Minute Meditations

How will we react when Jesus chooses to exalt the homeless person downtown, giving him immense wisdom that reveals to us that we actually know very little about life? What will we do when that woman we cannot stand, the one who made our life miserable for so long, is waiting for us next to Jesus, glorified in the kingdom of heaven? Being a disciple of Christ means abandoning our desire to choose who sits next to us at church, who is loved and forgiven, who God chooses to entrust with important tasks, and ultimately, who we spend eternity with. If the mission of Christ is like a dinner party in which we wait to respond to our invitation until we ask, “Who else is going to be there?” we might not be ready to follow him. When we place limits on who can enter and who God can use, we place limits on God and make an idol out of our faith.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

Jesus does not want masks. He does not want projections of our superficial selves that bear no resemblance to who we really are. When he calls us to follow after him, he does not want the person we wish we were or the person we pretend to be. No, when he calls us, he wants the person he created, the person we are becoming in his love, our truest selves. If we want to follow after him, we must strip ourselves of everything that is superficial, inauthentic, forced, or pretend. We need to let go of all those partial and superficial selves. They just get in the way.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

We are weak. We are vulnerable. We need tremendous help just to survive the day. Everything we have and everything we do is the result of Jesus loving us first, of him giving us the strength we need to continue. When we hide our flaws even from ourselves, believing even for a second that we don’t have any or that our flaws are so minuscule that we do not need help from anyone, that we possess within ourselves all the strength we will ever need to live a happy and healthy life, we unwittingly cut ourselves off from the true source of strength: the grace of the Holy Spirit. If we don’t think we need help, we’ll never feel compelled to ask for it. What a shame it would be to stop asking God for help.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

An infinite number of things will bring us comfort, satisfaction, and even happiness, and they may be good for a while. But only one thing can bring us eternal joy: following Jesus Christ and becoming a part of his mission. Jesus wants each and every one of us to be his disciples. He wants us to let go of anything and everything that gets in the way of following him, that prevents us from trusting completely, that holds us back from throwing ourselves headlong into the mission.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

Time and again, my little worldview is shaken by something wider; my plans are almost always dashed by bigger, better ones. If I’ve learned anything as a friar, it is that being a Christian means leaving behind absolutely everything I can imagine and being totally fine with accepting whatever God gives me—big or small, happy or painful. No matter what I come to expect, no matter how large and creative I think my imagination is, I always fall short of what God wants to accomplish. We cannot control the mission, and any attempt to cling to what we think we want only serves to slow down our own complete abandonment to Christ’s leadership.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

The Good News of Jesus Christ is precisely that things have changed and that they are going to change even more. He came to a world that was stuck, to a people that could not find a way out of their sinfulness, to announce that there was another way. Better yet, he came not simply to announce this path and carry us there as passive recipients of grace, but empowered his followers to bring about the kingdom of which he spoke. The kingdom of God is at hand. It is not simply a far distant reality, but something that is inbreaking here and now, something that can be felt and brought about by those who live in communion with him. In the way we love one another, work for justice, and offer sacrifice—doing as Jesus did—we can actually make a difference in our world because it is in these moments that Christ dwells in us and the Holy Spirit is sent forth from us. What is it that we always pray? “Send down your Spirit and renew the face of the earth!” If we want to follow after Jesus, we must let go of our cynicism and bleak outlook on the world, and instead believe with all our hearts that Christ is in control of this mission. We must look beyond what is not yet redeemed and open our eyes to the overflowing torrent that is God’s love in our world, transforming and renewing the face of the earth. We must realize it is through us, those whom Jesus has called as his disciples, that this work is being accomplished.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

Despite being a finite creature in the midst of an all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present Being—an absolute nothing next to God, in every way dependent and with no reason to boast—I never feel insignificant or unwanted. I am God’s child, chosen and adopted out of love, called to love and serve in his kingdom. What could ever matter more than knowing this? Truly, everything else is straw. Everything else is the working of a false self, an ego that knows nothing of reality. It is why in his admonitions St. Francis writes, “As much as [one] is before God, that much he is and nothing more.” Nothing in all of existence matters at all except what God thinks of us. What we say about ourselves, what others think of us, who we wish were are—these are all useless questions, false selves that keep us from who we truly are before God, and prevent us from following after Christ with our whole hearts. If we want to be his disciples, the only self we can bring is the one that he created and redeemed. Everything else, we must let go.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

For St. Francis, the search for himself began and ended by asking the only one whose opinion mattered: Jesus. Rather than filling his head with the opinions of the world, getting bogged down by his own self-doubt, letting his successes fill up his ego, he went to God in prayer and asked the two most essential questions anyone could ask: “Who are you, Lord, and who am I?” So simple and pure, and yet so powerful. In these words and the response that follows is everything that could ever matter. How we come to answer them will define everything.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

God loves us so much that, not only did he make us a creation unto ourselves, but in doing so, he gifted us with a particular way to return that love that is fit for no other person. In simply being our true selves, doing nothing more than becoming the unique person that God created us to be, we give glory to God and follow our own particular path of holiness. That’s it! We are not to imitate the lives of the saints or do what others define for us; our path to holiness is not made by scrupulously following the path of a holy person who has gone before us. What is asked of me may not be asked of you. What you are capable of may not be what I am capable of. Each and every one of us has been created differently, for God’s own glory, and we each have our own path to follow.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM