bring these words into your life. Feel them. Sit with them. Use them.

Wagamese invites us to remember prayerfully both creation and the Creator:

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

 Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (Madeira Park, BC: Douglas and McIntyre, 2016), 12, 101. 

Image credit: Patricia Duncan, Flight of Lesser Sandhill Cranes (detail), 1975, photograph, Nebraska, public domain, National Archives. Morgan Winston, Bread and Goblet of Juice for Communion (detail), 2020, photograph, Florida, free use. Jenna Keiper, Winter Trees (detail), 2021, photograph, Washington, used with permission. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: God’s sacramental reality is much bigger and more ordinary than what we often consider “holy.” The Divine Presence is found in bread, wine, a sedge of sandhill cranes, and trees in winter.

Explore Further. . .

• Read Native American writer and activist Sherri Mitchell on harmony with the natural world. 
• Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.  
• Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Prayer For Our Community

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Listen to Father Richard pray this prayer aloud.

Explore Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations archive at cac.org. 

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