Minute Meditations

One of the truths that is becoming more evident to me the more I study and think about the mystics is that they are not ordinary but chosen souls whom God came to when they were not expecting such a visitation. That they are chosen and special is God’s choice, not something they somehow merit. The rest of us try daily to go to God in our ordinary lives by living in faith, while the mystics spend their lives responding to the great gift of God’s extraordinary entrance into their lives. They show us what it is like to be taken over by God while at the same time cautioning us that we cannot merit God’s tangible presence. But given those distinctions, even we in our ordinary lives can embrace Christ on the cross. We can place ourselves physically and spiritually in a space or place that makes it at least a compatible space for “hearing” God’s voice and “seeing” God’s manifestations, should God decide to show us the divine presence in a way that is beyond the faith we have from our baptism.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murry Bodo, OFM

God’s creative will is an eternally sustaining will, namely, that my existence will not end, summons me to humble acquiescence and dialogue—or to proud, illusory self-sufficiency, which is a kind of hell because it severs the bond of love and results in a turning in upon oneself. God’s love, in contrast to self-absorption, overflows, and though the eternal creator chooses to become one with love’s creation entering the created world as creative word becoming obedient to the Word’s own speaking of what it means to be a creature, obedient, as Saint Paul says, even “to the point of death— / even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Christ was broken and died on the cross: Life did not spare the eternal Son, just as life will not spare us, but God’s Incarnate Word confirmed for us that love endures, no matter what humans or fate or life does or refuses to do. And in the end obedient love rises from the grave.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murry Bodo, OFM

The mystics teach us that one who tries to know and love God sooner or later becomes aware that God is unknowable, but one can love God intimately despite God’s ultimate unknowableness. With this awareness comes the further realization that all one’s desire to know and love God has from the beginning been God’s work and that, try as one may, two things are certain: You cannot find God who has already found you by running away from yourself, your own problems, your own unresolved fears; and secondly, everything you leave in order to respond to God’s love is in the end redeemed, transformed and given back to you wholly new and in an unpossessive way. It is as if you have returned to the garden of paradise illumined and purified so that you can walk again with God in the earthly paradise God intended for you from the beginning.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murray Bodo, OFM

Mary’s life, like that of her son, will be a living out of her own canticle. She will enter into the mysteries of Christ’s life. Like the Christian mystics after her, she will participate in a more intense way in the very mystery that she is sharing. As the model of intimacy with God, Mary will enter into the death and resurrection of her son. She will stand beneath the cross of his dying; she will rise with him body and soul in the mystery of her Assumption into heaven. Franciscans pray a seven-decade rosary, the Franciscan Crown, based on the Seven Joys of Mary, that for me summarizes what it means to enter into the mystery of how we are transformed by and into Christ. The mystic knows in a uniquely graced way these mysteries that we believe and live out as we try to be true to the mystery of our baptism.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murray Bodo, OFM

Francis follows in the footsteps of Jesus, and that is where most of us falter. We want to follow Jesus’ footsteps, but we know ahead of time where they lead, and we are afraid. We hold back. In his writings Francis never uses the word imitate in relation to Christ; instead he uses the phrase, “to follow in the footsteps of Christ”; Christ’s invitation was to “follow me” (Matthew 10:38), not “imitate me.” In following Christ the self one thinks has been lost is actually found, so that as one walks in the footsteps of Christ a whole and realized true self begins to emerge.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murry Bodo, OFM