One Minute Meditations

By Rev. T. Ronald Haney

We live in a speed-driven, compulsive, obsessive world. Time seems to evaporate. In such a world its refreshing to be able to take a minute out of our busy-ness to meditate on what is essential in life. These brief meditations will offer the reader the experience of Jesus in the ordinary dynamisms of everyday life. Even when Jesus is not explicitly mentioned in a given meditation, he is the Word who pervades all human words. Each meditation is an attempt to reflect Jesus dream for us to become all God wants us to be, to experience the beauty, the mystery, the challenge of Jesus in days that blur into days.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 26, 2006
• ISBN: 9781452065366

Rev. T. Ronald Haney

Father Haney is a published essayist, poet and novelist. His latest book on the spiritual life is God Within You: Mysticism for the 21st Century. His novels include, Assault on the Vatican and Idols of Power. He is preparing a sequel to these two novels, Miracles, Sinners and Saints. He has been the Executive Editor of The Catholic Witness, the diocesan newspaper of the Harrisburg diocese, PA. He has recently retired after 30 years as editor.

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Contents

PREFACE

SEASONS

SUNDAY GOSPELS

CYCLE A

EASTER SUNDAY

CYCLE B

CYCLE C

EASTER SUNDAY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

WHO IS JESUS?

The Master was often heard sighing the prayer, Jesus, my all!

One day a disciple approached him.

Master, why do you pray only that prayer?

The Master thought for a moment and then responded, As the risen Lord, Jesus is not an individual outside me, a distant being over and above me.

Rather, the Master said, "Jesus is Pervasiveness itself. Recall St. Paul. ‘I live yet not I but Christ is living in me.’

"When I pray, ‘Jesus, my all,’ my prayer is all-inclusive.

"All creation is present to me in the word, Jesus:

all the people in my life and in the world

all the wonders of ever-changing nature

all the written and spoken words that inspire

all the art and music and poetry

and above all, all the words of God’s revelation."

How can this be? the disciple asked. I have said this prayer, ‘Jesus, my all,’ and have not experienced what you have.

You have yet to absorb Jesus as All in all, as Pervasiveness, as Envelopment, the Master replied. "When I pray this prayer, Jesus fills me with himself and contains me fully.

"When I pray, ‘Jesus, my all,’ he infuses me with all meekness, with all poverty of spirit, with all faith challenges, with all joyous sacrifices.

"My being expands into the sheer dynamic of becoming in the Oneness Jesus is in me and in others.

The prayer, ‘Jesus, my all,’ invokes his whole Body within me in indescribable unity and glorious diversity. The prayer, ‘Jesus, my all,’ puts me in touch with all reality and all mystery because Jesus is Reality and Mystery, the Master said.

Then your prayer is never a one-on-one experience, never a me-and-my-Jesus communication? the disciple pursued.

No, my prayer is always an experience of a we-and-our-Jesus oneness, the Master said.

The Master paused for a moment and then added, "Jesus is Love, Jesus is Forgiveness, Jesus is Journey, Jesus is Horizon, Jesus is Challenge, Jesus is Victory. And Jesus and I and all are one.

Jesus is the Enthusiasm of my life, my work, my hope, my leisure, my all.

The disciple smiled. Thank you, Master. From now on I will try to experience the beauty, the mystery and the challenge of Jesus in the ordinary of my everyday life.

May these simple meditations help you to experience Jesus in the ordinary dynamisms of your everyday life. Even if, in a given meditation, Jesus is not explicitly mentioned, he is the Word who pervades all human words.

Jesus is the Author of all human thoughts and ideas. Jesus is the Image of all human insights.

Each meditation is an attempt to reflect Jesus’ dream for you to become all God wants you to be. May you find them so.

SENSE OF WONDER

Do you have a sense of wonder?

Someone said that the eighth wonder of the world is that there should be anyone who thinks there are only seven.

The marvelous thing about a sense of wonder is that it does not depend on knowing a lot.

For example, you can stand beneath a star-studded sky at night and be filled with wonder at the magnificence and the boundlessness of the universe without knowing the name of one star!

At the same time a sense of wonder encourages curiosity. The more you stare at the stars, for example, the more curious you may become about knowing their names, their constellations, their distances and so on.

God has filled our universe with marvels and blessed us with the ability to wonder at them.

The famous Jewish Rabbi, Abraham Heschel, said, I did not ask for success. I asked for wonder.

How can you develop your sense of wonder? G.K. Chesterton has given us a method. He said we should stare at the familiar until it becomes strange!

Why not begin today to develop your sense of wonder?

BOREDOM

Did you ever wonder why so many people are bored?

There are many reasons for boredom but one of the most obvious reasons is our lack of awareness.

We go through routines without even being aware of what we are doing. Seasons come and seasons go and we don’t even notice -- we are so unaware.

Because we are not aware, we take so many wonderful gifts of nature and human invention for granted. We see but do not look. We hear but do not listen.

One of the ways to develop your awareness is to change your routine. Get out of the opposite side of the bed in the morning. Stop and gaze intently at a flower you’ve been bypassing for the past several days. Go outside at night and stare at the clouds in the sky.

God has bestowed so many, many wonderful gifts on us and he has given each of us the power to be aware of these gifts. The problem is that our routines become ruts and, as a result, we become bored.

Stephen Kendrick in his book, Holy Clues: The Gospel According to Sherlock Holmes, says, We cannot solve life’s mystery but we can become more and more aware of how we live within mystery and how mystery dwells within us.

Why not begin now to develop your awareness by frequently pausing and saying to yourself, Now I am aware of …? And fill in the blank with what you are not intensely aware of.

HUMOR

Do you have a sense of humor?

Humor doesn’t necessarily mean laughter.

Rather humor is a sense of balance. Humor is the ability to keep big things big and little things little.

A sense of humor is a sign of mental health.

Someone said, Scratch a humorless person and you’ll probably find a fanatic. A humorless person often goes off the deep end, goes to extremes.

Humorous people are gentle. They are open to the opinions of others. They laugh at the eccentricities of others rather than become annoyed with them.

Humorous people do not go mountain-climbing over molehills. They know what is important and what is unimportant. They can quickly recognize what is essential and what is incidental.

Matthew Fox in his book, Compassion, said, There is no more accurate test of sanity than a sense of humor.

God has given each one of you a sense of humor and continuously calls you to a balanced, healthy outlook on life.

Why not respond to his call today?

BEING FULLY ALIVE

Do you feel fully alive?

In the Hebrew Bible, the word for spirituality means fullness of life.

Only a truly spiritual person can have the fullness of life.

Oh, we try to fill our lives with status symbols, power and wealth, influence, or with comforts and conveniences, but when we pause and examine our lives, we usually find that they are rather empty.

God is continuously urging us to come alive, to become fully alive. He wants us to be lively, enthusiastic, interested, concerned. In other words, he wants us to be alive to other people, to world events, to nature’s wonders and to his own presence to us.

To be alive like this, we have to be spiritual people.

Father John Powell in his book, Fully Human, Fully Alive, says, The basic question of the person fully alive is: How can I enjoy this? That is, how can I be fully active in all my parts: senses, emotions, mind, will and heart?

We call some people dead-heads. These are the people who die at the age of 20 even though they’re not buried until the age of 70. Are you one of these?

Why not start now to become fully alive by becoming deeply spiritual?

THE CREATIVE WHAT IF

How often have you asked yourself What if…?

Usually you ask this question because you’re dissatisfied with what is.

What if I were richer? What if I had a better education? What if I had married someone else? What if there were more opportunities?

Sometimes this question is dismissed as futile fantasizing.

Still, when you ask What if…? you may be on the verge of thinking or doing something creative.

God has blessed you with the ability to be creative. You have a lifelong potential to be creative.

God has also blessed you with time. Time to pause and evaluate your life. Time to plan for the future. Time for reform. Time for renewal. Time to begin anew.

New Years is one of those times. It is a time of opportunity.

What if you decided to use the time of the new year to try to be more creative in your prayer, in your personal relationships, in your work, in your parish activities, in your planning, in your communications?

Why not begin in the new year to ask yourself What if…? in a positive, creative, hopeful, renewing, practical way?

HOPE

Are you a person of hope?

Hope is based on the promise of God that good will eventually overcome evil.

Hope is positive. Hope is constructive. Hope is energetic. Hope is not a superficial optimism which pretends there is no evil in the world. Rather hope is an authentic optimism that believes that evil can be conquered.

Hopeful people are not people who just go around being happy and exuberant all the time.

Hopeful people can become discouraged, but with the help of God, they can rise out of their discouragement into new courage, into a new energy for doing good and overcoming evil.

Hopeful people are persevering people. They are people of vision. They want to make the future better by doing good in the present.

Dorothy Day said, No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless.

Life with Jesus is endless hope; life without Jesus is a hopeless end.

We need, more than anyone else now, more hopeful people. Will you be one?

USING YOUR IMAGINATION

Do you make your imagination work for you?

It’s a fact of experience that if you don’t control your imagination, your imagination will continue to operate on its own.

Too often when you don’t control your imagination, it will work against you in negative, destructive ways.

God has endowed you with the power of imagination. He calls you to use your imagination to cooperate creatively with his inspirations.

It’s not that people are unaware of God’s inspirations and challenges as much as it is a case of their not knowing what to do with them.

For example, you may be inspired to do some extra penance. Determining what penance you ought to do, when and for how long, with or without the guidance of another is the task of your imagination.

If you’re not in control of your imagination, it could work destructively against you and your penance might do damage to your health, or it might become the source of spiritual pride.

John Shea in his book, The Spirit Master, wrote, Imaginative language can tear down and build up with one well-placed phrase; its concrete character facilitates insight which brings about a new way of seeing.

Why not begin today, in small ways, to practice using your imagination positively and instructively.

SPREADING JOY

Are you a joyful person?

The opposite of joy is resentment.

Resentment is a way of being hateful in a polite and civilized manner.

A joyful person takes pleasure in another’s successes. A resentful person hates others for their successes -- but politely!

A joyful person is one who enjoys life, other people, changes in the seasons, good literature and music. A resentful person is always criticizing and finding fault with everything and everyone.

A truly joyful person knows that God is the source of all his or her joy and that God is also the fulfillment of all joy.

Whether or not you are a joyful person or a resentful person is your choice, your decision. The sad thing is that so many religious people are joyless and even resentful.

Joy is contagious but so is resentment. Which do you want to spread?

COURAGE AND LIFE

Is yours a courageous life?

Your life will shrink or expand in proportion to your courage.

God constantly challenges us and gives us the courage to meet those challenges.

The choice is yours: You can open up and accept God’s power and be courageous or you can sink into cowardice, hide from life, live in fear and merely exist.

If you want to live a more expansive life, if you want to be enthusiastic, if you want to be honest and open in your relations with others, if you want to be fearless in your prayer, then you must be courageous.

Like any virtue, courage has to be practiced. Pause now and think of some occasions when you’ve been cowardly, fearful, when you did not have the courage of your convictions.

Now think of those situations and picture what they would have been like if you had been courageous.

Joyce Rupp in her book, Fresh Bread And Other Gifts of Spiritual Nourishment, says, Courage is never learned overnight; it results from long years of practice and patience, being brave enough to face what life sends us.

Courage makes the difference between being a properly adjusted person and a fully developed person. You may suffer a bit for being courageous but in the long run you will be respected.

Why not begin now to practice the virtue of courage?

PRAYER

Are you a prayerful person?

Prayer is a conversation with God. Prayer is not appearing before God as an on stage self.

Prayer to be real must come from you as an authentic person.

Prayer demands honesty. To be truly prayerful you have to be honest with yourself about yourself. Honest enough not to kneel before God robed in all kinds of contrived pretenses.

No matter what words you use in prayer, God does know you through and through. You cannot hide behind the words of your prayer anymore than Adam and Eve were able to hide from God in the Garden.

You may fool some of the people some of the time but you can never fool God.

The best preparation for prayer is to come to terms with the real truth about yourself in the light of the gospel.

Authentic prayer means divesting yourself of all your defenses, excuses, pretenses, disguises, masks, manipulations, ruses.

Why not begin today to examine the honesty of your prayer life?

COMPASSION AND HUMOR

Are you a compassionate person?

Being compassionate means, among other things, that you can put yourself in another person’s place. That you can feel through the other person’s sensitivities, hear through the other person’s ears, dream through the other person’s hopes.

You are challenged to love others as Jesus loves them. Love one another as I have loved you. Such love presumes compassion.

How can you become more compassionate? Someone has offered a compelling insight, Humor is the brightest face of human compassion.

A true sense of humor indicates that you have the sensitivity necessary to be able to put yourself in another’s place.

One sure way of stifling compassion is to take yourself too seriously, to act as if the whole world revolves around you, to put yourself first and let others drop into an ambiguous limbo far from your conscious caring.

Humor helps you to recognize that you share the imperfections common to all. These shared imperfections motivate you to extend compassionate support to everyone because everyone, being imperfect, is in need.

Anthony Bloom in his book, The Courage To Pray, says, The greater our empathy and the more closely we identify through compassion with those for whom we pray, the more perfect is our communion with the merciful God.

Why not begin now to be more compassionate, to ask yourself habitually how you would feel in the other person’s place?

CURIOSITY

How curious are you?

Do you ever ask how long an inch worm really is or how little the star that twinkles is? How often do you look up words in the dictionary - words like temperamental, worrywart, zigzag, MIRV, jack-knife, antelope, sidetracked?

A curious mind is a mind ever alive to all the wonders, oddities, facts and fancies that beg to be known. A curious mind is young and hopeful, fascinated and joyous, flexible and open.

Curious people believe that experience is the best teacher, but they also believe that a wise person is one who learns from another’s experience.

Curious people are like detectives. They follow a clue without presuming what the solution will be.

Curious people are always surprised and excited about learning something new. They are also enthusiastic about sharing what they’ve learned.

God has blessed each of us with a mind that forever seeks truth.

Why not begin now to increase your curiosity by habitually asking yourself, What? When? Where? Why? How?

INDWELLING TRINITY

Are you a contemplative person?

Your image of a contemplative may be one who is removed from the frenzy of daily struggles. Totally dedicated, in silence and solitude, to intense communion with the Divine.

Still, in your religious tradition, there is the belief that God shares his life with you. I have come that they may have life, and life to the fullest.

From this belief we deduce the principle that where God’s life is, there is God.

What does this mean on a practical level? What does it mean in terms of your being a contemplative?

It means that God the Father, the Son and Spirit, the divine, all-powerful, infinite Trinity, dwells within you. Closer to you than you are to yourself. God is so present to you that he is present in you.

This means that at any moment of the day you can stop mentally, enter into yourself and, there, be in the presence of the Indwelling Trinity, interacting with the Father, Son and Spirit in genuine, active contemplation.

Why not begin right now, even in the midst of your busyness, to enter into yourself often each day and contemplate the Trinity dwelling within you?

BEING RESPECTFUL

Are you a respectful person?

Does the word, respect, evoke pictures of your being respectful of people with power and authority? Respectful in church? Respectful of women?

What about worms?

Can you see yourself standing respectfully before worms? Respecting them as co-workers in the preservation of the balance of ecology? Can you imagine yourself looking at worms in your garden and seeing a fragment of the overarching plan of God’s infinite providence throughout the vastness of the cosmos?

Does your respect extend from commonplace worms to unique stars to the crowning glory of God’s creation: another human being, merely and only as a human being without regard to his or her status or power or influence or achievements?

Would you show the same respect to a bag lady as to the President? To a derelict as to a bishop?

A respectful person stands in awe before every strand and fiber of God’s creation. Treats the commonest of God’s creatures with gentle wonder. Cherishes life and works diligently for growth and development.

Why not experience the glory of God’s creation by beginning today to be a respectful person?

BEING CHEERFUL

Are you a cheerful person?

Think for a moment of someone you’d call cheerful. What makes that person cheerful in your estimation? Why is that individual attractive, nice to be around, sought after? Now ask yourself, Can I develop cheerfulness?

A person of cheer is one who radiates joy and happiness. Even more, he or she shares joy and happiness with others. A cheerful person is an encouraging person. A cheerful person, in a way, shouts approval. He or she is pleasant, interested, motivating, hopeful, forgiving, optimistic, full of life, fascinated by all aspects of living, striving, failing and succeeding.

Now examine your attitude toward people, toward life, toward work, toward prayer. If you conclude you’re not a cheerful person, know this: To change your life, change your attitude. You can be a cheerful person.

A cheerful person is enthusiastic. Enthusiasm literally means in God. To be a person with a cheerful attitude, be a person who consciously lives in God. Respond to God’s gift of life by celebrating life in high spirits.

Begin today to change your attitude to one of cheerfulness and watch others come alive.

INVOLVEMENT

Are you an involved person?

Involvement doesn’t mean that you have to be everywhere at the same time. It doesn’t mean that you have to be chasing after every cause that beckons you.

Involvement is first of all an attitude. It’s an attitude born of many hours of gestation within the womb of the gospel. It’s an attitude built on the sturdy foundation of the teachings of Jesus.

Secondly, involvement is a choice. You are secure enough to choose what you will pursue. You are not concerned about what others will think about your choice. You know your abilities, talents, time allotment, health and obligations. Therefore you make the choice.

Finally, involvement is realism. You know that you cannot accomplish everything at once. You’re realistic enough to work hard without looking for stupendous results or instant fame. You’re willing to plod.

In his divine revelation, God is calling you to become more involved. This can be done by taking one step at a time as long as you have some idea of where you are going and what your destination is.

Why not take that first step today?

AWARENESS

How keen is your sense of awareness?

The other day I watched a caterpillar creeping around the patio furniture.

Suddenly it dawned on me that it had been a very long time since I saw -- really looked at -- a caterpillar.

Probably I had seen caterpillars in the past but apparently I was not aware of seeing them.

How aware are you of what you see? How aware of what you hear or feel or taste or smell?

God has given you your senses that you might enter into an intimacy with the universe as well as with your personal space in this vast cosmos.

God has also given you the ability to be aware of what your senses report to you. This ability to be aware, however, must be developed.

One way of developing your ability to be aware is to pause and say to yourself, Now I am aware of…. Then finish the sentence with whatever you are looking at or hearing. For example, Now I am aware of this rose or this starlit sky or this person’s conversation.

How vibrant your life could be if you would develop your awareness. How vivacious you could be. How enthusiastic. How joyous. How alive.

Why not begin immediately to develop your ability to be aware?

THE GOTCHA GAME

Are you addicted to the gotcha game?

Put another way, How honest is your communication? For many the predominant thrust of their communication is to get the other person. To get the other person’s goat.

What is your communication like?

Do you try to put the others on the defensive? Do you want to put others down? Do you ask questions that are in fact accusations?

Do you deliberately push people until they lose their tempers? Then walk away bulging with the self-satisfaction that says, in effect, Gotcha?

God has blessed us with the superlative gift of being able to communicate with one another. God challenges us to build community with this gift of communication.

Sadly, a gift can be abused. Once you speak a hurtful or mocking or insulting word, it’s very difficult to erase the deep impression your word has carved into another person’s sensitivities.

Why not replace dehumanizing words with words of support and affirmation? Why not make God’s Word the model of the honesty of your communication?

WHAT PRICE SECURITY?

Bigger and better barns! How important is material security in your life? How important is spiritual security?

You can stuff your barns with all kinds of things. Make the barn a treasure trove of comforts. Material security is not wrong in itself. Material selfishness is.

You can stuff your barns with all kinds of prayers and sacrifices. All you are interested in is a me-and-my-God salvation. A self-centered stockpiling of your own merits. Others can work on their own for their salvation.

Spiritual security in itself is not wrong. Spiritual egotism is.

But Jesus is saying, Don’t do it exclusively for yourself. Don’t hoard your material possessions. Don’t hoard your spiritual merits. Rather, share them.

Otherwise, like the man in the gospel story, your securities can be nothing but an illusion.

If someone asks to borrow your coat, lend him your jacket too. If someone asks you to walk a mile, walk two.

In all you do, share your material treasures, your material and spiritual treasures.

The truly happy person is the one with a barn that is half-empty.

In prayer, share yourself in your petitions for justice in the world:

Justice for those illegally imprisoned. Justice for the starving and impoverished.

Justice for those who are forced into slave labor, especially children.

Open your barn doors wide and give the bounty of your compassion, your sensitivity, your justice to those who are too powerless, too impoverished to even own a barn, who have nothing to put into barns.

ENTHUSIASM

Are you an enthusiastic person?

An enthusiastic person is curious, interested, knowledgeable and believing.

The word, enthusiasm, comes from two Greek words, en thus, which means in God.

Enthusiasm is placing your energy at the disposal of God’s infinite power.

Someone has said that nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is essential not only for achieving great things but for accomplishing anything worthwhile in your daily living.

Some people merely watch things happen. Enthusiastic people make things happen.

Joyce Rupp in her book, May I Have This Dance? says, To keep the love of God aflame in us, to stoke the fires of enthusiasm we need to draw closer to others whose hearts are on fire with God.

If you want to feel the vibrations of being fully alive, develop your enthusiasm by entering into life in all aspects and challenges as fully as possible.

Why not begin today?

BEING PATIENT

Are you a patient person?

Impatience more often than not leads to frustration. Impatience withers good intentions. Impatience gives into annoyance, intolerance, hypercriticism, nastiness and finally hopelessness.

You know from your own experience that we are all slow growers. Why, than, expect that you can change institutions or structures or governments or other people overnight?

Adolfo Quezada in his book, Walking With God, wrote, The result of impatience is craft without pride, literature without depth, labor without merit and service without benefit.

Patience means that you are willing to hold out the spoonful of honey rather than spill the barrel of vinegar. Patience means researching the problems. Patience means attracting others