The saints are our prayer partners 🙏 as we read in today's Minute Meditations!
November 5, 2024
Dear John,
Today is election day. This day likely brings about a lot of diverse emotions in many of us. As we celebrate our right to vote and the opportunity to have a democracy in our great nation, we also understand there is a lot of division and sometimes hatred that rear their ugly heads during this time. How do we manage this as loving people?
The good news is that we don't have to choose the hatred. When I get concerned about our country and trying to find my way of loving others like Jesus and St. Francis did, I remember something that gives me great peace...God is greater than all of this.
I am also so grateful that the Church gives us this upcoming season of Advent. Instead of worrying about our next president, inflation, and more division, I am choosing to prepare my heart and live in the hope of this beautiful liturgical season.
And, we have a simple way for you and your families, youth groups, classrooms, and prayer groups to do the same this Advent season. We have the perfect and simple tool and experience that will bring your hearts and your families back to the place of preparation and hope.
Check out what Susan Hines-Brigger and I have put together for you this Advent season. And, learn more about this book and getting automatically signed up for our daily Advent series with you here.
We love you and pray for you daily at Franciscan Media. I pray that you are able to join me and Susan this Advent in the joy of hope, expectation, and preparation. We found a way to help you slow things down and make your family your priority. I look forward to sharing this upcoming season with you!
A man who vigorously pursues a goal may produce results far beyond his expectations and his intentions. Thus it was with Peter “of the Golden Words,” as he was called, who as a young man became bishop of Ravenna, the capital of the empire in the West.
At the time there were abuses and vestiges of paganism evident in his diocese, and these Peter was determined to battle and overcome. His principal weapon was the short sermon, and many of them have come down to us. They do not contain great originality of thought. They are, however, full of moral applications, sound in doctrine, and historically significant in that they reveal Christian life in fifth-century Ravenna. So authentic were the contents of his sermons that some 13 centuries later, he was declared a doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XIII. He who had earnestly sought to teach and motivate his own flock was recognized as a teacher of the universal Church.
In addition to his zeal in the exercise of his office, Peter Chrysologus was distinguished by a fierce loyalty to the Church, not only in its teaching, but in its authority as well. He looked upon learning not as a mere opportunity but as an obligation for all, both as a development of God-given faculties and as a solid support for the worship of God.
Some time before his death around A.D. 450, Peter returned to his birthplace of Imola, in northern Italy. His liturgical feast is celebrated on July 30.
Reflection
Quite likely, it was Saint Peter Chrysologus’ attitude toward learning that gave substance to his exhortations. Next to virtue, learning, in his view, was the greatest improvement to the human mind and the support of true religion. Ignorance is not a virtue, nor is anti-intellectualism. Knowledge is neither more nor less a source of pride than physical, administrative, or financial prowess. To be fully human is to expand our knowledge—whether sacred or secular—according to our talent and opportunity.
Are you looking for a simple way to have a more meaningful Advent season with your family, youth group, or friends? Look no further!
Join author, Susan Hines-Brigger, and mom, Patty Crawford, on this daily Advent journey.
I was led to offer the Lord’s Prayer with Teresa at St. Joseph’s Chapel in Avila, where La Madre taught me to enter into this familiar prayer’s inner meaning. With her help, I was able to turn an often-empty vocal prayer into a meditation on filial love, trust, and ever-willing forgiveness. I was led to pray with John of the Cross as he, in contemplation, ascended Mount Carmel, emptying himself of all concerns and anxieties along the arduous way. I followed behind him, hoping to be filled at the bubbling mountain spring of God’s surpassing love, wisdom, and delight.
For decades, the saints have been my mentors in prayer, faith companions whom the centuries cannot separate, beloved friends bound by Wisdom who “in every generation…passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets” (Wisdom 7:27). Our saints await us, gathered under the Spirit of Wisdom’s bright wings. Let’s pray.
In the Book of Revelation, the author describes a vision of the New Heaven and the New Earth, which is followed by these words: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, . . . the beginning and the end” (22:13).
Pray
Timeless Creator, You encompass past and future even as we, your creation, can know you only within the present moment— the Eternal Now of your presence sustaining us always. Come now, to dwell now, among us. Amen.
Act
When your mind is distracted by memories that haunt and linger or by worries about a future that may never be, kindly remind yourself that God’s peace and strength for the journey are always in, and only in, the Eternal Now of your present life.
Today's Pause+Pray was written by Mark Forrester. Learn more here!
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