Dear John, In the New Year, as part of our Rebuilding God’s Church initiative, we will begin to redesign our website to provide resources to meet the common challenges people experience on their journey of faith. Our Saint of the Day, Pause+Pray, Minute Meditation, and Ask a Franciscan will be repositioned to respond to people's real questions and challenges. They will still be available in our newsletter and they will remain free! Find out more about our Rebuilding God’s Church $125,000 match. Click the link to donate. Your donations help us unlock this match money! If you are a recurring donor, and you would like your donations to be redirected to this campaign, please email giving@franciscanmedia.org. Thank you to those who have already done this! |
Deacon Matthew Halbach, PhD
President & Publisher, Franciscan Media
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Saint of the Day for December 17:
Hildegard of Bingen (September 16, 1098 – September 17, 1179) Listen to Saint Hildegard of Bingen’s Story Here Abbess, artist, author, composer, mystic, pharmacist, poet, preacher, theologian—where to begin in describing this remarkable woman? Born into a noble family, she was instructed for ten years by the holy woman Blessed Jutta. When Hildegard was 18, she became a Benedictine nun at the Monastery of Saint Disibodenberg. Ordered by her confessor to write down the visions that she had received since the age of three, Hildegard took ten years to write her Scivias (Know the Ways). Pope Eugene III read it, and in 1147, encouraged her to continue writing. Her Book of the Merits of Life and Book of Divine Works followed. She wrote over 300 letters to people who sought her advice; she also composed short works on medicine and physiology, and sought advice from contemporaries such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Hildegard’s visions caused her to see humans as “living sparks” of God’s love, coming from God as daylight comes from the sun. Sin destroyed the original harmony of creation; Christ’s redeeming death and resurrection opened up new possibilities. Virtuous living reduces the estrangement from God and others that sin causes. Like all mystics, Hildegard saw the harmony of God’s creation and the place of women and men in that. This unity was not apparent to many of her contemporaries. Hildegard was no stranger to controversy. The monks near her original foundation protested vigorously when she moved her monastery to Bingen, overlooking the Rhine River. She confronted Emperor Frederick Barbarossa for supporting at least three antipopes. Hildegard challenged the Cathars, who rejected the Catholic Church claiming to follow a more pure Christianity. Between 1152 and 1162, Hildegard often preached in the Rhineland. Her monastery was placed under interdict because she had permitted the burial of a young man who had been excommunicated. She insisted that he had been reconciled with the Church and had received its sacraments before dying. Hildegard protested bitterly when the local bishop forbade the celebration of or reception of the Eucharist at the Bingen monastery, a sanction that was lifted only a few months before her death. In 2012, Hildegard was canonized and named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI. Her liturgical feast is celebrated on September 17. Reflection Pope Benedict spoke about Hildegard of Bingen during two of his general audiences in September 2010. He praised the humility with which she received God’s gifts, and the obedience she gave Church authorities. He praised too the “rich theological content” of her mystical visions that sum up the history of salvation from creation to the end of time. During his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI said, “Let us always invoke the Holy Spirit, so that he may inspire in the Church holy and courageous women like Saint Hildegard of Bingen who, developing the gifts they have received from God, make their own special and valuable contribution to the spiritual development of our communities and of the Church in our time.”
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Advent with the Saints: Josephine Bakhita The bitter history of slavery in the United States has been called by one historian “the original sin” of our country. We still feel its effects today in our society. The sin of slavery has indeed marked many parts of the world. In the late nineteenth century, a seven-year-old African girl was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Her name was Bakhita, meaning “fortunate.” She eventually came into the possession of an Italian family in Africa and was babysitter for the daughter of the family. The daughter’s conversion moved Bakhita to faith in Jesus, and she was baptized Josephine in 1890. But slavery’s grip was strong. When the Italian family who claimed her wanted to return to Italy, Josephine refused. A court battle followed. The patriarch of Venice, and the Canossian sisters, whom Josephine had met on a visit there while caring for her Italian charge, took Josephine’s case. The court ruled in her favor, since Italy had banned slavery some years earlier. As a free woman, Josephine joined the Canossian sisters and was professed as a religious. She served the community and the poor, and was widely beloved, until her death in 1947. Today’s reading from the prophet Zephaniah proclaims that God will uphold a remnant of the people, from among the poor and lowly. Josephine would have understood! —adapted from the book Advent with the Saints: Daily Reflections
by Greg Friedman, OFM |
Discover Franciscan solutions for modern ecological challenges in this updated classic by Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, Ilia Delio, OSF and Pamela Wood. Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth |
Heart of Desire Reflect In episode four of Franciscan Media’s Off the Page podcast, Sister Ilia Delio, OSF, brilliantly talks about the integral connection between prayer and desire. Prayer, she says, can help us to “reset the button of desire” as we move deeper into our own hearts toward the God who resides there, in the deepest place of our being. Pray What do I desire, Lord? What’s beneath it all?
I’d like to say it’s you, but then why my restlessness? Why anxiety and discontent?
Maybe there’s something in the way, of my deepest desire,
something in my heart or mind damming parts of my spirit.
Or am I just being hard on myself?
I do that often, as you know, unable to accept my own acceptance,
clouded by my own judgment of myself.
I know I cannot be fully aware of your living in me,
but I want to awaken more to this oneness, this truth.
“Reset my button of desire” if need be, my Lord.
I know my desires can feel convoluted—messy and conflicted.
But know this: I desire to desire you. Act Contemplate St. Francis of Assisi’s words throughout your day today, “Let us always make a home and a dwelling place there for him who is the Lord God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Today's Pause+Pray was written by Stephen Copeland. Learn more here! |
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