Minute Meditations

Spiritual Progress

• The key to unfolding a deeper way of living is a thriving spirituality. This is the path that gives us some answers and brings us to fulfillment
• Good God, the creator of light and darkness, You who move the sun and the stars, move us into the place of light, a light so large that it will absorb all the darkness and guide us on our spiritual journey
• One of the best ways we can pray is to enter into Jesus' feelings on various occasions in his life, for His human feelings are our human feelings
• We need to continuously progress step by step, day by day, minute by minute, always aspiring to that which is our highest summit: God.
• Lord, help me to vanquish my quick-trigger impatience, to contain my often unhealthy curiosity and my inordinately unbridled imagination, my readiness to speak badly of others, and pull down the walls of my pride and haughtiness
• Our highest role as creatures is to offer worship and to share a oneness with our Creator. Only by prayer and worship can we enter the kingdom of Heaven
• Part of growing up spiritually is learning to be grateful for all things, even our difficulties, disappointments, failures and humiliations
• The fruits are the last things to appear on a tree, so it will take you time to develop these as you grow in the spiritual life
• When we do not reverence our individual selves by taking time to pray, rest and recreate, we soon run out of energy which is needed in order to maintain healthy relationships
• Christ's salvation was a matter of deliverance from sin, but also a resurrection to new life, a participation in the life of God. As God's pilgrims, we should seek this participation wherever we see an opportunity.
• We need food on our journey. Jesus knew that we would need spiritual food too. So what did he do? He instituted the sacrament of the bread and the wine - the Blessed Eucharist
• Religious practices give voice to spirituality, and spirituality gives meaning to our rites and rituals. Spirituality without religion is empty belief, and religion without spirituality is uninspiring
• This is one aspect of what it means to be a body-person: I should never allow the spiritual dimension of my life - my interior self�to be split or unhinged from my bodily actions
• Giving voice to concrete intention is a way to make ourselves conscious that, with God's companionship, we can transform ordinary activities into spiritual progress
• No man can live without delight, and that is why a man deprived of spiritual can never make spiritual progress
• From today onwards, I am going to strive for the greatest purity of soul, that the rays of God's grace may be reflected in all their brilliance. I long to be a crystal in order to find favor in His eyes
• Whatever her concerns about how God would empower her to accomplish His plan, Mary dares to go forward, knowing that she is loved and that she will suffer. We, too, are favored ones in God's eyes