Franciscan Media

We are entangled and bound up together, not as in a net in which we are trapped, but in a network through which we are nourished and find our health. It is humility that teaches us the good of this entanglement while pride tries to escape our embeddedness, mostly by ignoring it and sometimes by violently wrestling free.

– from the book: Wendell Berry and the Given Life

The support of friends, especially in times of crisis, is vital to helping us through the emotions that flood and fuel our hearts. They will help us see clearly enough to move through mourning, provide lighter moments, too, especially if we might seem to teeter on the edge of truly losing hope. They will be the personification of God’s unconditional love and help us find even greater spiritual depth.

In the beginning, God made a garden, rich with compost and humus, a black loam that smelled of dawn. Seeds began sprouting in this soil; trees’ roots wound deep within it as their branches reached toward the sun; grass, clover, and forbs of every kind spread over the earth in a green and golden carpet. God took some of this dirt, made muddy with dew, and formed a creature from it—a body of soil. Bending down, God breathed spirit, animus, into the earth so that it became an animal—a living thing.

There are so many needy people who hunger—but not for bread, they have plenty of bread—but for God! Go there, to tell this truth: Jesus Christ is the Lord and he saves you. But always go and touch the flesh of Christ! The Gospel cannot be preached purely intellectually: the Gospel is truth but it is also love and it is also beauty! And this is truly the joy of the Gospel!

Importantly, the cross does not have the last word. His resurrection does. Without the resurrection, the cross would be a seal of failure. Instead the cross is a sign of victory.

– from Meeting God in the Upper Room: Three Moments to Change Your Life

Suffering gives you the opportunity to grow. Your trials give you a gift: the opportunity to become the person you always wanted to become. A holier person. A more patient person. A person who endures. A person who is kinder. A person who is more merciful.

– from When You Suffer