-
The Gentleness of God: Receiving The Love That Makes Love Possible (Lectio Divina)
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…
-
God Doesn’t Change Our Circumstances. He Changes Our Hearts. (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on John of the Cross’s counsel to live as though only God and yourself were in this world, this Lectio Divina explores why God does not change our circumstances — but changes our hearts. Through the cross, the cry of Gethsemane, and the kenotic pattern of Christ’s self-surrender, this reflection invites us into…
-
The Ground of Our Being: God’s Indwelling Presence and the Grace That Draws Us Home (Lectio Divina)
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…
-
What Seemed a Fragile Thread: On Grace, Awakening, and the Love That Will Not Let Us Go (Lectio Divina)
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…
-
The True Self and the False Self: On Identity, Exile, and the Grace That Reveals Us (Lectio Divina)
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…
-
Not Perfect, Not Okay, But Loved: On God’s Unconditional Love and the Gift We Cannot Earn (Lectio Divina)
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,…
-
Cherished Emptiness: Creating a Sabbath in Your Heart With Macrina Wiederkehr (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on Macrina Wiederkehr’s insight that cherished emptiness gives God space in which to work, this Lectio Divina explores what it means to create a Sabbath in the heart — not as mere absence, but as a receptive stillness in which God alone may speak. A meditation on silence, surrender, and our God-shaped capacity…
-
The Tapestry of Life: Finding Joy Through Suffering With St. John of the Cross (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on Fr. Daniel Chowning’s reflection on St. John of the Cross, this Lectio Divina explores how joy does not mean the absence of suffering — but is woven through it. Through the Scotist lens of a God who willed us for love from the beginning, this post meditates on how the full tapestry…
-
Awakened by Love: Christ’s Yes, Our Yes, and the Sleep We Leave Behind (Lectio Divina)
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…
-
She Changeth Her Working, But Not Her Love: Healing in the Broken and Ordinary (Lectio Divina)
A Lectio Divina reflection on healing through brokenness — drawn from a burnt sandwich and a crumbled piece of carrot cake on a daughter’s birthday. Anchored in Julian of Norwich’s vision of a love that changes its working but never its love, this post traces the unexpected grace that arrives in our most ordinary…