
What does love actually cost us — and what did it cost Jesus? This Lectio Divina begins with an honest reckoning: love makes us emotionally porous, permeable to another’s suffering and vulnerable to our own grief at the prospect of loss. It gives meaning to our lives and makes the journey navigable, but it…

We are often told that God will not give us more than we can handle — but this is only partly true. In fact, God often gives us exactly more than we can handle: tests we cannot pass, crosses we cannot bear, laws we cannot follow on our own strength. And this is the…

Some days — some weeks, months, and years — we are going to be beaten down by the world’s brokenness. Suffering is real, brokenness is real, and the pain we carry can feel like our ultimate reality. And yet, in silence and stillness, something more real than our suffering is revealed. Drawing on St.…

A Sunday Lectio Divina on gentleness, Sabbath rest, and the grace of self-love. Drawing on Thomas Merton’s discovery that deep solitude opens us to a gentleness we can then offer others, this reflection explores how loving our neighbors as ourselves requires first allowing God’s gentle Spirit to work within us. Sabbath becomes the practice…

Drawing on Fr. Harvey D. Egan’s reading of Karl Rahner, this Lectio Divina explores the mystery of God’s indwelling presence — not at the margins of our lives, but at the very ground of our being. A meditation on prevenient grace, the depths of human consciousness, and the paradox that the God we seek…

Drawing on Ruth Burrows’s vision of God as the consuming desire of the heart, this Lectio Divina reflects on the invisible thread of grace that connects us to God — a connection we cannot break, though we may forget, deny, betray, doubt, or flee from it. From Adam and Eve to the disciples in…

Drawing on James Finley’s Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, this Lectio Divina explores the relationship between the true self and the false self — how the false self conceals the light of the true self, how Paul’s language of the old and new self illuminates that dynamic, and how it is grace, not effort, that…

When we have exhausted ourselves in the wilderness of self-will, we discover what was always true: God’s love was never withheld. Drawing on Fr. Mike Schmitz’s simple confession — “I’m not perfect. I’m not okay. But I am loved.” — this Lectio Divina reflects on the unconditional love that meets us in our imperfection,…

Drawing on Thomas Keating’s image of waking from sleep, this Lectio Divina reflects on Christ as the perfect and unwavering yes to the Father — and on how, through Christ joining himself to us, his yes becomes our own. A meditation on spiritual slumber, the dubious comfort of darkness, and the love that gently…

Drawing on St. Paul of the Cross’s invitation to throw ourselves into the ocean of God’s goodness, this Lectio Divina explores Jesus’s call to release anxiety and trust in grace — one step at a time — into the boundless light of love that was always waiting for us.